March 27, 2014
Double-Edged Sword
Most of us would say that when we’ve listened to
a sermon we’ve heard the Word of God. However, as I’ve been analyzing sermons
and meditations for their structure and content, I’m taken back with how much
of the presentations contain jokes, filler, opinion, illustration, examples and
rabbit trails. It gives me pause to compare all this extraneous material to the
Word of God. The writer of Hebrews said, “For the word of God is living and
active. Sharper than any double–edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing
soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the
heart.” (Heb 4:12 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Paul and Peter and James and John and those guys could say their preaching was the Word of God. Paul even wrote to the Corinthians, “If any one thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. If any one does not recognize this, he is not recognized.” (I Cor 14:37-38) He was pulling on some mighty big britches! But if he were being like most all of our current preachers, and probably like most all of them since Paul and those guys died, then he would have stitched his britches together himself, at best, or have gotten them stitched up in some semitary, or something like that. Paul’s britches were stitched by the Lord. He spent time in the third heaven. He declined to tell us what he heard. But my surmise is that it was extremely educational. He came back with an understanding of the Lord’s body, His Word, the new life, where we’re going, and how to best get there. His entire reason for relating his excursion into heaven was that his training for preaching and authority was not by men
-----But about the rest of these blokes who’ve succeeded the guys who wrote the New Testament? They have a lot of great ideas worth pondering, a lot of inspiration and meaningful advice for difficult times, but their britches just aren’t stitched the same as were Paul‘s. This is nothing against them. We’re all that way, now. The Lord’s Word has been written. And it’s before us. So if I am to feel I’ve heard the Word of God from the pulpit, then I will have heard either someone reading its text, or else someone assembling scriptural revelations from logical principles into valid concepts which do not go one step beyond what is written (I Cor 4:6.)
-----We’re too far down the road of “my church” “your church” for the pulpit of any given church not to be substantially guided by the overburden of one massive theological construct or another, or more. Most of the subtle caveats and clarifications and further explanations you hear in sermons are clues to when a preacher has left the Word of God and ventured into the beyond. This is one of the few reasons I do not work from a pulpit. I like to inspire and encourage and influence by sparking imagination and throwing out fodder for further thought. All of that is “beyond” kind of stuff not really in the nature of “preaching the Word.” But I don’t mean to be directional. And I don’t claim to be speaking the Word. And I don’t want people following my ideas. I want them reading the Word and assembling ideas from how it intersects what they are.
-----On the other hand, the Word preached today, at least as far as I estimate the matter, is an assemblage of ideas boiled down to their fundamental essences simply matching scriptural principles being woven together as their sense makes the fit. Preaching the Word today emerges from only the Bible. Preaching in Paul’s day, at least by Paul and James and John and those guys, “wrote” the Word.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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