"TRANSFORMED" Into the Image of His Son

Presupposition Six: Declaring the Whole Counsel of God is Unimportant as Long as Those Who Attend Feel Good When They Leave the Church.

Closely related to presupposition five, is the idea that it is no longer important to declare the whole counsel of God to his people. This, too, is a presupposition detected by observation. People tend to talk about those matters that are important to them, but seeker-friendly pastors tend to be extremely limited in the scope of their teaching.

They seem to believe human relationships are more important than a right relationship with God. It seems the idea of declaring the whole counsel of God never enters the mind of the average modern pastor. They seem satisfied as long as they can convince their hearers they are doing something religious and can collect their salaries. Do they believe sinners will be converted more readily if they conceal from them the whole truth about God’s character and his plan for the redemption of his people? In truth, one wonders if they even care about teaching biblical truth.

How will saints or sinners ever come to know and understand God and his character if such Pastors continue to present only a caricature of the biblical God?The antidote for both these presuppositions is a return to systematic, expository preaching based on a sound and careful exegesis4 of the biblical text coupled with appropriate practical application to the hearers’ lives. If the current trend in the modern pulpit should continue, our churches will produce an entire generation that is clueless about the meaning of the biblical text and about the major doctrines the Bible. We would do well to remember the L’s words through Hosea, the prophet, who wrote, "my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. ‘Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children’" (Hosea 4:6).

For decades now, in their infinite wisdom pastors have decided it was preferable to give their hearers the skim milk diet they were crying for instead of serving up the meat of the word. In so doing, they have produced a generation of pygmy Christians who are unable to hear the solid truth of Scripture.

Do you remember the March 2005 controversy about removing the feeding tube from a young woman named Terri Schivo, allowing her to starve to death. Mrs. Schivo had been in a vegetative state for fifteen years. There was testimony to the effect that during that period she could have been taught through physical therapy to eat and drink on her own. Had that course of action been followed, there would have been no need for the insertion of a feeding tube. Once the feeding had been inserted, she passively received nourishment but had no ability to obtain nourishment for herself.

She was totally dependent on her caregivers for any sustenance they chose to give her. I suggest this is analogous to the current spiritual circumstance of God’s people. Instead of training them to masticate the spiritual food of the Word of God for themselves, Pastors seem to have chosen to insert a spiritual feeding tube for their hearers, thus rendering them incapable of obtaining their own spiritual sustenance.