If We Seek Relevance At The Expense Of Faithfulness, We Will End Up Being Irrelevant!

If we are to be faithful preachers of God’s word, we must preach what people need to hear, and not simply what they want to hear. This is not only the way of faithfulness, it is also the way of relevance. Those who seek relevance at the expense of faithfulness turn out to be irrelevant. Their shallow and superficial preaching turns out to be no real substitute for ‘the living and abiding word of God’ through which alone the hearers can be ‘born anew’ (1 Pet. 1:23). Before we can truly appreciate the grace of God in the Gospel, we must understand that ‘there is no human solution to the human problem.’ This can be a painful experience. We do our hearers no favours if we pay little attention to the uncomfortable truths of God’s Word. ... In the presence of Jesus Christ we learn that we are sinners, but we learn also that Christ loves sinners. Unlike the Pharisees who despised ‘sinners’ Jesus Christ ‘receives sinners’ (Lk. 15:2). In the presence of Christ we encounter both perfect holiness and perfect love. In Christ, we discover ‘an unmerited abundance of love.’ This love leads us to a special kind of obedience - the obedience of love. ‘We love because he first loved us’ (1 Jn. 4:19).
-----
This post is an excerpt from my article on The Use of the Bible in Evangelical Preaching Today.