Does It Really Matter?

I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom:2 Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;4 and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.5 But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.
2 Timothy 4:1-5

I have been wondering all day, does it really matter, that we as ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ really preach the word? I have been teaching the Bible for ten years now (not long in my book), and have seen a lot of people come and go, and sometimes I wonder, does it really matter? I see people on so-called Christian television barking like dogs and roaring like lions, and I don't see that anywhere in the Bible. I see men and women alike, in the name of Christ, begging for your money, and I think, "If God gave you that ministry in the first place, why do you have to beg?" I don't see that in the Bible either. I do see a lot of people teaching from the Bible, but not many teaching the Bible. And that has led us to the place where the Church is today, anemic and powerless, not making a difference in the world. Does it make a difference? Of course it makes a difference! The reason that Christian people vote for candidates who stand for everything that is in opposition to Christian beliefs, is because we don't know the Bible. We don't read the Bible, other than Sunday, and maybe Wednesday, and we are not teaching the Bible, or being taught the Bible. If we don't begin to study the Bible, and know what it says, we will soon be led, and are being led, down a path where the wolves are waiting to devour us.

What do you look for when looking for a church? The answer to that question alone will determine the depth of your walk. The first answer that should pop into your head is, do they teach the Bible. Do they teach the Word. Not from the Word. Not two verses from the Word and then tell feel-good stories, and give you self-help formulas that kind of relate to the verses. But do they teach the word. Do they read a verse or a passage and explain what it says and how it applies to our lives today?

Paul is admonishing Timothy in the passage above, to preach the word. Why? So he can be better, or think he is better than the group meeting down the street? No, of course not. Paul gives the answer. Because if we don't, we will invent various reasons for why we choose the church we do, and all of them are self-serving and prideful. If we are not grounded in the Word of God, then we will gather teachers that will tell us what we want to hear, and not what we need to hear. If you teach the Word, then you have to talk about sin, and sinners, and frankly, sin is not a popular topic to talk about, because it makes people uncomfortable. I'm surprised Paul didn't know that. Paul should know that if you don't have a happening youth ministry, or a dynamic children's ministry, then, well, you just are not going to pull the crowds. Or if you don't talk about such things as "How to feel good in such depressing times," or, "Living Positive In a Negative World," well Paul, your fellowship will be small. And we all know that small is not success.

Don't buy into such hogwash. Paul had had enough beatings with lashes and rods to know that talking about sin wasn't popular. But he never deterred from his message: Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Jesus never came to set up His kingdom here on earth. He came to die. And then He told us to do the same. For us to be saved, somebody had to die. Jesus did. And now, for us to live, we have to die as well. It is that living sacrifice thing that Paul talks about in Romans 12:1. As Alistair Begg says, "Where did we get a Christianity where Jesus does all the dying?" We have to die, to our self. But I have to tell you, it isn't easy, nor is it popular. Not in this feel-good society in which we live. We somehow have gotten the idea that the church exists to make us feel good about ourselves. We have forgotten, that as believers, we are the church.

If we don't get grounded in the word, then we allow the world to infiltrate the church. The Emerging or Emergent Church movement is lethal to the Church at large. It is a combination of Eastern mysticism and Roman Catholic iconism, couple with New Age, and we have allowed it to begin to creep into the church. If we as believers do not know the Bible, then all these "Christian mystics" seem like a good thing, and we fail to examine them more closely than we do and just accept them at face value, and then it is too late. Remember, a little leaven will leaven the whole loaf. And leaven is a type in the Bible for sin. You know, if you bake some brownies, and they are 98% pure, it will always be that 2% of arsenic in them that kills you. I think you get my point.

So, does it really matter if a church teaches the Word, or just teaches from the Word? Yes it does. It mattered so much to Paul that he wrote his son in the faith, Timothy, to make sure he did not fail in that area. If you attend a church that does not teach the Word of God, I am not telling you to leave, but you really ought to examine their statement of faith closely to see if it lines up with the Bible. If you can't tell, then find someone who can, and let them help you decipher it. It shouldn't matter primarily about children's ministry or youth ministry, although those are good things. It should be about the Word. Because teaching the Word is sound doctrine. Does it really matter? Of course it does. Shalom.