As the culture of controversy has become dominated by text chains and back-room conversations, I often find that it is vital to the health and strength of the church community to respectfully and openly navigate certain controversies. In part, this is done to dull the blade of the sword of slander and distance us from the psychological phenomenon that occurs through “distance” primarily enabled via technological means.

The subject of this controversy, which I believe to be less a controversy and more a reflection on the cult of personality we have created amongst ourselves, relates to the digital dissemination of various sermon clips (not just one, but several) over the year(s) that portray men using off-color and/or crude language or vivid examples of what I often call “hermeneutic malpractice” from pulpits across the nation.

First, let me begin by acknowledging that there have been times where my humanity has shined through behind a pulpit and, do be honest, I am not proud of those moments (many of them when I was younger in ministry). While I can say with certainty that I have never used off-colored language or intentionally worked any sense of crude innuendo into a sermon, I have allowed my personal frustrations and/or have allowed myself to stretch a text to fit what I can only now label as “pretext.”

The older I get, the more God hammers into my spirit the importance of elevating the sacredness of the pulpit and, going back to a revival I was preaching in Starks, LA many years ago, I still distinctly remember God speaking these exact words of admonition to me while praying in the sanctuary of the church: stop trying to direct the wind and preach the Word!

These words changed me.

PREACH THE WORD

In II Timothy 4:2, we are met with the Pauline admonition to “preach the Word; be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and doctrine.” That first command, “preach the word,” is the basis for everything else that follows and tying a bow around the entire command is the means by which we are to preach the Word; with great patience and careful instruction (NIV).

“Careful instruction” (pasē … didachē) highlights the didactic side of pastoral preaching worthy of the name. For discussion of the word didachē (instruction, teaching), see commentary at Titus 1:9. Jesus called disciples (learners); he did not merely assemble audiences. Pastors are not merely orators. In his preaching, Timothy is to embrace, live, and impress the teaching he has received from the Scriptures (3:15–17) and others (such as Paul) who have taught him so he can teach others (see 2:2 and discussion there). Combined with patience, sound instruction will ground God’s people so they can withstand the challenges of which the next two verses speak.

 Yarbrough, R. W. (2018). The Letters to Timothy and Titus (D. A. Carson, Ed.; p. 437). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos.

This admonition to preach the word with great patience and careful instruction stands out as a direct bulwark to the alarming end-time reality that follows in that: the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables (v. 3-4, KJV).

Recognizing this alarming end-time reality, the importance of how we engage with and deliver the Word of God is vital! God forbid that we provide any fodder that denigrates God’s Word amongst a generation that already needs little initiative to denigrate and disparage it themselves. Yet, as we see through the rise of social media, we are steadily thrust into scenarios where the Word of God often appears to be secondary to the cult of personality, eisegetical efforts to craft a “reel-worthy” clip or clever new thought, or a grossly overstated efforts on the part of well-meaning individuals to create a move of God, without appearing to have any real confidence in the unprecedented power of God’s Word.

We are to preach the word with great patience and careful instruction, never twisting, stretching, or wresting from the Word of God clever thoughts that cannot stand up to that sober admonition from Paul. Moreover, if there has even been a place in the church community that must be protected, defended, and lifted high above personality, eisegtical sermonizing, and carnality it is the pulpit!

THE SACRED PULPIT

I have taught several places, as well as the church I pastor, that the pulpit was designed for one specific reason alone: to provide an elevated position for the Word of God. This means I must approach the pulpit with great caution and careful self-reflection since I am standing behind the very thing that is meant to lift and pedestal the sacred Word of God.

For me to be cavalier, crude, unprepared, half-hearted, saturated with sinfulness, or dominated by self is to engage in a dangerous activity that often has more negative ramifications on those who hear the Word, than who delivers the Word. Why? As a preacher and teacher of the Word, I set the high-water mark for how my congregation and/or hearers approach the Word of God.

Several years ago, after presenting on the subject of An Apostolic Response to Biblical Illiteracy at the Symposium on the Apostles Doctrine, hosted by Rev. Rick Mayo in Spokane, WA, I was asked a specific question in the Q/A by an esteemed educator, psychologist, and pastor that tagged into something I had said in the presentation. His question, and I paraphrase, was “how can we change this in our own Apostolic culture?”

My response was concise, but uncomfortable. I told him that, in order for us to address the erosion of biblical literacy in our own ranks, we had to be willing to confront fellow-preachers in our own circles of friendships who engage in eisegesis and/or hermeneutical malpractice. This was briefly met with a scattered few “amens,” but an overall silence due to the truthful, yet uncomfortable reality of the statement. Later, following the Q/A, I was approached by a myriad of men who all voiced the same thing: “what you said is absolutely needed, but will it be done?”

Summoning my best Louis L’amour verbiage, “this town needs a sheriff!”

THE WILD, WILD WEST

The Wild West was a period of time that gave rise to the infamous outlaws such as Butch Cassidy, Jesse James, and Billy the Kid yet, on the other side of the daring, cruel outlaws of the day, it was also a time that gave rise to the complex figures of the Law such as Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Pat Garrett. It was this juxtaposition of the tension between chaos and order that some of our most adventurous stories emerge from the history of the Old West.

