What Pulpits Get Wrong

Transcript

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[0:02] So, one note is, Eric, could you bring out that microphone again that we use for the prayers because I'm going to enlist one person from our audience, the congregation today, to read from 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 11 in the pew Bible in front of you. It kind of has to be that one. So who would be willing to stand up at a certain point in the sermon and just read where you are and have it amplified? Pam, thank you. Okay.

[0:33] So maybe, Blythe, you just hold the microphone from your grandma while she speaks. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 11. I'm sorry I didn't look up the page number in advance, but you'll find it for sure. All right. So today's sermon is a little different. It's a sermon about preaching. So it sounds a little like Inception, you know, how deep can we go? But this is a sermon about preaching the gospel because this is super important. And the background of this is I went on sabbatical a while back, probably a year and a half ago, and I visited eight other churches while I was away. And I kind of kept notes on how did they greet me? Was it good? How was the coffee? That was important.

[1:20] How were the bathrooms? And only one had worse bathrooms than us. I hate to say it. Everybody else had great bathrooms. But the one that was worse than us was terrifying anyway. And then what was the preaching like? What was the preaching like? And I came away a little disappointed, I'll be honest with you, with the state of preaching.

[1:40] These were all different kinds of churches, all Protestant churches, but all around this area. And so I kind of want to talk about what needs to go into a sermon every Sunday. And I want you to hear that because I want you to hold me to it and hold Pastor Victoria to it. Because we don't want to drift off into preaching something that's not the gospel. And we'll get into what that means.

[2:02] And what does it look like when preachers preach something else besides the gospel? If you're taking notes, I'm going to have you take notes on just a few words. And I'll reiterate them at the end. But if you're taking notes, I'll kind of give you some clues. But let's go to our reading. This is from 1 Corinthians 1.17. So this is the part I read, not that Pam reads. I'll ask her in just a minute. 1 Corinthians 1.17-25, followed by the first two verses of chapter 2. The apostle Paul says, For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to proclaim the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its power. For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. I will thwart.

[2:55] Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of our proclamation to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified.

[3:24] Christ crucified. crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Chapter 2. When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. We ask that you would add blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen. So I used to listen to a podcast called Modern Reformation, and it's really pretty good, but after a while they kind of started repeating themselves, so I stopped listening to it. There's a really great guy on there named Rod Rosenblatt. He was a Lutheran pastor and college professor, and he told a story. I've told some of you this story. He told a story. He told a story of how down in Southern California, there's a giant cemetery, actually multiple cemeteries, named Forest Lawn. And he went there to preach at a funeral of somebody who had passed away that he knew. And so he preached his funeral sermon, and afterwards a woman came up to him who had been the organist, you know, at the funeral home. And she had been there for years,

[4:55] and so she had actually heard hundreds, if not thousands, of sermons. Okay, kind of put that in your mind. She had heard thousands of sermons just in the ten or so years that she had lived there, right? And she said to Rod Rosenblatt, she said, what was that? He says, what do you mean? She said, what was that that you said? He said, that was the gospel. And she said, well, I've never heard that before. How do you not hear that? What that means is that over years and years and years, day after day after day, pastor after pastor after pastor had come into that place and preached nothing about the resurrection, nothing about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, nothing about our own sin and needing to be saved. Isn't that stunning? Isn't that stunning? I don't think he's lying. I don't think he's, he's passed away. He passed away last February. And that really stuck with me. That was the gospel. And she's like, that's, that was amazing. He's like, yeah, it was amazing. It is amazing. That's why I keep saying it. You know, that was the gospel. And so the gospel counts. The gospel is important. And the pulpit is really a sacred space where really only the gospel can be proclaimed. You can't do anything else from this place. Now, sometimes people sing and sometimes

