You May Be Particular, But You Should Learn To Think Broader - 12
Don't let your giants cause you to obsess.
God made you, YOU. He put you into the earth at a particular time in a particular place. He knows your form. Your limits. And He saved you and has been building you into the man he wants you to be: a mature man.1
There is something good and true about the particularity of your faith and life, though you mustn’t get too inside of yourself. You mustn’t see things so close that you are nearsighted. You have to try and see things from 20,000 feet. Let’s call it being sober-minded.2
Stop yourself as you study God’s Word and prepare to teach it. Remind yourself that the life of the congregation has needs greater than you can supply in yourself, and then ask God to help you be honest with yourself about the things you intend to make a big deal about and the things you don’t. Does it make sense to “harp on” some things while ignoring others?
A pastor/elder will often reveal himself in the things he chooses to read, listen to, preach and teach, and then apply from God’s Word. Some things become like giants to the man. Perhaps, they frighten him. Other things, he hardly knows exist.
A goal for the mature man is that his teaching becomes whole, rather than uneven and lopsided. Do not become the one-stringed preacher.
Your past and present fears often rise up and affect what you spend your time thinking about. Surely, the things you think about, will both interfere and inform your sermons and writing and classes and such. It is not all bad, for God has impressed some things into you. But, if you’re not cautious, it can diminish your effectiveness and keep you from gaining greater breadth of mind. An elder needs breadth of mind. He needs to think broader in order to help more of his congregants.
After all, you are to preach and teach the whole counsel of God.3
Stop and consider your past and present fears: Are you afraid of financial ruin? of death? of infidelity? of humiliation? of imprisonment? of being mocked? of the future degradation of society? of losing your children’s love or respect? etc., then chances are you will be thinking, selecting texts, teaching, and applying the Word, against those giants that seem so menacing to you.4
Oftentimes, a man’s giants arise from his past pain. He was hurt by someone and doesn’t want to be hurt again. He has thought a lot about it, how to avoid it, how evil the thing was. It is hard to make scars invisible. And a pastor/elder shouldn’t act like they don’t exist. In fact, he might have something good to say on these subjects. It is just that life and faith are greater than his giants. The giants needs to be put in their places.
Giants do not only exist from personal pain. They come from the outside teachers as well. (See the list from footnote three below.) I remember how talk radio used to steer people’s thinking (mine too) every morning and afternoon as they came and went to work. Now it is podcasts and other social media accounts.
Look. It is easy to get riled up over the latest goings on. And it should be clear to mature people that these VITALLY IMPORTANT topics are not nearly as vital and important as is suggested. And I say this because of how rapidly they appear and disappear on the digital airwaves. People get worked up for about two weeks on some issue and then here comes a new one.
These hot issues - or giants of the day - will show up frequently in your teaching if you spend a lot of time dwelling over them. They will come out in the passages you pick, your exposition, and the applications you make.
The problem becomes that you begin to teach the Bible mostly around your obsession with the giants. You want to teach the congregation about how large the giant is, and so you page around looking for a passage you can use. You want to quote from Paul, Peter, Jesus, and Moses mostly to prove a point. Your aim is to speak to whatever it is you’ve been thinking about lately. That is a sermon driven by a preacher more than a sermon driven by a text.
Does this mean you should not teach on the issues of the day? No. But it does mean you should make your intentions quite plain and transparent. Own up to it, “I’m about to teach on a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.”
The congregation needs to know they can trust you with every text of Scripture and that you will respect the intention of the Bible writers. They are NOT helped when you leverage into a bible passage your latest obsessions. It is confusing. They begin to doubt themselves, whether they even understand the Scripture. They are stymied trying to figure out how you were able to condemn, say RACISM, by using Jesus encounter with the Syrophoenician woman.5
This is the process of cleaning you. It is called Sanctification.
1 Peter 1:13
Acts 20:27
It is possible I have not listed the Goliath of Gath that troubles you. How about the welfare State, or big Pharma, or the environment, or feminism, or patriarchy, or the fiat money system, or the “end times”, or abortion, or homosexuality, or vaccinations, or the 2nd Amendment, or freedom of speech, or the latest election which is usually referred to as the “most important election of our lifetime.”
I actually saw a woman preacher accuse Jesus of acting poorly by how he treated the woman in Mark 7:24-30. How incredibly sacrilegious!