Preach the word

Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching.. – 2 Timothy 4.2

Three simple little words – but with so much power and impact. I could go a lot of ways here but I think I am going to focus on pastoral or ‘formal’ preaching Timothy was a young preacher who, according to the rest of Paul’s instruction was a bit prone to lose his focus and get distracted with other issues. He liked an good debate and even got involved in discussions that did no good for the ministry. He had to be warned to stay on track.

Here Paul reminds him to do that in his preaching. Preach the word.

As a preacher I understand the need for that reminder. We all have our own ideas and notions and things we would like to talk about. We all can be tempted to use our pulpit and people are more than happy to hear it.

That makes it pretty tempting. Its tempting to say what people like and people can have itching ears that liked to be scratched. That want us to say things that they want to hear.

We can preach about politics and please a crowd. We can preach exciting stories and adventures. We can preach about our perspective on current events.

But none of that really matters.

Listeners can also be tempted to find a preacher they like who does not deal with their sins.  It’s nice to find someone who only preaches the ‘nice’ things and never preaches the hard things.

We must expect and demand that our preachers preach and the word and they are to preach it – and nothing else.