By Jason Charles on 7/10/2019 (4 years 291 days ago) Theology & Religion
When pastors in today’s modern churches are backed into the corner on the topic of preaching hard against the societal and political sins of our nation you will usually hear the same excuse,
“These topics are all important, but I am just called to preach Jesus and the Gospel, I haven’t been called to preach on politics.”
There is one huge flaw in this reasoning, and it actually blasphemes the person and power of who Jesus is in totality.
Jesus is not just the man we read about in the Gospel narratives. No, pastors that make this excuse, limit Jesus to the mere 33 years of His physical ministry, death and resurrection. If you Just preach the Gospel stories, making endless ear tickling analogies on Love every Sunday, you fail to teach the real Jesus of scripture and instead present a mirage of who Jesus truly is in scripture.
If Jesus is God, then as a preacher you need to be able to reconcile thousands of idiosyncrasies between the justice and wrath of God in the Old Testament and the mercy of Jesus in the New Testament. Our culture demands answers today, asking, IF they are one in the same, why are they so different in personality between the two testaments?
The fact is, 99.9% of preachers out there would be hard pressed to expound on any principles that bridged the Old and New Testament. As a result there is a great falling away from the Church; young people especially have lost interest in the smoke and mirror churches they find on every block in their home town.
If more pastors preached the real Jesus, the Jesus that whipped money changers, told the disciples to buy swords, called the religious class the children of the devil, refused to speak to the reprobate Herod, spoke a curse of destruction on Israel, we wouldn’t have half the messes we have today.
So You Say You Preach Jesus?
Here is why it is important for pastors and Christians to apply themselves to the understanding of all of the principles we find in the Bible; principles that jive completely with all of the harder sayings and actions of Jesus.
The Gospel of John, in the opening few verses uses the word λόγος(Logos) as a powerful way to describe the enormity of who Jesus’ really is,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. John 1:1-3
Simply put Jesus is described as the “Word”, he was with God before creation, and is the means in which the thoughts of God become manifest.
The Cosmology that this statement evokes is breathtaking in concept, and one I think most Christians fail to grasp in totality. This statement used by John, purposely invokes Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” all by speaking it into existence. We are being given a “Word Picture” peering into the actual mechanics behind creation. Just like a programmers code which supports logic and organization thus the Word of God supports all of Creation through logic and organization as well.
A further rendering of this word λόγος also reveals that the word is used interchangeably with the “Word” of God as found in scripture. Thus saith the LORD,
λόγος - word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea
- what someone has said
- a word
- the sayings of God
- decree, mandate or order
- of the moral precepts given by God
- Old Testament prophecy given by the prophets
- what is declared, a thought, declaration, aphorism, a weighty saying, a dictum, a maxim
Fittingly, the dictates of the Bible reveals our Creator just as it should, in the personage of Jesus Christ. If John 1:1-3 is to be true, and Jesus is the λόγος, then logically the entire body of scripture, its histories, law, prophets, proverbs, and psalms all should reveal Jesus Himself, seeing He is the author. When we analyze the Bible we find it does, in almost poetic form.
Jesus is simultaneously the physical order and moral order, as well as the historical person we find in the Gospels. Jesus is more than the Gospel narratives, before our world existed He was the Eternal Word of God. John the Apostle got this, as well as the Apostle Paul. Paul speaking of Jesus said,
Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. Colossians 1:15-18
So, if you are truly preaching Jesus as so many pastors claim they are, then pastors should be constantly referencing the entire volume of scripture including the Old Testament and not just the feel-good soundbites in the New Testament. The role of a preacher is to reconcile what we know about Jesus in both the New and Old Testament, and that takes work, reasoning, understanding, insight, study, and yes even courage, because the harder things of scripture, the things preachers love to avoid are controversial by nature and undoubtedly won’t win them friends in the world or in their congregations.
Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. 2 Timothy 4:2
Conclusion
Today we have pastors skirting their responsibility as teachers and prophets. The way they do this is through the omission and application of scripture in their teaching ministries. We need pastors to reorient themselves with the last and final instructions Jesus gave us while on earth. The Great Commission is the summation of what it means to be a Christian, it is the mission statement of the Church.
Shortly after Jesus’ resurrection, he gave us the Great Commission, a guiding compass that we might know our Two-Fold mission as Christians while on earth.
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen. - Matthew 28:19-20
Yes two-fold mission, if you read this verse properly you see one mission is the mission that most preachers claim for themselves, which is evangelize and share the Gospel, but they forget the last part and mission which is “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”
Jesus says ALL things, not a selection of things, not just the things that make you feel happy and joyful, but even the commands in the Old Testament. Jesus and the Apostles quote copiously from the Old Testament, they never for an instant neglected to reveal Christ in the Old Testament, knowing full well that to preach Jesus meant to preach it all. His commands come from the entirety of scripture because he IS scripture itself.
This is where you lose pastors, they don’t want to preach the Old Testament because frankly they don’t know how to reconcile Jesus with the God of the Old Testament, they don’t have the knowledge or insight to communicate the principles we find there. The worthless seminaries they attended omitted it in their training and thus they are too lazy to study these things for themselves. Preaching the real Jesus is a lost art, and as a lost art we now have a lost society.
When we preach the entirety of scripture, we are confronted with stories that speak on unjust war, abortion, sanctity of life, natural rights, natural law, revealed law, reprobate sin, jurisdictional limitation of Government, self-defense, the justice and wrath of God, etc.
These are all issues we are required to preach on as commanded by Christ Himself. Don’t call yourself a preacher if you can’t reconcile these things for your flock, the lack of knowledge on these subjects immediately unqualifies you from the ministry per the Great Commission itself.
In fact, Jesus Himself quoted from 24 Books of the Old Testament during His ministry, He even took the time on the road to Emmaus to demonstrate to the two disciples that He is found everywhere in the Old Testament,
And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke 24:27
This should demonstrate the requirements of ministry, if pastors nowadays can’t even fulfill the Great Commission in entirety and do exactly what Jesus did, which is reveal His Laws and Principles in scripture as He did on the road to Emmaus as a perfect example, then they have no business in the Ministry. Furthermore, congregants that continue to attend these churches, satisfied with the lack of substance they have no business calling themselves Christians. You either take Jesus as who he is, which is the God of the Old and New Testament, or call yourselves by another name. A fake, watered down Christ is no Christ at all.
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