I rarely do this, but let me vent about something I recently witnessed
on television. I’m not just venting. I have a point to make so bear with me. A
few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon, I sat down to watch some T.V. as I usually
do after the Sunday morning service.
This is usually a time where I will watch some sports and doze in and
out of sleep from time to time. Well, on
this particular Sunday afternoon, it was sort of a dead time in the sports
world. Nothing was coming on that
interested me until later in the afternoon. Therefore, I hunted something to
watch. I stumbled upon a well-known preacher and his Sunday morning service and
figured I’d listen to his sermon. I’ve
listened to this preacher before and typically enjoyed his sermons though it
had been a long time since I had listened to him. And he is a man who has an
exceptional ministry and who by and large is a much better preacher than I
am. However, I must have just caught the
program on the wrong day because what I watched/listened to for the next thirty
minutes was not what I had tuned in to see.
I had chosen to
watch/listen to channel because I knew this man to be a man of the Word and so
I wanted to hear a good message from God ‘s Word, something that preachers
rarely get to do or make themselves to do.
However, what I got for the next thirty minutes was a talk on the
current state of our economic status as a country and basically a political
diatribe against our current administration’s economic policy with a story or
two from the Bible thrown in for good measure.
I concluded after listening to the sermon that I could have received the
same message by watching the Fox News Channel.
At least there, I would have not
been disappointed with what I heard because that’s what you go to Fox News to
hear.
And that’s my
point. You don’t come to church or listen to a preacher to hear a political
diatribe or to hear what you could hear at someplace else in the culture
whether it’s from the entertainment industry or political pundits. You come to
church and you listen to a preacher to hear something or someone different. You
come expecting to hear a word from God through the Bible. You come expecting to
hear a message that you cannot hear anywhere else because the only place God
has entrusted that message to is His Church and the men He has given as
undershepherds to proclaim that
message. And that message is the Gospel
of Jesus Christ found in the story of the Bible, God’s Word.
Ok, I have descended from the soapbox.
