Believe In What You Say

 “Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them.” (Jer 1:17 AV)

This is God’s instructions to Jeremiah.  Jeremiah was the weeping prophet.  He would share little good news.  That is, for the immediate future.  Jeremiah would bring much news by way of the fall of Jerusalem.  His ministry was preaching to the last generation that would live in Judah and Jerusalem and those going into captivity.  He would have to face his fellow Hebrews and tell them, because of their disobedience, there was no hope for the present generation.  Some of these folks, if not most, were older than him.  They would be the generation that finally brought judgment upon Judah.  Bearing in mind the tenor and content of his message, it would be normal to be a bit reluctant to share it.  I might shirk a bit at the looks on the faces of those whom I am supposed to honor because of the experience and age.  This is the reason for the instruction above.  If a preacher is going to preach the word of God, he cannot be overly concerned with the response he might get.  Otherwise, he will not have the confidence written on his countenance which gives the message credibility.

During my seminary days, there was one day I will never forget.  It was during our homiletics class.  That is where they teach you how to preach.  As part of that class, we were given topics to address.  After so many messages, then we were given liberty to pick our own topics.  On one such night of instruction, one of my classmates preached a message regarding the direction in which our church was going.  He was disappointed the leadership had begun to embrace a more progressive philosophy of ministry.  He saw the failures of past teaching as contributing to the direction they were headed.  Such things as Christian Liberty as the license to sin.  Or, the doing away of the entire old testament law and principles by way of an unbiblical way of looking at grace.  He mentioned the failure of the leadership to stress separation.  The failure of teaching a form of separation and then backtracking it to capitulate to a more modern and progressive crowd.  At any rate, the leadership was not too happy.  It got him kicked out of Seminary.  The thing is, I agreed with everything he was preaching.  Perhaps the tenor of it was not as tactful as it could have been, but that one night showed to this preacher that one cannot compromise the word of God simply our of fear it may not be received well.

The preacher needs to believe everything he is told to share as the truth of what it is.  It is God’s word.  It is not our word.  It is not our opinion.  It is not our message.  The words which we share must be of the LORD and we must be convinced of that.  Some of our opinion or anecdotal examples are of us.  Sure.  But when it comes to the doctrines, truth, and application of the word of God, this should not be of us.  It should be solely of the LORD.  If we are not convinced of the truth of what we are asked to preach, then we should not preach it.  One of the pieces of advice I was graciously given was when a teacher said, “Don’t preach a message until you make it wholly your own.”  What he meant by that was don’t share the truth of the word of God until you are completely convinced of that truth.  Otherwise, the preacher does more harm than good.