[6:15] people do other things. But generally speaking, in a Protestant church especially, the pulpit of the church is the place where the gospel is. And so, you know, I think that's a really important aspect of the gospel. Right received I passed on to you as of first importance that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and that he appeared to Peter and then to the twelve after that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time most of whom are still living though some have fallen asleep then he appeared to James then to all the Apostles and last of all he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born for I am the least of the Apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God but by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace to me was not without effect no I worked harder than all of them yet not I but the grace of God that was with me whether then it was I or they this is what we preach and this is what you believed thank you Pam just hear that last part again I worked harder than all of them but not yet not I but the grace of God that was with me Jesus died he rose again he was seen by people I am

[8:09] the least of the Apostles he says I understand my own brokenness I understand that I used to persecute the church I worked hard but it wasn't me working it was the grace of God that changed me and that's the gospel right that's the gospel we're gonna get into a little bit more than that but that's the gospel so recently we we had a funeral here is really a memorial service or celebration of life for Mary Ann Eklund and uh a little secret for you is that uh it's funerals are hard for me emotionally to do but they're of course worth doing but the sermon is relatively easy to prepare because I say the same thing every time. Have you noticed? Maybe you haven't noticed. If you've noticed, it means you've been to too many funerals here. But basically, I do the same thing every time, which is I tell some stories about the person. I talk about just how great they were. But then I make a point to say, none of that great stuff that you've heard about them or will hear about them, none of the great stuff that I just said about them is going to save them.

[9:14] Only Jesus Christ saves them. And if they've done anything good at all, it's because the Holy Spirit was working through them. Sometimes it was by trying. You can do a few good things. But a life that's consistently well-lived is a life that's inspired by the Holy Spirit. That's the gospel. And you have to be really careful to preach the gospel at a funeral because a funeral is a time when people really, really want to say nice things about somebody, which is good. It's called a eulogy. That's actually what it means is good words. You want to say good things. You want to say nice things about people.

[9:48] But you have to be careful at a funeral. For one thing, if there's somebody there who hasn't had a good life or hasn't done a lot of good things, do you know what they might hear? They might hear like, oh, heaven is for people who do a lot of great things. Clearly it's not for me. Do you see how somebody could think that? So we have to be very careful at a funeral to say, you're not saved by all the good things you've done. You're saved. You're saved. Jesus Christ. And not only that, the person that we're talking about isn't that great of a person because they're a sinner. Because they're a sinner. So there's a rubric. A rubric is kind of an instructions in the Lutheran book of worship. I had to study this when I was in seminary because I went to Lutheran seminary. And there's a special note. It's very odd, but it's there that says when you're doing a funeral at your own church and there are people from the Masonic order there, you cannot let them preach from the pulpit about somebody because, and I'll get to why, because they have a different gospel. And it's honestly, it's true. And if you get, if they want to have the funeral at the Masonic Lodge and they want you to preach a funeral sermon, you can do that. That's okay. But it says, the rubric says

[11:06] very clearly, as soon as you're done speaking, you have to say to everybody, the Christian part of this service is now over. And you take your book and you walk away. Isn't that funny? Because what's gonna come after you is a friend of the guy in the Masons who's gonna go and say, Bob was a great guy and he's gonna be in heaven because he's such a great guy. Yeah.

[11:36] That's not the gospel. That's the opposite of the gospel. Do you get what I'm saying? And you can't have confusion from the pulpit, right? This is important for the pulpit. You can't go, you can't go, you're saved by grace, you're saved by all your good works. You can't, those two things don't go together. They're mutually exclusive. And so in that awkward place where the passion, and this doesn't, has never happened to me, I don't think it ever will, but if I ever go to the Masonic Lodge, I will do that. I'll go, this, the part of the Christian proclamation about heaven and heaven. And resurrection and this person's life is now over. I have nothing more to say about it. Whatever comes after this is up to you all, okay? So that's what I'll do.

