“The Church Needs Renewal”
“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;”
II Timothy 4:2-3
Praise the Lord all the saints of God.
The Church needs to regain its impact, authority, and leadership in society, and be the salt and light God has called us to be. The first area where the Church in America needs renewing today is that of the “PREACHING and TEACHING of GOD’S WORD”.
Paul admonished Timothy
“Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;” 2 nd Timothy 4:2-3
Teaching involves more that imparting information from the Bible. It requires the relevant explanation and application of biblical truth to the hearer’s world, and that requires expository teaching of God’s Word.
Exposition is teaching that is faithful to the original meaning and intent of the biblical authors and relevant to the lives of believers today. Because the Church needs to be taught rather that entertained, expository preaching and teaching is critical to the development of Churches that will be able to affect our culture for God.
Passionate preaching void of solid biblical content leads to emotional fanaticism, whereas solid content void of contemporary relevance leads to dead orthodoxy. Our culture needs a clear, strong Word from God that is both biblically sound and relevantly communicated.
The explosion of religious T.V. programming in particular, has had the inevitable affect of giving the modern-day Church a “show-biz” mentality that deals in sound bites and spectacular testimonies. In such settings, the Bible is often uses to verify the experiences being promoted.
The Bible was not written to teach prepositional truth only. It was written to teach us how to live. Jesus’ final commission to His Church included, “…teaching them to observe all that I command you…” St. Matthew 28:20. Now “observe” here doesn’t mean sit by and watch, but it means “to keep, to obey”. The goal of the Bible teaching is application. Truth can’t be taught as though it were unrelated to life. We must teach and preach for life changing results.
When the pastor opens the Bible, it is God who needs to speak from the pages of His Word. Nothing can replace the relevant, clear teaching of scriptures.
Faced with a deteriorating culture and it’s own declining influences, the Church in America cannot afford to cling to man-made traditions. The Bible, not tradition, must sit in judgement over us.
Paul wrote (Colossians 2:8) See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
St. Matthew 15:1 -2
Religious traditions may or may not be good. But what God wants is for us to obey Him- and that’s always good.
Colossians 2:8 warns us to beware of human traditions. If an activity has a biblical basis, we then need to ask how effective it is. Reevaluate it and find out how to make it effective.
Bishop George W. Ayers
