10/6/13 Cecil about 50
This
morning many locations of New Life Community Church in Chicago are beginning a
series of expositional sermons digging deep into Paul’s second letter to
Timothy, a series that will last well into December. In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul instructs Timothy, a
young minister of the Gospel of Jesus, to “correctly handle the word of truth”. I am proud of the brave decision by the
pastoral team at New Life to commit this amount of time digging deep into a
passage of scripture such as this, because it means they are committed to expositional
preaching - allowing the Bible to set the agenda and speak for itself - rather
than emphasizing the more comfortable and interesting topical preaching - deciding
on a topic or message and then looking for Bible passages to support it. I call it a “brave” decision because allowing
the Bible to speak for itself means one will be biblically correct but not
always politically correct. It means
they are willing to do the work of applying hard biblical truths to our lives,
truths that often step on toes and make congregations step out of their comfort
zones, truths that could lead people of shallow, untested, and ultimately false
presuppositions about God to abandon the church altogether, like Paul
experienced when abandoned and persecuted in Asia for his message as he described
in this letter. They won’t be able to
ignore difficult verses, or cherry-pick other verses to say “what itching ears
want to hear” as he wrote in 4:3. I was reminded of the importance of expositional
preaching when I reached out to a man named Cecil at a Starbucks yesterday. He described himself as a born-again
believer, dedicated to biblical truth, and told me about his faith journey
since praying a salvation prayer about ten years ago, quoting numerous Bible
verses in the process. But as he talked
I realized he is quickly drifting into many of the same beliefs of the cults
and false teachers like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and prosperity preachers, false
teachers that freely distort the Word of God to suit their purposes, just like
Satan did when tempting Jesus in the wilderness. Many non-believers I’ve talked to claim they
don’t believe in Christianity because the Bible can be interpreted however
people choose, and in talking to someone like Cecil I know that they are
correct, which is why expositional preaching is so important. We no longer have the choice to custom design
the word of God like just another drink at Starbucks. We can’t build a system of belief on sound
bites and easy answers. We may have to
squirm in our seats as we wrestle through some inconvenient truths. “But as for you, continue in what you have
learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you
learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are
able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All
Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and
training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped
for every good work” (2 Tim.3)
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