Don't Be a Cheap Preacher

John MacArthur writes: "(A) fatal path is to be like the preacher who says, I've already got a sermon; I just have to find a verse for it. He starts with a preconceived idea and then gathers some verses to support it—a case of the tail wagging the dog. True biblical sermons don’t drive the biblical text, they are driven by the biblical text. I know if I try to manufacture a sermon, I wind up forcing Scripture to fit my ideas. But when I try to comprehend a passage, the message flows out of that understanding."

Such an unfortunate use of Scripture occurs with dyed-in-the-wool conservative, strict plenary, and with "Bible preaching" interpreters. Preachers with seminary degrees, Bible school degrees and those with secular degrees are not immune to this erroneous way of preaching. They preach a philosophy or theosophy that contains some truth and back it up with Scripture verses from here or there. 

The problem with that type of sermon is that absolutely ANY philosophical position can be supported with selectively chosen verses. Just because a preacher is making true statements (which not all do) and "supports" them with Bible verses does NOT mean he is preaching the Bible. That's exactly what cults and apostates do. They sprinkle truth in their speech, attach Scripture to their topic and proclaim that God has said such-and-such. Their congregations respond as though something profoundly spiritual has been preached.

MacArthur continues: "I heard a sermon on 'they cast four anchors…and wished for the day' (Acts 27:29 KJV); the anchor of hope, the anchor of faith, and so on. Those Acts 27 anchors were not anchors of anything but metal.

"Most interpretive challenges can be resolved through studying the passage within its wider context. 'God is not a God of confusion' (1 Corinthians 14:33) and He does not have a problem explaining Himself. The problem is usually with us—whether it be a personal objection to what Scripture says, a cultural gap between us and the text’s original setting, a refusal to obey, or a lack of broader biblical knowledge. Whatever the case, skills in Bible interpretation can be acquired and applied."

Remember, every verse of scripture must be interpreted in terms of the word used, the chapter it's in, the chapter it's in, the book it's in, the covenant that applies and the Bible as a whole.

Anything else is just cheap.

Preach the Bible or Preach the Gospel. What does the Bible say about it?

In Mark 16: 15-18 we read:  "He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the Bible to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

That is Mark's rendition of the Great Commission...only it's a misquote. What it actually says is, "He said to them, Go into all the world and preach the good news (the gospel) to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

Every time Jesus quoted the Old Testament, it was to show how it pointed to Him. Every time Paul quoted the Old Testament, it was to point us to Jesus. In fact, every time the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, it is to point us to Jesus.

The Old Testament is not about Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Shadrack, Meshack or Abednego, it is about Jesus.

So, how many people has your church baptized so far this year? Why is that? You preach the Bible as hard as you can, yet nobody comes to Christ. What's wrong?

What's wrong is they're hearing the Bible preached instead of the gospel. Preaching the Bible is not what we've been commissioned to do. We've been commissioned to preach the gospel.

Many preachers "pride" themselves that they "preach the Bible," and they turn its verses into morality lessons, character studies, Christian behaviorism, social commentary and political opinion, never getting to its point, which is the gospel in both the Old Testament and New.

What is this "gospel" thing?

The word "gospel" means good news. The good news is that Christ (Messiah) has come to save people from their sins when they repent, follow Him in baptism and trust in, and only in, His finished work at the cross of Calvary. Virtually every preacher knows that, but somehow it does not compute in their minds that the gospel is the only message they have.

If you preach from the Old Testament, you must not preach it for the purpose of showing how God blesses obedience and curses disobedience. You must preach it for the purpose of pointing people to Christ.

If you preach from the New Testament, you must realize that it is not an extension of the Old Testament, it is the fulfillment of the Old Testament in Christ.

"But just preaching the gospel gets old," you say. Then you're not saved. If the gospel ever gets old, then it was never good news to begin with. The gospel is not just good news, it is the best news that has ever been presented. It trumps ABC, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and FOX news hands down. It is more current than tomorrow's news. It is the reason there are Christians in the world. It is Jesus.

When people come to your church, they should have three things: They should have a time of deep, spiritual worship (not fun and entertainment); They should have a time of exuberant praise of Christ; and they should hear the gospel.

Maybe there's a reason people are not "getting saved." Maybe they have no idea what's going on in your "worship" service. Maybe they're hearing the Bible preached instead of the gospel.

You think?

