Empty oratory, cotton candy and meringue are each sweet tasting, and yet, none of them have any nutritional value. They simply are not healthy! In fact, a diet of such is toxic!
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: Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 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; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:1-5 NKJV)
This first century exhortation is no less needed today in the twenty-first century. Next to false teaching (1 John 4:1), hollow homilies, fluffy with “smooth words and flattering speech” (Romans 16:18), which are undergirded by philosophy and endless personal analysis, immeasurably harm the collective of the church and Christians individually.
Alas, however, rare is the preacher or teacher these days who will in a straightforward manner undertake the pronouncement of a portion of “the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). Book, chapter and verse preaching is neither any longer promulgated nor tolerated by the majority of present-day preachers or teachers and their auditors. Gone are the days when the pulpit and the lectern concentrated chiefly on conveying God’s message. The churches of Christ need more of the kind of preaching for which Ezra and his assistants were noted. “So they read distinctly from the book, in the Law of God; and they gave the sense, and helped them to understand the reading” (Nehemiah 8:8). No finer model of preaching and of teaching exists than what one can discern from Nehemiah 8:1-8.
Our babies in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1; Hebrews 5:13) are starving! They go hungry at the feet of the very ones who have been designated to feed them the Word of God—preachers (Romans 10:14). Furthermore, where are the elders who, ultimately, are responsible for feeding the flock of God (Acts 20:28; 1 Peter 5:1-2 KJV)?
We wonder in complete amazement that our brethren believe a little bit of everything and not much of anything. Often, they do not know from where we came, who we are, where we are going or how to get there. It is no wonder, then, that few demonstrate in their lives a distinction from the ungodly world ruled by Satan (John 12:31; 2 Corinthians 4:4). Instead, Christians are supposed to be “a peculiar people” (Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 2:9 KJV), unlike those all around us with “filthy language” (Colossians 3:8), who conduct themselves immorally, lack true purpose in life and have no genuine heavenly aspirations.
Statistically, the Lord’s church is disappearing! It is evaporating! The churches of Christ—Christians who compose it—are being dissolved by the ungodly world. Sin is the solvent that eats away at one’s Christianity, and on a large scale, sin is consuming the Lord’s church.
Rather than idly observe what appears to be the inevitable demise of true Christianity in many communities, faithful Christians—armed with God’s Word and strong conviction derived therefrom—must preach plainly and unapologetically the Gospel of Jesus Christ—without appealing to empty oratory, cotton candy and meringue. Sweet fluff and puff sermons and Bible classes that do not “convince, rebuke [and] exhort” are a large part of how we arrived in the despicable circumstances confronting the Lord’s church in our day. The apostle Paul said, “For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27 NKJV). The apostle Peter wrote, “as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby” (1 Peter 2:2).
The solution we need begins with a desire by the church to adopt a diet of God’s Word, beginning with the “milk” and graduating to the “meat” (Hebrews 5:12-6:2). Equally important, preachers, teachers and elders need to make sure that the milk and the meat of God’s Word are amply provided—without admixture of man’s ideas (Colossians 2:23), other gospels (Galatians 1:6-10) or amusements. “For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing” (Acts 17:21). “And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2).