[12:16] Well, are you starting to get it? What we say matters from the pulpit. You can send mixed messages. You don't want to do that. So the opposite of the gospel is Bob, Bob was a great guy, he's going to heaven. That's the opposite of the gospel. The gospel is that Bob is a terrible guy. But you don't want to say that, do you? But that's the truth. The gospel is that Bob was a terrible guy. Look at what the scriptures say in Jeremiah 17 9. We should all have this one memorized. Jeremiah 17 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Have you heard that one before? Who can understand it? Or Paul in Timothy, 1 Timothy 1 15 says, Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Right? Right Right Right And because he came to Jesus in his filth and his squalor and his brokenness, and he died to himself, and he came to believe that there's a place waiting for him in heaven that Jesus is preparing even now. That's the gospel. The gospel isn't that he earned his way to heaven. The gospel is that he didn't earn anything. But he submitted his whole life to Jesus, and Jesus saved him. That is the gospel. Any good things he may have done, and some of them were a result of trying hard, but most of them were a result,

[13:59] of being transformed by his faith and by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that he received as pure grace. So if you want to do good things in your life, you do them because of the Holy Spirit. The only true power to do that consistently is by the Holy Spirit living within you. You can try. You can try real hard. A lot of effort can go into it, but you can only keep that up for so long on your own. After a while, you'll run out of gas. But the Holy Spirit is sort of this unending. It's like a hybrid or an electric car, but it has solar panels on the roof, and it just keeps its battery. It's beautiful. That's the Holy Spirit. That's the gospel.

[14:33] So when I visited eight other churches, I think I only really heard the gospel once, which is terrible. And it's disappointing. And so, you know, like I said, keep me and Victoria, keep our feet to the fire. If you hear something, if we ever fail to really preach the gospel while we're up here, come find us and shake us up a little bit, because we want that.

[14:55] Now, I want to tell you a bunch of things that were preached. But in my experience, but in other other experiences, too, that were sermons, but they weren't the gospel. Okay. And this is important. And here's where you want to take notes. Okay.

[15:10] So one one form of a sermon that's not the gospel is when they only preach the law. Do you get what I'm saying? They only preach the law. So that was hearing a sermon that was just a list of bad things that we should avoid. And I've been to a sermon like that. And the pastor was laying it on. He was mad. I think he was. He was trying to motivate people. You know, he was talking about all our brokenness, which was all true, but he never got past all of that. And I even spoke up from the crowd. I was like, Pastor, is there grace somewhere? You know, I don't know why I did that. I just, I don't think that was me talking. Because I don't normally, I would never normally interrupt somebody like that. But I, and it was in front of the whole church.

[15:52] And he said, yeah, yeah, there's grace. But it was such an afterthought. So not preaching. Only preaching the law is a failure to preach the full gospel. But here's the interesting thing. If you want to grow the church, do you want to grow our church? Not this way. The fastest way to grow the church is just to preach the law. People love it. People eat it up. It's like catnip. Okay, why? Two reasons. One is everybody thinks they're better than they actually are. So they love hearing the law because they're like, oh, yeah, I do that. I keep that one. I keep that one. And they're thinking at the same time of all. All the people they know who aren't. And we love nothing more than comparing ourselves to other people and feeling more righteous than them. So the law is like honey, you know, to a bees. It's just like we could preach the law, preach the law. But you don't, you know, if you preach the law, what you're saying is you can earn your way there. That's what's happening when you say preach the law. You do it, you do it, you do it, and you'll get rewarded for it. Well, in Galatians, Paul tells the Galatians, he says, if you think you can get closer to God, by keeping the law, and he was talking about circumcision, but it could be about anything.

[17:02] He said, if you think that that will get you closer to God, then you have to keep the entire law all perfectly. And he said, Christ, you have cut yourself off from grace and Christ will be of no benefit to you, which is terrifying. It's the most terrifying sentence in all of scripture to have a be in a place where Christ is of no benefit to you because you think you can come to get to heaven. So, you know, if you're going to preach the law, you have to keep the law.

