Tickling Ears and Getting Cheers - 10

You will be tempted to hear praise and avoid criticism by those you love.

Each Sunday that I preach, I have my four children who sit in pews out in front of me. I love them more than my own life. And I would hope that they’d forever remain a part of the congregation. I don’t want them to leave.

However, there are things in the Bible on which I know we all don’t see eye-to-eye. We’ve had some healthy exchanges in my kitchen and dining room and on trips in my car, all throughout life. I hope that I’ve taught them to ask the hard questions. Not one of them is quick to receive a teaching they don’t agree with.

In our disagreements, I confess, I have become concerned about their waywardness (as a father should) and they, alternatively, have become concerned about me adding to or taking away from Scripture. I get it.¹

So what does this do to me when I’m preparing to preach a sermon? Am I tempted to leave something unspoken (though the text speaks to it) for fear of how one of my children might respond? I can tell you, how they will respond, it does enter my thoughts but so does the response that might come from others in the congregation.

Ultimately, I better come clean with God. Right? I best not neglect preaching the whole counsel whether my children like it or not, whether the congregation likes it or not, whether I like it or not.

This is Paul’s advice to Timothy, “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.”²

So then, it is about God’s Word. It helps us. We need it, whether or not we want it in the moment.

Of course, it’s not all bad to be concerned about how people might respond. It keeps you thinking. You dig deeper. You tend to really want God to prove it to you before you go out on that ice. And as iron sharpens iron,³ so do a pastor’s children and congregants sharpen the pastor. When he preaches to people he really loves, and he knows they might not like what he is about to teach, then he digs deeper (hopefully) for fear of being a false teacher, a complacent teacher, who could drive those people away.

I’m glad my kids think hard on things. And, I suppose, I’m glad they’ve disagreed with me a fair amount. Nonetheless, I’ve got to love God and His truth the most. It is His Word that must go out from the pulpit. I answer to Him, no matter who likes it or doesn’t. And I understand that, sometimes, people are just not ready for it yet. So then, it is up to them and the Holy Spirit to sift and shake it.

This is not to insinuate that I’ve only ever preached correctly. I can teach wrong, no matter how hard I study to show myself approved by God. My children will probably be the first to tell you!

I will always go back to when I taught “Christian” pacifism. Turn the other cheek and all, but I taught it to the point of complete non-resistance: Gandhi-like. I figured if you beat up my grandma that I should trust the Lord to intervene, for I was not to resist the one who would do evil, and all that. I was foolish. I was not handling Scripture properly. I was young and naive.

When I learned better, I guess I didn’t tell my friend Dave about my mistakes. His question to me was sobering for me, “Why didn’t you tell me you don’t believe in pacifism anymore?” It is sobering because he said it as if his faith and obedience depended on me. Yikes teacher!

I suppose your church family can affect even your selection of sermon topics or a book of the Bible or where you choose to begin and end a passage. You will have to pray and ask God to keep you honest about that. What is in your heart and mind that provokes a particular passage? And you will also have to be kept honest about disjointing the text to promote something YOU want to say.

I see the alternate motivation in young men. Some of them want to receive a chest bump or a high five for really pulling out the stops against feminism, and political compromise, and meek qualities like kindness and compassion and such. Here too, you can be tempted to look for passages and books that allow you to really bring your points home and garner praise from others of like mind. Don't preach for attaboys!

I think perhaps the best advice I could give is to prayerfully pick a book of the Bible that seems like it would help build-up the congregation to a mature man.⁴ Then study the book by reading it through a few times, then read commentaries from different centuries and preach as close to verse-by-verse with application for today that fits within the scope at which the biblical writer was aiming.

1. They are wrong.

2. 2 Timothy 4:1-3

3. Proverbs 27:17

4. Ephesians 4:11-14 says, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”