In the previous two posts, we looked at moralistic preaching and allegorical preaching.  In this post, we will look just briefly at gnostic preaching. Another unintended consequence of not preaching what is actually found in a passage is that listeners are given a gnostic view of Scripture.  The Gnostics were were a cult group in the early church who claimed secret knowledge that gave them their unique understanding of Scripture - a knowledge to which others were not privy.  I have not studied how the gnostics in the early church preached but would like to appropriate the term “gnostic” to describe a particular preaching abomination that I have often witnessed. Gnostic preaching happens when a preacher uses the text of Scripture as a springboard to preach about something that is not actually found in the passage. His listeners are left with the impression that if they didn’t have the preacher to tell them the meaning of the passage, then they could never have understood it for themselves.  The preacher must have some special knowledge that enabled him to pull THAT meaning from THIS text.  Here is Thailand, it is often assumed that the preacher must have gotten that special knowledge from his classes at Bible college - knowledge to which the common man does not have access.  Therefore an unhealthy dependence on the preacher is fostered.  People are lulled into thinking that they NEED the preacher to understand the Scripture because the Scripture itself is not clear enough taken on its own.  At the end of a gnostic sermon, the listeners say, “Wow!  I would never have figured that out from reading this passage of Scripture if the preacher hadn’t told us what it meant.”  At the end of a Biblical sermon, the listeners say, “Wow!  I don’t know how I didn’t see that before.  What the preacher said is all there so clearly in this passage of Scripture!”

In my previous post, we looked at moralistic preaching and now we turn to the second of three common forms of unbiblical preaching - allegorical preaching. At a retreat for pastors and missionaries, we heard a sermon from a pastor who is serving on the leadership board for a certain Thai church denomination.  He preached on 1 Samuel 17 - the story of David and Goliath.  After the reading of the passage and giving a winding conversational introduction, he started going through the passage, telling us what was there in the story.  Each part of the story of David and Goliath was used allegorically to emphasize some spiritual or practical truth that is needed in order to be successful in ministry.  

In my last post, we began to look at the problem of preaching that uses the Bible but misses the point of what the Bible is saying.  In the next three posts, we will look at three common forms of unbiblical preaching - moralistic preaching, allegorical preaching, and gnostic preaching.  There is a lot of overlap between these three but they are distinct enough to put them in separate categories - even though they may all show up in a single sermon.  In this post, we’ll take a look at moralistic preaching.Moralistic Preaching and BuddhismMoralistic preaching is all about getting people to be good.  Thai Buddhists believe that the point of every religion in the world (including Christianity) is to teach people to be good.  And if they listened to the sermons in many churches on Sunday morning, their belief would be confirmed.  Instead of telling listeners about Christ, the cross, and the drama of redemption which winds through the whole of Scripture, moralistic preachers tell people, “Be good and God will bless you.”  The need for forgiveness is not emphasized nearly as much as the need to try harder to be a better person.  This type of preaching is familiar to people from a Buddhist background because it is the same type of sermon that Buddhist monks give.  

I’ve lived in Thailand for about five years and have heard a fair share of preaching in Thai churches.  I’ve heard local pastors in small congregations, specially invited preachers at large evangelistic events, and top church leaders at national gatherings.  And while there are some fine godly men preaching good Biblical sermons, the majority of preaching that I’ve heard in Thai churches has been very disappointing.  It’s not that they don’t use the Bible.  They do.  It is not that they are preaching blatant heresy.  They are not.  More often than not, I find sermons to be disappointing not because of what is there, but what is not there.

For the past two weeks, we had a short-term team with us from America and I have had both the pleasure of working with them, and also the responsibility of translating for them most of the time.  Though my Thai ability is not superb, it is usually sufficient to get the job done.  However, I know that pronunciation is not my strong suit and part way through this past Sunday’s sermon, I was hoping against hope that I was getting a certain word right.  I wasn’t.As my friend Luke preached in English, I did the best that I could to translate what he said into Thai.  All was well until he took us to Zechariah 10:3, “My anger burns against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders; for the LORD Almighty will care for his flock, the house of Judah, and make them proud like a horse in battle.”  From that point on in the sermon, Luke used the word “warhorse” quite frequently.

In the previous post, we looked at the Biblical precedent for preaching and saw that sermons are not merely a Western cultural tradition but have their foundation in the pages of Scripture. In this post, I would like to wrap up by responding to some objections to maintaining the sermon as a central part of the life of the Christian church.Objection#1 “Sermons are ineffective” Perhaps you will grant to me the fact that preaching is important in Scripture but would go on to add that times have changed and sermons just don’t “work”. In some ways, I agree. I have heard lots of sermons that just don’t work. But it is not because the idea of preaching a sermon is a bad one but rather because the sermon that someone decided to preach was a bad sermon. It was boring. It was irrelevant. It was mostly the preacher’s own ideas and hobby horses with little reference to Scripture. It explained the meaning of the passage for ancient Israelites but failed to show how it applies to modern listeners. It was all puffed up emotion or moralistic platitudes with little reference to Scripture. It did nothing to address the misunderstandings and objections of the listeners, failing to make people see what God is saying and how it intersects with their life. It is just a collection of observations about the passage that the preacher thought were interesting but there is no overall coherent message. The preacher, fearing that he will lose people, fills his sermon with too many irrelevant funny stories that at the end of the day make people laugh but fails to feed them with the Word of God. There are lots of examples of bad sermons but that is not any justification for