[17:31] So, and the other reason people like hearing the law is we like structure and we like clarity. We like feeling safe. We like, we like it when people say things like there should be less killing and less stealing. You all love that stuff, right? We're like, we think that's right. Oh, yes. Finally, somebody saying that. But if you only preach the law, but you never get to grace, then you're not preaching the true gospel. So the first category was only preaching the law. The other category is the opposite only preaching grace. And I've heard these sermons too. Oh, it doesn't matter. Oh, you tried, but it doesn't really matter. Your sins not a really a big deal. You can just go confess it. It's all covered by the grace of Jesus Christ. And there's never any call to say the law is important.

[18:16] The Apostle Paul says the people he says your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. This is important stuff. What you do with your body matters. What you do with your life matters, right? It can't just be grace. Grace. That's not the gospel either. That's missing the gospel. That's a little less common.

[18:34] But God cares about what you do. Now, so that's the other one only the law or only grace. They have to be together. They both have to be present in maybe equal portions or sometimes it's out of order out of out of out of balance a little bit, but that doesn't matter. They both have to be there. We start with our brokenness and we go to the place where we realize that our brokenness is who we really are. Our works cannot save us. Only Jesus Christ saves us because of his work and the Holy Spirit allows us. Have I said this a few times? I'm going to keep saying it. This is the gospel. Now one category of preaching. That's not the gospel is if I were to give you a sermon about the power of positivity or believing in yourself. Do you like those? Those are when I was on sabbatical. All right, I heard about three of those and the sad thing was they were all based on Scripture. But they weren't really engaging with the scripture. There was just a few sort of encouraging words in the scriptures. And that was the sermon was you got this. You're okay. You know, you're not okay. You're not okay. I'm sorry. You're not okay. You're broken. Do you get that? You're sinners. I'm when I say you I mean me. Okay, I'm pointing back to myself.

[19:52] We're sinners were fallen broken people, right? And so Joel Osteen. Maybe an example of this. If you're returned into him, it's just like the power of positive thinking and you know, you've got this and let's not read the parts of the Bible about about conflict or sacrifice or brokenness. Do you know that we spent a whole six-week study talking about lament? Where's the room for lament in those sermons? Where's the room for saying God? I'm broken. There's no room for it. So somebody who's goes to one of those churches and they're depressed and they can't get out of the depression. They're like clearly Christianity is not for me. Because I can't feel this. I can't feel what all these other people are feeling. No Christianity is for you. It is.

[20:36] Because Jesus gets depressed. The prophet Elijah gets depressed. God seems to get depressed about the people he's made, you know? God, there's no promise that you're going to be happy as a Christian. You might have some joy, but there's no promise. You may be happy, but you may not be happy. There's no promise that everything's going to go. Well, the promise is that you may take up your cross. And follow me. That's the promise and the offer and the challenge of Christianity. And you know what? I can't believe in myself. You know, I can have confidence in my abilities and I can be assertive in a healthy way. But I trust in Jesus for my salvation. I don't trust in myself for my salvation. I can't believe in myself, right? And how I feel has absolutely nothing to do with the accomplished fact that Jesus saved me when he died on the cross. How I feel about Jesus doesn't change what Jesus has done for me. So these really emotional sermons, they're not the gospel. They're something else. You know, you can get that Tony Robinson, all these people, Chris Farley, Van Down by the River, you know? There's all sorts of motivational speakers out there. You can get that for free on YouTube. You don't need to come to church for that.

[21:48] You come to church to hear the gospel about Jesus Christ, not believe in yourself. The close cousin of this, so that's believing in yourself or power. And then there's the other one, which is more positivity. The next one is prosperity gospel, which is like its cousin, which is you're going to have everything you need. You're going to have a lot of wealth. God's going to pour stuff into your lap. You're going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

[22:10] But the gospel says, take up your cross and follow me. Die to the self to be raised to new life. You may have wealth or you may not. But if you have grace, you have more wealth than all the treasure in all the earth. But they don't want to talk about that because it basically is a pyramid scheme. The people who preach prosperity gospel, the ones preaching it are the richest people in the entire church. It's crazy. Creflo Dollar, remember this? I can't get over that. He asked all his followers to send him money so he could buy a G5, which is a private jet, a Gulfstream 5, because it was so important to him to fly around in a private jet.

