It’s easy to tell people what they want to hear. It’s much harder to tell people the truth. I find that the hardest sermons are those that are critical of the way lives are lived by members of a congregation. Often times, blistering lament offending lifestyles of people in your church family come off as judgmental and archaic, but these sermons often define a preacher’s love for the church family.
If a man should go about and utter wind and lies,
saying, “I will preach to you of wine and strong drink,”
he would be the preacher for this people!
(Micah 2:11 ESV)
Here’s the translation: “If you preach how to get what you want from God, then you’d be hired to be a sinful people’s preacher.” In context, the nation of Judah (the southern kingdom of Israel) was in a period licentiousness and moral ambiguity where they would frequently disregard their values in favor of a preacher who wasn’t as critical of the bad choices they were making.
If you love people, if you care for people, and I mean genuinely love and care for them, then you will be hard pressed not to speak into their lives to point out God wants to lead us beyond the sensual to a better place but we won’t ever see it if the choices we make lead us toward destruction. All of us have a duty to preach the hard sermon. I don’t care if you’re not seminary trained or if you haven’t fully understood or even read the Bible, we need to preach the hard sermon for people in lives. Yes, it may lead to bad feelings for a while, but when they find God is leading them, they will thank you for it.
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