1 Peter 1:23 declares the Word of God is living and endures forever. The Word of God produces and sustains life. The Word of God is never out-of-date or irrelevant. It is living and enduring because its Author, the God of this Universe, lives and endures forever!
Today, lots of ministers to listen to the demon “relevance” which says “When you preach you must be relevant to your people. Beware of being irrelevant.” Now there is a half-truth in that but as Christopher Ash contends,
“How do we define what is relevant? Who decides what Is relevant? Answer: the hearers do! What relevance means is that I must scratch where they itch. And therefore my method is the method of the contemporary politician. I must find out where they are itching.. So I gather a Focus Group, I take an opinion poll, I build up a picture of the issues bugging people. And this forms my agenda, which I address in my topical preaching. My preaching agenda is their itching agenda. They come to me as patients with their presenting symptoms, perhaps of anxiety, discomfort, low self-esteem or loneliness. And as their spiritual doctor I prescribe remedies for their perceived ills.
The problem—as every good doctor knows—is that the patient’s perceived ills, their presenting symptoms, their itches, may mask a deeper but unperceived illness. And the only one who knows the deeper illness is the God who made us. The Bible is the written expression of God’s agenda, the word of the God who made us. It expresses his purposes, his plans; it centers on him, not on us, and speaks to us only as we relate to him. To preach expositorily through a Bible book is to trust that the agenda of God is the right, the deepest, the best agenda. (The Priority of Preaching, p. 112)
This was part of my sermon on “Gospel-Powered Love” (PDF or MP3) from June 24, 2012.