When a town or territory started to get out of hand, the need and call for Law and Order would begin to penetrate the conversations of the townsfolk and, as evidenced in history, a mixed bag of heroes would rise to the occasion, six-shooters blazing, bringing a reckoning to the lawless agencies of chaos.

In like fashion, six-guns excluded, our need for accountability is essential in an era where the cult of personality seeks prominence in the church community. We need a robust vertical and horizontal structure of push-back when the Sword of Truth is wielded in a cavalier, crude, or unsavory manner. We need the faithful wounds of a friend where “open rebuke is better than secret love” (Prov. 27:5-6).

Our unwillingness to insist that even our closest friends handle the Word of God with integrity, carefulness, and respect will become a drip-drip of demise throughout our movements as the world continually looks for ways to undermine the Scriptures. We must, as II Corinthians 4:1-2 admonished, renounce disgraceful, underhanded ways and commit ourselves to the high agreement that “we refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” (ESV)

We must obey that pastoral admonishment of Paul to “rightly handle the Word of Truth” (II Tim. 2:15), avoiding “irreverent babble” that will lead people further into ungodliness, and not its counter.

Being one who “correctly handles” the Word requires getting it straight and giving it straight. “Correctly handles” has as its basis the Greek word orthos (“straight”), the same word from which we build words like orthopedic and orthodoxy. The exact charge to Timothy is to “impart the word of truth without deviation, straight, undiluted….Some Christians may have sat under the same preacher for years, but they cannot recall anything specific they learned from his sermons! Some disexposition parades as exposition in which the text is referred to, but there is no rigor, no engagement with the text in its context, no attempt to convey what it really said then or says today—only well-traveled bromides.

 Hughes, R. K., & Chapell, B. (2000). 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus: to guard the deposit (p. 209). Crossway Books.

Peter Adam, in his book “Speaking God’s Word,” lists several ways in which the Word of God can be abused. Here are just a few of them:

• De–Contexted: when Scripture is torn from its context and misapplied
• Lensed: when a text is viewed through one’s favorite lens (psychological, political, therapeutic, chauvinistic, etc.), so that no matter what text the preacher uses he will always end up on his own candy stick.
• Doctrinalized: when texts are wrested from their meaning to establish specific preferences
• Silenced: preaching what is not said, but majoring on unsubstantiated possibilities in the text.

In light of the foolish chatter of false teachers and a world seeking to gather to themselves those who will only tickle their ears, I would submit that falling under the call to avoid “irreverent babble,” would also be any “chatter” that fails to lift the Word of God to its intended pedestal of respect.

This “chatter” is talk that is vapid, perhaps profane, and in any case “devoid of Christian content” (BDAG 539)

 Yarbrough, R. W. (2018). The Letters to Timothy and Titus (D. A. Carson, Ed.; p. 387). William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos.

R.C.H. Lenski’s cry rings so true:

Oh, what maltreatment of the heavenly Word, and thus of immortal souls! And to think that such men call themselves experts, master-workmen in the Word! God’s Word they cut and slash as if it were the word of men. The eternal truth they cut up as being so many “outworn categories of thought” to be made over into something that is thought to be modern, up-to-date, as if the sin and woe in the world today were not the same old sin and woe of all the ages. Cain’s murder is as modern as any murder on today’s front page.

 Lenski, R. C. H. (1937). The interpretation of St. Paul’s Epistles to the Colossians, to the Thessalonians, to Timothy, to Titus and to Philemon (p. 799). Lutheran Book Concern.

WHY JOHNNY CAN’T PREACH

In closing, I point our direction to a book entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Preach:The Media have Shaped the Messengers,” by T. David Gordon. In this book, Gordon outlines his issues with the modern practice of preaching and the fact that so many congregants are sitting through sermon after sermon needing good, solid nourishment, but not ordinarily getting it from those who deliver God’s Word. In his introduction, he makes a claim I 100% agree with that circles back to my answer in the Q/A at the Symposium when discussing the decline of solid, biblical teaching and the need to address one another as preachers.

The problem is not primarily due to laziness or defensiveness (though the latter is a serious problem; ministers as a group are more resistant to annual review and constructive criticism than any other profession of my acquaintance).

Why Johnny Can’t Preach by T. David Gordon, p. 18

Let me drop a few important quotes from the book:

If the hearer’s duty in listening to a sermon is to be willing to submit one’s will to God’s will, then one can only do this if the preacher does his duty of demonstrating that what he is saying is God’s will.

Ministers have found it entirely too convenient and self-serving to dismiss congregational disinterest on the basis of attenuated attention spans or spiritual indifference. In most cases, the inattentiveness in the congregation is due to poor preaching—preaching that does not reward an energetic, conscientious listening. When attentive listeners are not rewarded for their energetic attentiveness, they eventually become inattentive.

As a quick note to the above, I feel this plays a big role in so many sermons of those who constantly insert personality-driven tirades and fluff. We are not investing the proper time into the biblical text to bring to the hearer a straight-cutting of God’s Word in a way that adheres to Solomon’s desire to prayerfully seek out “acceptable words” and “write words of truth correctly” (Eccl. 12:10). I firmly believe that we DECREASE the appetite for biblical exposition by doing everything except biblical exposition.

In conclusion, we MUST address this elephant in the room in defense of God’s Word.