Preaching the Verses vs Preaching the Message

Christ, the Bible's
Whole Message

Some preachers think that if they read some verses from the Bible and “apply” them to life they have “Preached” the Bible. That is true if, and only if, they have put the verses in the context of the word used, the verse it’s in, the chapter it’s in, the book it’s in, the Testament it’s in, the covenant it belongs to and the Bible as a whole.

That’s hard work, and very few preachers practice it.

Too much preaching treats Bible verses as though they are stand-alone, sort of proverbial instructions for life. There are really none of those in the Bible, not even in the book of Proverbs.

Some verses and passages express complete thoughts and seem to stand alone, but they do not. Some sections of the Bible synopsize Biblical concepts and doctrine, but they are not intended to be islands of theosophy. To use them thus is an aberration and could easily lead to heresy.

Take John 3:16, for example: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Almost all Christians know that verse and it is the pivotal verse around which every other word of the Bible rotates. But is must not stand alone! It has a context and without the contest it is totally meaningless (even though we think we can ascribe meaning to it.

The context goes something like this (very simplified): God made and loved all that is. Man sinned and changed the creation for the worse. God wanted man’s love. He chose the Jewish nation to bring forth Messiah (the Savior). His chosen people could not remain faithful to Him, as can none of us. After many years of preparation, Messiah came in the form of a man named Jesus, God’s only begotten Son. He lived, suffered, was crucified, died and rose again for the remission of the sins of all who would believe. If we trust in, and only in, the finished work of Christ at the cross of Calvary, we receive an un-worked for gift of eternal life.

That is the Bible’s message.

For some, that is “inadequate.” There has to be more. There have to be rules and regulations and proof-texting Scripture provides those. There have to be special gifts, and proof-texting Scripture provides the evidence for them. There has to be more revelation, revelation that is extra-Biblical and gives more than the Bible gives.

For those people, Jesus is just not enough. And those people, my friend, are as lost as they can be.

If Jesus, in and of Himself, is not adequate to meet all of our needs, spiritual, emotional, mental and physical (and I am not talking about His “obligation” to heal us from every disease), then His trip to the cross was just a frivolous exercise in futility and God is not who He says He is.

Certain books of the Bible are often treated as though they are not related to Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. James is one of those books. James is often presented as some sort of “rules for Christian living.” But it is absolutely NOT that. James presents us with the life changes that result when we have the Jesus of the New Covenant in our hearts. James is not “do this and you will please God.” James is “when you are saved, this is what your life will look like by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

The Ten Commandments are treated by many “Christians” as God’s standard by which we must perfectly live if we are to please Him enough to save us. In the sense that they are God’s standard of perfection that is correct. But Paul is very clear in Romans that the purpose of God’s perfect Law is to reveal how short we fall in living up to God’s standards and how much we need a Savior to fulfill the Law for us.

The “yes, but” argument does not fly. There is no “but.” The Bible always has been, is now and always will be God’s revelation of His love for His creation and His plan for its redemption. That is its intention and that is its adequacy.

“How do we apply the Bible?” We take its message of salvation, allow the Holy Spirit to internalize it into our hearts and then follow His leadership (which will always conform to the message of the Bible).

The trouble is, many preachers do not believe the salvation of the Bible is enough for Christians. They believe there is more. But if the Holy Spirit has convicted you of sin, you have recognized who Christ is, have committed your life to following Him and have allowed the Holy Spirit to take up residence in your heart, you lack absolutely nothing.

With this attitude, Christians can absolutely, delightfully devour every word of Scripture because every word of Scripture reminds them of what they used to be, how Christ came into their lives and how He made them into the unswerving, eternally secure being they are today.

With this attitude, Christians can truthfully sing: “I love to tell the story, for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to know it like the rest.”

The story is all we have. If we need more, we are forever lost.

What Shall We then Preach?

Far too many pastors have no idea about the significance of the New Covenant. Preaching from the New Covenant perspective is absolutely foreign to them. It is so much easier to just read Bible verses that match their legalistic mind set. Even though they DENY that they are legalistic, they preach sermons that are legalistic in nature.

Interestingly, every time they lead in the Lord's Supper (Communion), when the cup is passed, they read from Matthew 14:24. "This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is poured out for many." Maybe they read from 1 Corinthians 11:25, "This cup is the New Covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me."

Once the Lord's Supper is over, they do not mention or preach from the perspective of the New Covenant again until the next Lord's Supper service.

That is sad and borders on heretical. Jesus IS the New Covenant. That's what He came to be.

