Seedsower Music:: "Now Where Was I?"

No preacher would deliberately set out to confuse the listener. But some sermons wind up doing just that. Once in a cul-de-sac, the only way out is to turn around. How can we avoid that altogether?

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"Now Where Was I?"

October 27, 2008

...."rightly dividing the word of truth.

2 Timothy 2:15

Have you ever been driving, and seeing tail lights ahead, you take a side road and hope to avoid losing any more time? But the more you drive, the more lost you are? And suddenly it dawns on you that if you had just stayed on the main road - you'd be at your destination by now? You've been there, you say?

Timothy was a young preacher, and Paul gave him some very helpful preaching advice, advice we all could heed. A.T. Pierson gives us some insight into what Paul could have meant by "rightly dividing."

"This expression, found in Paul's second letter to Timothy, is a very peculiar one (orthotomounta ton logon tas aletheias)-- [Greek transliteration]. It seems to be nearly equivalent to the Latin phrase recte viam secare-- to cut a straight road-- and to hint that the true workman of God is like the civil engineer to whom it is given to construct a direct road to a certain point."

"The hearer's heart and conscience is the objective point, and the aim of the preacher should be, so to use God's truth as to reach most directly and effectively the needs of the hearer. He is to avoid all circuitous routes, all evasions, all deceptive apologies and by-ways of argument, and seek by God's help to find the shortest, straightest, quickest road to the convictions and resolutions of those to whom he speaks."

"And if the road-builder, before he takes any other step, first carefully surveys his territory and lays out his route, how much more should the preacher first study the needs of his hearers and the best ways of successfully dealing with them, and then with even more carefulness and prayerfulness study the adaptation of the word of God and the gospel message to meet those wants."

From GEORGE MULLER OF BRISTOL by A. T. Pierson