[22:49] And that's stunning. I mean, that's the gall. And somebody wrote a note on Twitter that said, Creflo, I think Jesus paid it all. Why don't you go ask him? That's good. All right. Quote scripture. Right back at you. That's very good.

[23:07] Another category, I'll recap all these at the end just in one or two words. Another category, which is similar to these others, is just good advice. The sermon is just good advice. You know? It's just good advice for how to get along with your family. It's a sermon about relationships. It's a sermon about forgiving your sister who was mean to you 10 years ago. And et cetera. Right? That's good advice. Right? Have you ever noticed, if you're really paying attention, I want to see, have you ever noticed that sometimes I'll say, this is just advice. This is not the gospel. Have you ever heard me say that? If you haven't, it's okay. But I try to do that. Because sometimes there is a time for advice where there's some wisdom in the scriptures. And even the scriptures, like Proverbs, there's some good advice there. But that's not the gospel. Right? Like a slothful person is not going to eat. That's just a maxim. That's a truism. Right? But that's not the gospel. That's not the gospel. That's law. It's definitely the law. Right? So, I could give you good advice about having good habits. I could tell you to floss. I could tell you to eat an apple every day. I could tell you to exercise and on and on and on. But you don't need that from here.

[24:09] You can get that on YouTube for free. Here you get the gospel of Jesus Christ. Right? Now, the Spirit guides us. We pray. We live in community. We consult wise people who are older than us, either in years or in the faith. And we end up with good advice. We have good advice as an organic part of our Christian living together. But it's not the gospel. None of that saves us. It makes our lives better, but it doesn't save us. That's the important distinction. Okay. I think one last one is the gospel is not politics or civic causes. Okay? Right? Get up here and give a speech to tell you who to vote for. That is not the gospel. A lot of churches are doing this. They're inviting politicians to come into their pulpit.

[24:56] Where is the confusion? It's there. What's happening in the pulpit? A political speech. What's the pulpit for? Nobody knows now. Is it for the gospel or is it for this political speech that has nothing to do with God and everything to do with politics? So you don't invite people into the church to give political speeches. It used to be that was illegal. It seems like it's legal now. It's too bad. But it doesn't really matter.

[25:22] But it's not. You know, a sermon that's about a cause, that's not the gospel. I heard a friend of mine, he went to North Park Seminary. He was in the preaching class. And they're always critiquing each other's sermons as how you grow as a preacher, learning to be a preacher. And there was sort of a class sermon that somebody gave about it was all about the need to save the environment and curb our carbon emissions, which is great stuff, right? And the professor said, you know, that was rude. That was really moving. That was great. I really appreciate it. I agreed with it. But that's not even a sermon.

[26:00] That's a speech. You know, that's a policy paper. That is not the gospel. You can't do that. This is what seminary is for. It's like, no, no, no, don't do that. I'm glad you did that so we can all learn in this moment. You cannot do that. You can't give a speech about the environment from the pulpit. As good as that is, and that's great, it's not the gospel. It's not about, it's a very, very, very important thing. It's a very specific thing for the pulpit and the preaching of the gospel, right?

[26:27] You can't preach that in a church. There was nothing about Jesus in there. There was nothing about Jesus in saving the environment. And other people can do those kinds of speeches much better than us, right? We do teach that we should be good stewards of all things God has given us and especially the creation, but that's actually a law sermon. Do you get that?

[26:48] That sermon about the environment is a law-only sermon. You need to be better. You need to cut your carbon footprint. You need to do this. It's a law sermon. That's not going to save you. It's not going to save you. It's not going to save the world. It'll save, I mean, well, actually, it will save the world, but not in that way. That's good.

[27:06] I just thought of that. Wow. So actually, maybe they should give it, instead of an F, should have gotten a D minus or something, because you were close. You were super close, right? Jesus Christ on the cross saves us.

