Christian Commentary Encouraging Devotions

I came upon this article and thought it important to quote.

"It is well and good for the preacher to base his sermon on the Bible,

but he better get to something relevant pretty quickly,

or we start mentally to check out."

People are increasingly impatient with and resistant to the reading and preaching of the Bible.

In many churches the exposition of the Bible has given way to the concerns, real or perceived, of the listeners.

We fixate on our needs, our wants, our wishes, and our hopes-at the expense of others and certainly at the expense of God. We do not like it when a teacher uses up the whole class time presenting his material, even if it is material from the Word of God. We want to be able to ask our questions about our concerns, otherwise we feel talked down to, or we feel the class is not relevant to our lives.

Don't spend a lot of time in the Bible, preachers are told, but be sure to get to personal illustrations, examples from daily life, and most importantly, an application that we can use.

Individually, each human being in the room is an amalgam of wants, needs, intuitions, interests, and distractions.

Corporately, the congregation is a mass of expectations, desperate hopes, consuming fears, and impatient urges.

All of this adds up, unless countered by the authentic reading and preaching of the Word of God, to a form of group therapy, entertainment, and wasted time - if not worse.

Many congregations expect the preacher to start from some text in the Bible,

but then quickly move on "to things that really interest us."

Like . . . ourselves?

One of the earliest examples of the preaching of the Bible is found in Nehemiah 8:1-8:

And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, "Amen, Amen," lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord. Others helped the people to understand the Law, while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading with their faces to the ground.

Ezra and his companions stood on a platform before the congregation.

They read the scriptural text clearly, and then explained the meaning of the Scripture to the people.

The congregation received the Word humbly, while standing.

The pattern is profoundly easy to understand - the Bible was read and explained and received.

The point of the sermon was simple - "to make clear the reading of the Scriptures."

The sermon is to consist of the exposition of the Word of God, powerfully and faithfully read, explained, and applied.

It is not enough that the sermon take a biblical text as its starting point.

The neglect of the Word can only lead to disaster, disobedience, and death.

God rescues his church from error, preserves his church in truth, and propels his church in witness only by his Word -

not by congregational self-study.

In the end, an impatience with the Word of God can be explained only by an impatience with God.

We - both individually and congregationally - neglect God's Word to our own ruin.

As Jesus himself declared, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

Albert Mohler,

http://www.christianpost.com