The Jews were in covenant relationships with God. There were 7 covenants in the Old Testament: the Edenic Covenant; the Adamic Covenant; the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant; the Mosaic Covenant; the Palestinian (Land) Covenant and the David Covenant. Every practicing Jew would be aware of these covenants. They revered them. They memorized them. They felt bound by them.

In the Old Testament, following the Davidic Covenant, Jeremiah said that God was going to establish a "new covenant" with Israel, one that would find its place in the heart, not in rules and regulations. This New Covenant was established in Jesus, Christ (Messiah). And He ABSOLUTELY DID AWAY with the Old Covenants. More accurately, He FULFILLED all of the requirements of all of the Old Covenants. We do not have to fulfill them, He has already done that for us. (Hebrews 8:13)

Every Pharisee, Sadducee and Levite would have understood EXACTLY what the implications of this New Covenant were. That understanding is what made them so furious about Jesus' ministry that they wanted Him dead. They did not want their covenant(s) made obsolete. That is because under the New Covenant, there would no longer be a need for the office of priesthood because EVERY believer would be a priest in his/her own right.

This is not about the so-called "New Covenant Theology," which is fraught with error. It is about coming to grips with and learning to live as New Covenant people.

We need to be steeped in the New Covenant (but not New Covenant Theology). We need to hear it from the pulpit, not on special occasions, but every Sunday. The New Covenant is Jesus. "Obedience to God" is not our message. Our message is following Christ. If we immerse ourselves in following Him, there is no need to ever be concerned about knowing how to be obedient. He will have written His New Covenant on our hearts. If he hasn't, we are not His.

So, should we preach about obedience here and obedience there? NO. We should preach that in our natural state we are totally and irrevocably depraved and cannot be good enough to even be in God's presence, let alone to please God. We should preach that the wages of sin is eternal death. We should preach that God offers a gift called "salvation." We should preach that the gift is freely given to those who accept it by trusting in, and only in, Christ, who shed His blood at the cross of Calvary.

So many Christians and pastors are so staunch in their legalistic upbringing and what they were taught in Bible study, Bible college or seminary that they COMPLETELY MISS the real message. They seem to believe that if every sermon is about, and only about, the salvation available through the Christ of the New Covenant that they will be seen as irrelevant and out of date.

There is NOTHING irrelevant or out of date about the message of salvation in Christ. That is the ONLY relevant message. It is a message NOT TO BE TACKED ON TO A SERMON TO CONVINCE PEOPLE TO BECOME CHRISTIANS, it is to be the MAIN FOCUS of the message from the first word to the last.

If the message of salvation in Christ is boring to you, you probably are not saved. If you are a preacher and you are struggling to come up with a "relevant" sermon message, QUIT STRUGGLING! God has provided you with the message. The only thing you should be "struggling" with is how to present THAT message more clearly and fervently. If you think God has led you to some message that is about social injustices, moral issues or how bad the world, country and/or church is, you are dead WRONG. HE HAS NOT LED YOU TO PREACH THAT MESSAGE. He only leads you to preach the message of Christ.

If you are preaching from one of the great Old Testament passages, learn to contrast it and compare it with the New Covenant message of the New Testament! If you are preaching from the New Testament, learn to present its New Covenant message with enthusiasm, accuracy and power.

Christians and pastors, learn to resolve to know NOTHING except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2). That's all you need to know. What you need to learn is how to preach HIM.

Stop treating the Bible as though it is a list of things that displease God and things that please Him. Faith in Christ (not some generic faith in faith or even faith in some generic God concept) is the only thing that pleases Him.

Give 'Em A Good Warm-Over

A pastor preached a message on David and Goliath on a fine Sunday morning.

A few weeks later, he preached from the same passage, gave the same illustrations and drew the same conclusions.

Then, just to make certain everybody had heard it, he preached from David and Goliath once again.

Now, some of you are thinking, "This must be a joke. What's the punch line?"

No punch line. This is no joke.

Does it occur to pastors that when they "preach" from the same passage over and over, use the same illustrations over and over, draw the same conclusions over and over and use the same cliches over and over, the congregation might get the idea that they are too lazy to develop a new sermon?

Out of 66 books, are there not enough passages to keep a pastor busy with new material?

There is one message (and only one message) that bears repeating every single Sunday. It is a message found in every book of the Bible. It is the message that Christ paid the sin debt we owe. 