[27:18] And remember our reading, because this is what the professor said. There's nothing about Jesus in there. 1 Corinthians 2 says, this is Paul, the last thing I read, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. That's what Paul said. I'm not going to be about anything else when I'm with you, but Jesus Christ and him crucified. One of my professors at my seminary said, ask yourself when you preach a sermon, did Jesus Christ have to die on the cross for that sermon to be preached? Yes or no? If he didn't have to die on the cross for that sermon to be preached, then don't preach it. It's something else. It's not a sermon. It's something else. It's not the gospel, that's for sure. It's a great question. If the answer is no, then don't preach it. Preach the sermon that proclaims the cross of Christ, the fountain of all grace that covers all of our sins. That's the gospel.

[28:10] And politics, you'll never hear me tell you how to vote. We do have a voting guide, voting guides here in the church for you that you can pick up today. There's that brown book in front of you in the pew. Take a look at it. That's your voting guide. Very long, very, very involved.

[28:26] It's huge. No, I'm kidding. It's a pretty big book. Very classy book anyways. No, but really, if you want advice on how to vote, read the scriptures, listen to the Holy Spirit, live with each other in community, pay attention to the news.

[28:42] That's not the gospel. Do that on your own. That's your own life, okay? Now sometimes we will be prophetic from the pulpit. This is important. Sometimes the pulpit is a place for being prophetic. But not all the time. If there was prophetic words from the pulpit every Sunday, it would just burn us all out. You can't do that. I knew a pastor who was doing that. Every week, it was just one cause after another.

[29:06] Again, we're back to that's only law. Be just all the time. Be just all the time. That's the message from the pulpit instead of Jesus Christ saves us. Jesus Christ changes us. The Spirit empowers us to do these things. That's a different message, right? And so it's important to be prophetic from the pulpit. It has to break our own hearts first, right? God cares about the vulnerable. That's part of a good sermon. He wants them to be protected. But he wants them to be protected by transformed human beings that are followers of Jesus Christ. That's the important part. And being prophetic from the pulpit is fairly rare, and it kind of needs to be fairly rare. Why? Because the Spirit's better at being prophetic. The Holy Spirit is better at being prophetic than the preacher is. The Holy Spirit will tell you more things than I can about what you need to speak up about. The Holy Spirit's better at that than I am. And I have to trust that, especially this church, as you grow in faith, you'll continue to be prompted by the Spirit to address the evils and injustices of the world. I got to trust that. The Spirit will show you things that the rest of us can't see. So I'm going to recap, all right? If you were taking notes and you missed one, here are the things that are not the gospel.

[30:17] Here are the things that are not the gospel, okay? Only the law. Only grace. Positivity or believing in yourself. Prosperity, that's not the gospel. Good advice is not the gospel. And politics, that's not the gospel, right? But these are things that can be heard from pulpits all across America, and that's a real disappointment. If you, God forbid, leave our church because you don't like us, that would be really sad. We'll talk to you first. But if you say you move... And you're going to be a pastor. And you go to another church, listen to what they're preaching. If it's just good advice or feel good about yourself, maybe give them one more chance and see if they right the ship. But if not, I would suggest you move on to a church that preaches the gospel if you're looking for a new church, if you move away.

[31:08] But we have to say what the gospel is, and we've been saying what the gospel is. The gospel is the law followed by grace. It's almost as simple as that. The gospel is law. The gospel is the law and my inability to keep the law, followed by Jesus being able to keep the law and dying for me on the cross so that I could be saved. Knowing that I fall short, confessing that I'm a sinner like St. Paul, there's nothing good in me. Hearing the good news about what Jesus does for us and having our sins washed clean by his blood on the cross. And we're going to keep singing about the cross. And it's the hope that his resurrection points to our own resurrection. That's the gospel too. So that's the gospel. And... And I'm going to end there because I have more to say, but I'll stop right there. That's the gospel. We have to remember what the gospel is. Let's pray.

[31:56] Father, thank you again, not just for your word, but for the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of salvation to those of us who are broken, fallen sinners, who come to you with all of our need, just as we are, and your grace flows into us. We thank you for that gift. Amen. Amen.