Preaching Against Sins
Booklet, 12 pages
Copyright © 2004 James L. Melton
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Proverbs 8:13 says, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate.” A good companion verse would be Psalm 97:10: “Ye that love the LORD, hate evil: he preserveth the souls of his saints; he delivereth them out of the hand of the wicked.”
I have started with these two verses because I believe they give us the reason why most preachers do not preach against sins: they don’t fear God enough, and they don’t hate sins enough.
Notice, I used the word “sins” (in the plural), not the word “sin.” Any preacher can “boldly” stand in his pulpit and yell “Sin is killing our churches! Sin is killing our families! Sin is killing our nation!”, but for every one hundred preachers who make such statements, you won’t find ten who will actually name the sins. This reminds me of the old story I once heard of a lady who returned home from church services and had her husband ask her about the topic of the preacher’s sermon. “He preached about sin,” she replied. The husband asked, “Well, what did he say about it?” “Oh,” said the wife, “he said it was wrong.”
That’s about the limit of most “preaching against sin” these days. Everyone is just terrified of offending somebody and losing a few members ($♥$♥$)—if you know what I mean.
I guess one of the most common excuses for not preaching against sins—naming the sins, that is, and making the sinners feel guilty as the devil—is a little philosophy that goes something like this: “Well, the Holy Spirit has to do his work in the hearts of his people. If I preach against their sins, then I have gotten ahead of God and tried to change them instead of letting God change them. I must wait on God to change their hearts and give them a genuine love for God and for godly living.”
Yes, and while you wait (and wait, and wait, and wait) the more spiritual members of your church will be writing letters to me saying, “Bro. Melton, I just don’t know what to do. I believe my preacher loves the Lord, but he won’t STAND against sins in the church, and he won’t FEED US any good meat for fear that someone might not be able to digest it. Just last month I placed some of your tracts against Santa Claus in the tract rack, and the pastor asked me to remove them because someone had complained about the tracts being offensive. I’ve been thinking about looking for another church. Do you know of any good churches in my area?”
The member has made one miscalculation: he assumed that the preacher loves God. In light of Psalm 97:10, I wouldn’t make such an assumption. According to our text, one who truly loves God will balance that love with a proportional amount of HATE toward evil: Ye that love the LORD, hate evil.
In other words, a Christian only loves God as much as he hates sin. A 90% love and devotion to God coupled with a 20% hate for sin is a lie. It’s bad accounting, and it’ll never pass God’s audit. The fact of the matter is that no one, layman or preacher, loves God with all his heart, soul, and mind (Matt. 22:37) unless he also hates evil with all his heart, soul, and mind. Today’s Christians are “out of balance” and are a traffic hazard on the King’s Highway.
Allow me to illustrate what it means to hate sin. Thomas Carlyle once said, “The greatest security against sin is to be shocked at its presence.” Now, I just happen to hate snakes. I hate all snakes, and I kill every snake I possibly can. I hate all cats too, but not as much as snakes, because I only kick and throw things at cats. I murder snakes with a passion. I will stomp the breaks on my Jeep and lock up all four wheels just for the high honor of grinding a snake’s head into the asphalt.
Now, if I were preaching one Sunday, and I saw a snake crawling across the carpet under our pews, the preaching would stop and the entire church would occupy itself with ridding our worship services of that thing. No one would just sit there as though nothing were wrong. As a matter of fact, one would doubt the intelligence of anyone who did just sit there!
Yet we have churches filled with people who just “sit there” with full knowledge of sinful activity in the church, and we have thousands of preachers (excuse me—I should have said pastors) who just “stand there” in the pulpit and never open their mouths about the numerous sins crawling amongst the pews.
What if everyone followed Carlyle’s counsel and became SHOCKED at every presence of sin? What if all Christians really hated sin as much as they profess to love God?
Why does a farmer rid his field of stumps? It’s because he hates stumps. Why does a gardener rid his garden of weeds? It’s because he hates weeds. A gardener who allows weeds to grow in his garden would have a tough time convincing anyone that he hates weeds! Likewise, a pastor who tolerates sin in his church will have a tough time proving that he hates sin.