If a pastor thinks that message is boring, maybe he should reconsider his calling. It was the apostle, Paul, who said, "I have resolved to know nothing while I was with you but Christ and Him crucified." That is our only message. It does not deserve to be tacked on as the caboose of some other message, it must BE the message.

Can't find Jesus in the whole Bible? Consider this:

Jesus In Every Book of the Bible

In Genesis, He's the Breath of Life
In Exodus, the Passover Lamb
In Leviticus, He's our High Priest
Numbers, The Fire by Night
Deuteronomy, He's Moses' Voice
In Joshua, He is Salvation's Choice
Judges, Law Giver
In Ruth, the Kinsmen-Redeemer
First and second Samuel, our Trusted Prophet
In Kings and Chronicles, He's Sovereign

Ezra, true and Faithful Scribe
Nehemiah, He's the Rebuilder of Broken Walls and Lives
In Esther, He's Mordecai's Courage
In Job, the Timeless Redeemer
In Psalms, He is our Morning Song

In Proverbs, Wisdom's Cry
Ecclesiastes, the Time and Season
In the Song of Solomon, He is the Lover's Dream

In Isaiah, He's Prince of Peace
Jeremiah, the Weeping Prophet
In Lamentations, the Cry for Israel
Ezekiel, He's the Call from Sin
In Daniel, the Stranger in the Fire

In Hosea, He is Forever Faithful
In Joel, He's the Spirits Power
In Amos, the Arms that Carry Us
In Obadiah, He's the Lord our Savior
In Jonah, He's the Great Missionary

In Micah, the Promise of Peace
In Nahum, He is our Strength and our Shield 

In Habakkuk and Zephaniah, He's pleading for revival
In Haggai, He restores a lost heritage
In Zechariah, our Fountain

In Malachi, He is the Son of Righteousness rising with healing in His wings

In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, He is God, Man, Messiah
In the book of Acts, He is Fire from Heaven
In Romans, He's the Grace of God
In Corinthians, the Power of Love
In Galatians, He is Freedom from the Curse of Sin

Ephesians, our Glorious Treasure
Philippians, the Servants Heart
In Colossians, He's the Godhead Trinity
Thessalonians, our Coming King
In Timothy, Titus, Philemon He's our Mediator and our Faithful Pastor

In Hebrews, the Everlasting Covenant
In James, the One who heals the sick.
In First and Second Peter, he is our Shepherd
In John and in Jude, He is the Lover coming for His Bride

In the Revelation, He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords

      The prince of peace
      The Son of man
      The Lamb of God
      The great I AM

      He's the alpha and omega
      Our God and our Savior
      He is Jesus Christ the Lord
      and when time is no more
He is, HE IS, HE IS THE GREAT I AM.

So come on, you preachers who can't take the time to find Jesus in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament; get with God's program!

When you claim to "preach the Word...all of it," are you talking about using it as a bunch of DOs and DON'Ts, a list of things we do (or don't do) to please God? Or are you finding in its pages from Genesis to the Revelation the good news of Messiah crucified, buried and resurrected? He's there. If you were called to preach, He is who you were called to preach about. If you cannot preach Christ, you were not called to preach.

ARE YOU A COMPETENT MINISTER OF THE NEW COVENANT?

“He (God) has made us competent as ministers of a NEW COVENANT – not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” ( 2 Corinthians 3:6)

To what is Paul referring when he uses the term “letter?”

To some it makes no difference. They just keep on sanctimoniously continuing in doctrines that belong to the Old Covenant and are too steeped in religiosity to trust in or commit to a New Covenant. They stubbornly cling to teachings they received as children or as babes in Christ and would never trust themselves with a New Covenant. They lack faith in Christ to be the New Covenant.

When using the term "letter," Paul is speaking about the Law of Moses, the essence of the Old Covenant. You can test that with the context of Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Hebrews) 

The passage that follows (2 Corinthians 3:7-18 and all through 2 Corinthians, chapter 4), considered in the context of the words used, the verses they are in, the book they are in, the Testament they are in, the Covenant they refer to and the Bible as a whole, is a call to be STEEPED in the New Covenant.

Why do some pastors just throw these parts out? Is it because they do not conform to their distorted habit of walking with one foot in the Old Covenant and one foot in the New Covenant?

Consider Hebrews 8:13. Following a magnificent discourse on the New Covenant and its High Priest, Jesus, we read, “By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one OBSOLETE and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.”