I’ve heard some missionaries say that the sermon is not all that important for the spiritual growth of believers. Others have suggested that the sermon be done away with all together. Isn’t the sermon merely a cultural tradition of the Western church anyway? Shouldn’t we find some better, less passive, and more culturally appropriate way to help believers understand and apply the Bible?Hearing statements like this have concerned me because in the name of contextualization and better spiritual growth, we are about to throw out something that not only has a firm Biblical basis but is also an appropriate and contextual form of religious speech in Thai culture. In this first of two posts about the sermon, I would like to lay out some Biblical arguments for why churches should retain the sermon as a centerpiece of Christian worship and teaching. Not only churches in the West, but churches everywhere.The Biblical Precedent for PreachingIf we look through Scripture just briefly, we’ll see lots of examples of preaching. The idea of the sermon was not developed in some Puritan think tank in 16th century England. When the people of Israel had newly entered in the land of Canaan, Joshua expounds to the people the history of what God has done for them (Joshua 24:1-13) and upon that basis goes on to challenge them to choose whether they will serve the God of Israel or some other gods (Joshua 24:14-15). Here we have two fundamental components of a sermon: explanation of God’s words and actions and application of that to the lives of the listeners. Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel stood up in the public square, bringing God’s word to the people, and exhorted them to turn back to God. In the book of Nehemiah, we see a wonderful example of this as Ezra the priest stands up to expound the law of God to all the people who are gathered in the public square (Nehemiah 8:1-8).

The following two stories from the lives of believers at the PhraBaht church (with whom we work) have reminded me of the special care that we need to take to value the elderly among us. “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity. Honor widows who are truly widows.” 1 Timothy 5:1-3 Pim’s mother was discouraged. Weak and bedridden because of diabetes, she often had thoughts of death and recently she had been having dreams about her late older sister who was calling her to come join her. ‘What’s the point of living?’ she thought to herself. ‘It would be better if I were to die.’ She would often vent her frustrations to her daughter and teenage grandson. One Sunday morning before church her grandson got tired of listening to her complain. Rather coldly, he said to her ‘If you want to die, then die already’ Those words cut her deeply and she refused to be taken to church that day. While Pim’s mother lay at home with thoughts of death and worthlessness, the believers at church had different thoughts. They missed her. After church, Sun and Muay visited her to talk, pray, and read the Bible. A few days later, Arui came to encourage her. By the time Sunday came around again, her spirits had perked up a bit and she was glad to see us when we came to pick her up and bring her to church. I don’t think that the preacher that day knew what had

It has been about a month and a half since Karl's mom passed away on May 24th and her absence is profoundly felt. She was a wonderful woman and dearly missed. Our family is very thankful that God gave us some time with her after we arrived from Thailand on May 20th and praise Him for strengthening us for the chaotic and emotional time that we stepped into when we got off the plane.I had the unique privilege of leading the memorial service for my Mom and I am posting below the order of service from the church bulletin together with the MP3 audio files for the service. I am doing this both for my own sake and that of my family as we think back about my Mom in years to come, and also for the sake of those who loved and appreciated my Mom but were unable to make it to the memorial service. The six MP3 files, taken together,

Since Sun hasn't been feeling well because of the pregnancy, I've been taking care of Joshua more than usual so that she can rest but I run out of things to do with him and get completely exhausted. On the days that he decides to wake up at 5 am, it doesn't help matters. And, frankly, I can only build towers with blocks or watch him drag pillows around the house so much. Keeping him from getting permanent head damage from his climbing (and falling) expeditions also gets old after a while. I love the kid, but often times I would rather be doing some language study or sermon prep instead of watching him for hours on end. But, in any case, I decided to try to make the best use of time, so while I lie on the floor and try to prevent Joshua from hitting me with wooden blocks or plastic tubs, I also listen to sermon CDs. I don't always get through a whole CD before he needs a snack from the kitchen, or a piggyback ride, or the something else happens to take us out of his room, but I have been incredibly blessed by some of the good preaching I've been listening to while watching Joshua at home, and while driving around town with him doing errands. I was given a set of CDs from the Shepherd's Conference (MacArthur's pastor conference) and it is just excellent to hear some good solid Biblical expositional preaching and teaching. I've heard quite a bit of preaching here in Thailand and frankly, a lot of it is not that impressive. The church here seems to suffer from the same ailment as Western churches - sermons that don't really teach the Word of God but rather merely use a verse or short bible passage as

This past Sunday I preached for the first time in the Thai language and I praise God that my Thai brothers and sisters in the congregation at Lopburi Church understood the message and were blessed by it. I made sure I read over the sermon text (sections of Psalm 119) a number of times and had a Thai teacher at our language school help me read over the text to get the correct pronunciation and rhythm of the text. At the very least, I wanted to read the Scripture well and clearly because even if the rest of the sermon were to be a disaster, God’s people would at least hear the inspired Word of God read clearly.

I recorded the sermon with Sun’s phone and when I started to listen to it later that night I immediately knew that I had started off speaking too fast. I was nervous. I had the whole manuscript typed out in Thai although I have trouble reading off a manuscript even in English. However, I wanted to type out the whole thing to help me think through how exactly I would say things in Thai when the time came. Also, I wrote out a manuscript so I could show it to one of the church elders to check the overall flow of the sermon to see if it would make sense to a Thai congregation. English thought patterns and Thai thought patterns are often structured differently and I wanted to make sure I was phrasing things in a more or less Thai way to facilitate understanding. In the end, I didn’t use the manuscript that much when I was preaching because I just am not accustomed to reading off a page verbatim when preaching. The up side of that is that I had good eye contact. The downside is that I wandered around looking for the right word more often than I would have liked.