A Rare Moment On the Soapbox

             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.  

             I hope and pray that is what you come to hear each week at wherever you attend church. And I hope and pray that if that’s what you desire to hear week in and week out, that you will never leave disappointed.  However, if you do, and I was the pastor who disappointed you in that way, let me know so I can kick my own self in the rear end.  

Ok, I have descended from the soapbox.