THE Message and the Messenger

Now we must look at the role of the preacher and see what has become of the message that the church is bringing today, do we hear in the contemporary church the message that the first church brought; or are we hearing another message (1) ? As I have already discussed slightly in the first chapter the apostle Paul stated the following. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek (2) . In this modern world there are those preachers who are stating the following, “quote, different times require different messages, unquote (3) .” Here Murren argues in the following way, if we were to look at the preaching of the old 19 th century ministers and gospel teachers, we see that they were speaking to a different era, and the message today needs to be different as we are speaking to a broken generation. Thus we have a modern day preacher, preaching a modern day message, I just wonder where on earth he would get his inspiration for his message, for he preaches messages with the following formulas in them. a) Practice composing practical, catchy titles for your sermons; b) limit your preaching to twenty minutes or so. And c) study the newspapers to see what cutting edge articles are at the forefront, here then we see where he gets his inspiration, out of the newspapers, newspaper exegesis or should I say eisegesis and not Biblical exegesis (4) ? The Bible is the word of God and God never changes (5) , and neither does His word. God therefore understands His creation and thus He also understands the need of Creation, and that need is to hear His word for them. Generation after generation then needs to hear the word of God and does not need to hear the modern philosophising of men, who proclaim to be ministers of the gospel. True preaching then is that preaching that comes from the uncompromising word of God, the message would then be Christ centred, sin exposing, self convicting and life changing (6) . The Bible is ready; for the Bible is Gods word given to men, but are the people ready to hear it? Do the people in the church want to hear what the Bible truly says, or are they just looking for nice topical sermons on a Sunday morning. The question is, are the people ready, or should I say are the people making themselves ready to hear what the Lord is going to say through the preacher. I have sat in churches where the minister has brought an inspired word from God, and the response has been nothing, so it is possible then for a live message to be brought, but not received because the recipients have been dead to it. And these people proclaim themselves to be Christians, born again and Spirit filled (7) ? What then as gone wrong, or what seems to be the problem facing the preacher today? Well it is a fact that the church is facing a lack of any real depth amongst its theologians, those who state that they have an anointing upon them rarely give any evidence of that in the messages that they bring.