Many churches make it a point to advertise the fact that they preach and teach a gospel this is relevant. I know that what many are trying to say is that they are not boring like many believe that church can be. As a preacher, I think a lot about relevance. In other words, why should anyone listen to what I have to say? Why should anybody care? Relevance is an interesting word. It could mean more than one thing. It might mean that a sermon is relevant if it feels to the listeners that it will make a significant difference in their lives. Or it might mean that a sermon is relevant if it will make a significant difference in their lives whether they feel it or not.
That second kind of relevance is my goal in preaching the sermons that I share. In other words, I want to say things that are really significant for your life whether you know they are or not. I want to share the words of God that paint a true picture of His glory, character, and sovereignty. My way of doing that is to share the truth of the gospel that has as little of the traditional and religious ways of thinking as possible. In other words, speak a truth that can withstand the scrutiny of those that are traditional or religious in their view of the Gospel.
On any given Sunday you may have people who believe that racism, global warming, abortion, limited health care for children, homelessness, poverty, the war in Iraq, white-collar crime, the global AIDS crisis, rampant teenage pregnancy, the subprime mortgage crisis, and so on and so on, is relevant. These things have nothing to do with the real problem that this world is facing.
I believe that there the most relevant issue in one’s life is whether or not they are “born again”. Jesus says in John 3:3, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the
It would be wrong to think that these other issues are the most important issues in life. They aren’t. They are life-and-death issues. But they are not the most important, because they deal with the relief of suffering during this brief earthly life, not the relief of suffering during the eternity that follows. They only deal with how to maximize well-being now for eighty years or so, but not with how to maximize well-being in the presence of God for eternity. Eternity is much longer than eighty years.
My job as a spokesman for God week after week is to deal in what matters most, and to stay close to the revealed will of God in the Bible (so you can see it for yourselves), and to pray that, by God’s grace, all people will see and feel the magnitude that what God says, is important.
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