Does this mean that the Old Covenant is obsolete? Exactly! That is exactly what it means. But those who hate people who pick and choose Scripture, elect to ignore this passage, again because it does not conform with what they have heard all of their lives.

In many cases, preachers preach as though Scripture is a series of behavioristic rules and regulations designed to help us be good in God’s eyes. News flash! You cannot be good in God’s eyes by doing the things Scripture “requires” of Christians. You can only be good in God’s eyes if He sees you through the advocacy of Jesus Christ.

If that’s the case, what does one do with books like James, which has always been preached by most as a “guide for Christian living?” The answer is: YOU STOP PREACHING JAMES LIKE IT IS A “GUIDE FOR CHRISTIAN LIVING” AND START TEACHING IT AS A BOOK THAT DESCRIBES THE HEART-CHANGE THAT RESULTS FROM A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD THROUGH CHRIST, THE ONE WHO IS THE NEW COVENANT!

Most preachers are MUCH too LAZY to do that. They just take the book one verse at a time as if each verse is just a New Testament proverb about being a wise Christian. That it is not. By its own testimony, it is a book about Godly wisdom coming from above, not from the techniques of the world. It is consistent with the concept of the New Covenant being written on our hearts.

If you are saved, you are a creature of and must be committed to the New Covenant. If you are not committed to the New Covenant, you are not saved. You might think you are saved. You might even “feel” saved. Maybe you had an experience that you think was a saving experience. But if you are not aware of and committed to the New Covenant, you are not saved.

You would be well served to admit your stubbornness, repent of bad preaching (preaching a lot of Bible verses and calling it Bible preaching), and receive the blessing of the New Covenant (Christ), whose gift is eternal life and whose Law (love God and others) is written on our hearts.

Preaching the Gospel/Bible?

Some pastors seem to think that if the read a lot of Bible verses and make comments on them, they have “preached the Bible” or “preached the gospel.”

Often they preach on some topic or another and then tag the sermon with a non-descript “invitation,” that nobody knows why or how to respond to.

That’s not preaching the Bible. That’s not preaching the gospel. That’s not even preaching. That’s just filling time.

Paul wrote, following his failed excursion into philosophy at Athens, “I have resolved to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified…” (1 Corinthians 2:2). He didn’t say, “I have resolved to know not much more than Christ and Him crucified. He said, “I have resolved to know NOTHING but Christ and Him crucified. What does NOTHING mean? Does it mean “something,” “a little bit” or does it mean “NOTHING?”

Suppose a preacher takes a few Scriptures from the Old Testament, maybe one of the famous stories like Daniel in the lions’ den, David and Goliath, Joshua and the walls of Jericho or any of the other great stories, and reads them. Then suppose he reads about obedience and how “God blesses obedience and curses disobedience.” Then suppose he tacks on the gospel at the end. Has he preached the Bible? No, he has not.

The problem is that many preachers treat the Bible as though it is a bunch of unconnected, unrelated stories, rules, regulations and wise sayings. It is not.

The Bible is the most remarkably consistent, intertwined and amazing books ever written.

First of all, it is written by God. He used 40 different authors over thousands of years who wrote 66 books, each of which relates to every one of all of the others! That is astonishing!

What a total shame to not demonstrate in every sermon how the Bible is all about God’s character, His love of His creation and His plan for its redemption. What message could possibly be more powerful, more relevant and more important for any human being to hear?

Preachers wake up! Stop cherry-picking Scripture to put together a sermon that fits your agenda or your “theosophy.” Cults do that! Let’s not let the Word of God be treated like some legalistic bunch of do’s and don’ts.

Neither let us use Scripture to show how bad the church is or how bad some practices in the church are. The church is the BRIDE OF CHRIST!! Stop doing that! The church is not bad. The church is good! There might be some people who need Bible study, training or growing, but the church is GOOD. Get that through your backward thinking, legalistic heads!

Come on, preachers. Study before you speak. Find the gospel in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Stop taking the lazy way out in sermon preparation. Start finding Jesus in every verse of the Bible. He’s there! You just have to find Him there! Do it!

Don’t tag your sermon with a quick invitation. Make your message lead up to a great, positive, compelling and inspiring invitation. Make Jesus the whole point of your message. Make every word of your message be designed to introduce people to Jesus and to inspire those who already know Him.

If you don’t think He is worthy of that, you need to revisit your own salvation experience!

Do You Pray for Your Pastor?

If you do (and you should), what do you pray for? Do you pray that he will be your personal chaplain or do you see him as your shepherd? A chaplain is duty bound to serve the rotating needs of a specific class of people.

