Are you Comfortable?

I was speaking to a friend long ago about what he looked for in a church.  He’d come to mine a few times and decided to go elsewhere, so when I got a chance to catch up with him later, I was interested in knowing why. 

“Your church was nice enough, but I didn’t really like the pastor’s sermons. They were right out of the Bible, verse-by-verse, and I felt like it was just a glorified Bible study.” 

“Well, what about the church you’re going to now?” 

“Oh, the pastor there does useful sermons. We’re starting one on marriage next week.” 

This got me thinking. I’ve been in a few churches and liked them all to some degree. The one I’m in now favors expository preaching – that is, going through the Bible book-by-book, verse-by-verse. One of the big advantages of expository preaching is that (especially if the congregation is on their toes) it’s harder for the pastor to pick and choose. He can’t skip the hard verses. He’s got to take them on.  

In a more topical church – one that picks subjects and then tells you what the Bible says about them – the pastor might preach a lifetime without touching on some of the more challenging parts of the Bible. This might work for them, but it does the general Christian no favors. It’s the challenging parts that often get challenged by unbelievers, and if you care any about them (as Jesus implied when he said, “go and make disciples of all nations”), you have to be ready for the objections.  

But even more so, we should care about the faith of the members of the church itself. How is a pastor equipping his congregation to face the world if he’s only going to lean toward the easy stuff in his sermons – always shooting for the low-hanging fruit? The “Daniel fought his Goliath, and you can too!” kind of sermon every Sunday. What happens when they get hit with, “What about this [obscure ‘gotcha’ that some kid found on the internet and has been answered fifty different ways already]?” The poor believer, who’s only heard all of the good and easy stuff, is befuddled right out of his faith. If I had a quarter for every deconversion story that, evident at its very heart, only stood upon some weak objections to the faith, I’d be a rich man (Jesus’s parable of the seeds comes to mind here). 

As I’ve written recently, I advocate for a complete and thorough study of the Bible. If you’re going to follow Christ, you’ve got to get into all of it, and not just the parts you like. Because I assure you, there are parts of the Bible that most of us will find quite uncomfortable if we’re honest with ourselves. It’s in these cases that we have to give the Bible its chance to work us over with those parts. Paul wrote in 2 Tim 3:16 and 17 that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness [my emphasis], that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” That is – to do the work to which God calls us, we must let his word build us. Teach. Reprove (rebuke). Correct. Train us in righteousness. You don’t do that just by cherry-picking the stuff that makes you feel good. 

Is topical preaching bad? Not at all. There are always things a pastor can do to exhort his people in certain areas. If he sees a need for it, then of course, he should go ahead and dig into what the Bible says about something. It might even be helpful in breaking up the monotony (if there could be) of an expository run through a book of the Bible. But a pastor can’t drift far from making sure his congregation is hearing the whole word of God. Let’s face it – if a person wants a moralized view of the world as it fits them, there are plenty of places to go – many of which even look like churches. But there is only one place they can go where they get the full story, and that’s a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching church. The whole Bible, cover to cover. And this comes with the added benefit of a common family of believers who can, in turn, question, exhort, assist, and pray for you. 

If you want to be serious about your faith, then get serious. If you just want to be comfortable, well, then you may as well just join a social club. Far less danger in that.