Preaching Myths (IV)

So far in this series we have been looking at myths surrounding evaluating sermons.  Is it wrong to evaluate at all?  Does good fruit act as guarantee of the sermon?  What about the “no-offense” rule? 

Let’s take one more angle on the issue of evaluation:

4. If the sermon is true, all is well.

This is a slippery one.  The moment a question is raised about a message, some will jump to the defense of the preacher by asserting that what was said was true, even if it was not exactly the truth of the passage being preached.  Let’s knock around a few comments on this:

A. Most of us have mis-preached and should be grateful for God’s graciousness. I would not want every old sermon scrutinized and held over me, and I suspect you would not either.  This is not about nitpicking through every word preached and being judge and jury of orthodoxy. 

However, in balance with this first thought are those that follow.

B. What the Bible says matters. While we do want to be gracious to one another, we also need to remember that we are handling the Word of God. 

Every single word is given by inspiration and we will in no way be honouring God if we take matters of accurate text handling and interpretation lightly.

C. What the listener reads matters. Here is the sticking point. Just because what a preacher says is true does not mean that saying it from the wrong passage is acceptable.

Listeners may be looking at the biblical text as the sermon is proclaimed. It does not matter that they are hearing truth, if that truth is falsely tied to another biblical text that does not mean what is being said. 

The integrity of the messenger and message matter.  Even if the message spoken were biblically true, it matters if listeners are looking at their Bibles and scratching their heads. 

We do not want to give the impression that the authority for the message is birthed out of the ingenuity of the preacher.  Are we comfortable with someone preaching biblical truth from an appliance instruction manual, or from a kid’s book of fairy tales?  Then we should not settle too easily for misappropriated biblical texts either.

Peter Mead is mentor at Cor Deo and author of several books. This article first appeared on his blog Biblical Preaching.