Petty Preaching

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:24)

Preaching is a noble engagement, especially for someone who has been called to it by God.

However, there are some preachers who have trivialized the same to a contest of creativity and popularity, crafting a discourse without using the Bible text. To the Bible student, not only is it inappropriate and misleading, it is as coarse as the coarse jesting we are warned against in Ephesians 5. Yet it is all done in the pursuit of relevance in preaching using human effort. And it is normally called motivational.

These will make a sermon out of anything and nothing just to keep their congregations entertained, not exhorted. They will pick a word or a small portion of a sentence in a verse and create a message completely unconnected to what even the verse is saying.

I will give a couple of the most notorious I have heard repeatedly over the years. And I quote them because they divert the listener’s attention from the lesson in the scriptures and to the intellect and creativity of the preacher.

The first one comes from Isaiah 6. In the year king Uzziah died. I have heard this countless times. It is sad because Uzziah’s death takes flight and completely obliterates the message found in the rest of the chapter, which is the presence and glory of God. Instead of the death being a point of reference, it becomes the primary focus of the narrative. God’s presence and revelation disappear from the message, as do Isaiah’s conviction and commission.

‘Let Uzziah die in your life’ becomes the rallying point of the discourse. Unfortunately I never even once heard Uzziah defined. It is akin to killing a ghost you cannot see, one you have created in your fancy.

The second comes from Ezekiel. Son of man, stand on your own feet. You would wonder whether someone can stand on someone else’s feet. But the same is preached so powerfully and becomes the only thing God requires from His people, to stand on your feet. I never even once also heard the reasons people were required to stand on their own feet or what they were standing on previously?

Yet we know Ezekiel was just being prepared to handle the message andassignment God had for him to His people.

The third one comes from the Gospels. Jesus passed between them and went his way. Again people are not given the context or even the purpose, just the encouragement that God will make you pass between people to your destiny. Yet we know that only pastoralists and herders pass between animals. It feeds on the people’s competitive pursuit of an edge over others, and especially demonstrates their superiority.

Yet probably the most notorious is the numerologist. The numbers must be used to prove that your time has come according to the numbers. It is not much different from astrology, only that this has been sanitized with a verse here and another there. In astrology it is the stars that align and in numerology it is the numbers that are arranged. They will address from years to months to dates.

Sadly, the numerologist pastors do not agree about the significance or value of each number. What a number would mean for one expert is completely different from another. Even the numbers themselves do not agree amongst themselves to mean one thing even to one expert. When it fits the pastor, 11 is eleven. When it does not agree with his math, it can mean 1+1 or two. 23 can be twenty three or 2+3, five. It can even be 2x3 or six. It all depends on what the numerologist is aiming at. At times even a zero can have a value.

The numerologist forces numbers to pass the message he has prepared. And especially in these times when revelation only comes once a year and so must set the year’s revelation in the right frame.

Anyway, let me boil your brain (a direct translation from Kiswahili)

On Sunday many of you will be encountering numerologists, especially at this time of the year. This is because they will be adding all those numbers to promise you heaven and breakthrough in the year. All because it is their new year, never mind that it is a secular year with enough demonic connections and connotations.

Expect some of the following.

This is 2018, two thousand and eighteen. But I doubt there is any numerologist capable of giving numbers value that far. Therefore many will make the two thousand disappear. Or call it the 18^th year of the third millennium (or second depending on their education).

Many also do not have the value of 18 as a number. They have to split it.

It can be 3x6 but that will be discarded because it can easily mean the antichrist, 6, 6, 6.

So it has to be 2 x 9, which will be double the meaning attached to 9. It will be interpreted to mean a double portion of what 9 means.

Others will add 1 and 8 to make 9.

Still others will resurrect the 2 and add it to the 1 and 8 to make 11, and then make a meaning out of it.

And even that 9 can be further split to be 4 and 5, or 3 and 6 (6 is not a good number normally) or even 2 and 7.

Yet others will choose to ignore all other numbers and be left with8.

And any other combination will be worked out to mean what the preacher wants his congregation to run with this year.

Yet there is a sacred year, a year that God commanded in the scriptures, though I doubt He wanted it to be a clutch to help His people stop reading His word for revelation and guidance.

The saddest thing for these petty peddlers of the spiritual is that they never encourage people to grow to search the scriptures for themselves. They literally stand in lieu of the scriptures and God’s revelation. They are the experts on all things spiritual. And they are still proud of the reformation, even calling themselves Protestants.

They never hold their people to a godly standard. They do not challenge them toward holiness. Their aim is to teach them to expect a breakthrough or the other even as they give to activate that breakthrough. To them grace is an abstract term meaning God does not care how you live provided the numbers and revelations are arranged to favor you.

Will we get back to the public reading and proclamation of the scriptures?

I long for the day preachers will revert to the plain teaching of the Bible irrespective of whether it motivates people or not. I pray to see preachers making God’s grace so real and hell so hot until people literally run to the altar for salvation.

Enough of motivational and entertainment pretending to be preaching.

It is sad that most entertainers get their groove in church. It is sad that most comedians start their trade in church by making fun of those petty sermons and dramatics from preachers.

Why not just read the Bible and ask God for eyes that are open to see beauty in that word alone?

Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. (Psalm 119:18)

Because God’s word is beautiful.