Sermonizer's Remorse

I don't often get to preach to our larger congregation. When I do, it's usually a one-shot. No series of sermons, and that's ok, but it means I don't get to go back and clarify if I realize something I said was incomplete or not quite right.

So this is my solution. It's only a partial one, to be sure. Not every one who heard the original sermons will be able to read these addenda, but some is better than none. :)

The first issue comes from the sermons I preached on a Sunday morning and evening on Walking Hand in Hand with Jesus. I made a statement (actually, more like a paragraph) along these lines: there is nothing I can do to overcome a sin in my life. Without Christ I am powerless to win any victories against sins in my life. The momentum of the sermon carried me past this point without realizing that those statements aren't exactly true.

Outside of church, where statements like those often sound good because they are accepted without examination, you begin to realize that if they were true, the world would be a much darker place. No lost person would ever be able to quit any particular sin they had ever begun. What I should have said is that without Christ I am powerless to overcome SIN in my life, not SINS. What I believe is true is this: that by willpower or good intentions or with the help of a support group or whatever, I might in fact be able to win a victory over a particular sin in my life; but the SIN NATURE will find other ways to manifest itself. Without Christ, I might win a battle here or there, but I can never win the war.

The second issue I wanted to address is not one of correction, but one of clarification or elaboration. I preached this past Sunday evening that we will have more peace in our life if we "delight in the Lord's instruction," including reading, studying, memorizing, meditating, applying, and worshiping. I believe this is sound teaching, but today I imagined someone listening to that sermon and responding something like this: "Jason, it's easy for you to talk about meditating on God's word day and night. You're a preacher! You are SUPPOSED to think about God stuff all the time. It's your job. But the rest of us have to live in the real world. We don't have time to walk around with our thoughts on the Bible all the time. We have jobs to do and businesses to run and bills to pay and yards to mow and dishes to wash and family fights to deal with etc, etc, etc." (Not that I think a real person would say etc, etc, etc, but you get my drift.) Maybe I don't give my imaginary person enough credit. Maybe a real person would be quick to realize that preachers also have most of these things, but there IS a sense in which we expect ministers to fill their heads with way more "spiritual" stuff than most Christians could possibly be expected to.

To any form of this concern, expressed by people real or imaginary, I want to say the following. The Bible is not just about "God stuff." It's also about "real life stuff." It teaches us how to handle money, and how to deal with sex, and how to navigate through conflicts, and how to treat employees, and how to face hardships, and how to respond to illness, and how to raise children, and how to be married, and how to conquer fear, and how to relieve stress, and how to avoid worry, and lots of other things that EVERYONE wants to know! The Bible is EXTREMELY practical--but you have to invest some serious effort to get to know what's in it in order for that practicality to begin to coalesce for you.

Let me give one example. Most of the time, I listen to Christian radio stations. (Ok, and talk radio as well.) But every now and then, sometimes more frequently, sometimes less so, I listen to secular radio stations for a while. This is largely due to the fact that I have been involved in youth ministry for years, and it's helpful to know at least a little about what the culture is currently dishing out to them. So recently I was listening to some secular morning show, and they were talking to callers who were sharing how they had responded to people they perceived to be jerks in parking--taking up more than one spot, "stealing" a parking place, whatever. One person dumped their milkshake in an open sunroof. One actually ordered an extra coffee so they could pour it on a car. The worst was the caller who had put dog poo under the door handles of the "offender."

The morning crew spoke about how dangerous it is to act out in this way because you don't know how the other person will respond. One of the personalities wondered whether some of these people perhaps actually deserved the penalties poured out upon them. Finally, one of the DJs said something like, "I think that there's something about letting things go, not taking revenge, that is just healthy." It appeared to me that these people were floundering in the dark. None of them seemed to be willing to say that they KNEW what was the right thing to do. If they had even the level of Biblical knowledge that my children have, they could have said you should not return evil for evil. The could have quoted, "vengeance is mine, says the Lord." But neither they nor any of the callers had any real wisdom to shed light on the topic.

So yes, real people up to their necks in real life will benefit from delighting in the Lord's instruction and meditating on it day and night. And when you do, so will the guy who just stole your parking place, though he may never know it.

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