Shepherding runs in the opposite direction from a chaplain. It takes all the unique needs of various people at various stages of life and leads them to one ultimate solution… Jesus Christ.

This post begins a series of posts about how to pray for your pastor.

The absolute most important prayer for your pastor is that his sermons are redundant.

What? Pray that his sermons are redundant? Why?

Still stinging from his fiasco at Athens, where he tried to match philosophical wits with the Athenian philosophers, Paul wrote that he “…resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” (I Corinthians 2:2)

He had made the mistake of preaching something other than the gospel. But the gospel is absolutely the ONLY message we have. If you get tired of that message, you need to check your relationship to God through Christ.

So, pray that you pastor will be able to proclaim one overarching message from every text he preaches. Whatever principle or wisdom is put forward, pray that every message you hear from this pulpit is the wrapped around the same redundant theme: the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Pray that his sermons hold high the sacred jewel of redemption so that you may marvel at it. With every turn and refraction of light there is a new glory revealed but it always the same jewel.

Pray he is a record scratched exactly at the sacrifice of Christ. Pray that he never gets over, gets past, gets to the bottom of or never gets tired of the glorious news of the accomplishment of God in Christ.

Pray that he hears you singing the refrain, “Tell me the story of Jesus. Write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious; sweetest that ever was heard.”

Pray your preacher aids you in the constant re-discovery of the absolute, unending spectrum of glorious truth that is within the Word of God and its singular message spanning from Genesis to Revelation.

This is not a story about what man does for God. This is not a message about how man gets to God. This is not a story about how man sought God. This is a story about how God got to man, how God satisfied His own requirements on man’s behalf and for his own glory.

Pray this message never ceases to amaze this man who is your pastor.

(Thanks and a hat tip to Church Pastor for the inspiration for and much of the content of this post).

Bible Study and Preaching

What passes for Bible study and “Bible based sermons” today is dismal. It is little more than pick-and-choose magnified to imitate Bible truth.

Bible study has been reduced to chopping the Bible up into little pieces to serve a particular topic of interest to the Bible study leader or the ones responsible for his “teaching manual.” This is the method used by every heretical cult that has ever been and is fraught with danger.

A case in point is the way the book of Proverbs is used to address certain topics, for instance, “Watching your words.”

Being careful about what you say is important. Words can hurt. Words can heal. Words can be neutral. But using some “proverbs” about words from one section of Proverbs and some from another completely misses the point of the book. Proverbs, in the Bible, is about growth. As we grow in Wisdom (Christ), we will understand how to use words better. That’s why the subject of how we use words is progressive in the book of Proverbs. Each time it is brought up, a little more of the subject is revealed and a proper response expanded.

Each section of Proverbs deals with the same group of topics, each time a little more in depth and a little more detailed. The topics are: Wisdom, the fear of the Lord, the company we keep, the value of money and things, and the results of choosing wrongly. Wisdom is a type of Christ in Proverbs and the point is that as we know Christ better we will exhibit more and more of His characteristics.

Sermons have been reduced to modified legalism. Most evangelical pastors would deny that they are legalistic, but then go right on preaching about lists of things that are right and things that are wrong. That IS legalism. And it is NOT what the Bible is about, no matter how many passages or verses are quoted.

The Bible is about the gospel of Christ. That’s its message from cover to cover. The gospel is the Good News that Christ has paid the penalty for sin and that if we repent and turn to Him in faith, trusting in, and only in, the finished work of Christ at the cross of Calvary, we will spend eternity with Him in Heaven.

Whether we are preaching from Exodus, Leviticus, Malachi the Gospels, or wherever, the message is the same: God is of the highest character; He loves His creation and has a wonderful plan for its redemption.

The Bible is not about how we behave (although if you need a behavioral guide, it is the best there is). It is not a history book (although if you need to know the history of Israel or of God’s movement in history, it is the best history there is). The Bible is not a psychology book (although it contains the best psychology that ever has been, is now or ever will be). Nor is the Bible a philosophy book (although it contains the only relevant philosophy in the universe).

The Bible is God’s revelation of His character, His love for His creation and His plan for its redemption.

Every Bible study leader should look for those three things. If he cannot find them in what he is preparing to teach, he should go back and study some more or he will be teaching the wrong thing.

Every preacher should look for those three things. If he cannot find them in what he is preparing to preach, he should go back and study some more or he will be preaching heresy.