The Bible is filled with instruction on the need to preach against sins. Remember the case of Saul and Samuel in I Samuel 15? Amalek, the enemy of Israel, stands as a picture of our enemy, the flesh. Notice what God commanded Saul concerning this enemy: “Samuel also said unto Saul, The LORD sent me to anoint thee to be king over his people, over Israel: now therefore hearken thou unto the voice of the words of the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (I Sam. 15:1-3)
“Spare them not” was the command of God, yet we find that Saul and the people disobeyed this clear command by sparing the king Agag and “the best” of the spoils: “But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly.” (v. 9)
God did not command them to keep “the best” of anything. In God’s holy eyes the Amalekites and their possessions were wicked and they deserved to be annihilated. Yet, Saul felt that he had a better spirit of discernment than the Lord, so he spared what he esteemed to be “the best.” By contrasting the “bad” things with the “really bad” things, Saul had redefined Israel’s enemies.
So it is today. God wants us to “spare not” when it comes to preaching against sin, yet too often we only preach against the “really bad” sins (homosexuality, adultery, abortion, etc.) while sparing the lesser sins (gossiping, worldly music, immodest apparel, jealousy, smoking, gambling, social drinking, etc.).
One reason for preachers not preaching against sins is the fact that they often fail to realize its harmful effects. In Matthew 9:12-13, Jesus speaks of sinners as having a sickness: “But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Sin is like a disease that spreads and infects one’s whole body. The wise preacher will bear this in mind and address sin issues early on before the sin can spread through the church, the body of believers. That is, a wise preacher who loves God and hates evil will learn to practice sin prevention in his church. He will not sit around with his fingers crossed and hoping that a particular sin will just go away. Like a good surgeon, he will cut the “cancer” out of the body so that proper health can be restored. This cutting, of course, is to be performed with the sharp two edged sword of God’s word (Heb. 4:12).
A Christian who attends church services and never hears the preacher speak out against his sins is like a patient who visits his doctor frequently, only to hear good news every time, even though he’s eaten up with cancer. Each time the patient is in worse condition, yet the doctor ignores the problem. Christians are growing more sinful and weaker spiritually every day because preachers are ignoring a certain amount of sin in their congregations. Like Saul, they are refusing to spare not.
The words sin, sins, sinned, sinner, sinners, sinneth, transgression, transgressions, wicked, wickedness, and trespass are found over 1,800 times in the Bible. That’s about one occurrence for every seventeen verses or nearly twice per chapter. God is clearly concerned about sin! God does not side step sin issues; he deals with them all through his word.
Take the first sin in the Bible, that of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter three. Immediately after the couple had sinned, God was right on the scene dealing with the problem. Would it be fun to confront two sinners? No, it would not be fun. Would this cause some embarrassment to the sinners? Yes, it would cause some embarrassment to them, but God is HOLY, and he hates sin, so his holiness demanded that he deal with the sin issue. It is our lack of holiness that allows us to ignore sin. God, being a holy God, never ignores it.
In the very next chapter, Genesis chapter four, we find God tracking down a sinner and speaking to him about his sinful conduct. Cain killed righteous Abel, so God dealt with Cain.
Two chapters later we find the earth so corrupt that God must take action again. He destroys life from the earth because of the sins of men.
In Genesis chapter nine we have a “preacher of righteousness” (II Pet. 2:5) coming onto the scene. When faced with a sin issue, Noah dealt with the sinner (Gen. 9:24-25) because he was a preacher of righteousness, not a preacher of compromise.
In Exodus chapter thirty-two we find Moses coming down mount Sinai to discover that God’s people had begun worshipping a golden calf. Did he side step the matter and pray for them to mature in the Lord? No, he destroyed the false god and had 3,000 men killed.
Leviticus 19:17 is a good one: “Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him.” This modern crowd has it all backwards, thinking that one is being hateful when speaking out against sin. In the Bible it is just the opposite: you “hate” someone when you don’t rebuke them for their sin!
What did Joshua do when the sinful act of Achan came to a head? Being a holy man of God who understood his role as God’s representative, Joshua dealt with the sin, and he did so publicly, and this was the will of God (Jsh. 7).
Nathan was a fine preacher who knew the importance of preaching against sin. In the first thirteen verses of II Samuel chapter twelve, we find Nathan going straight to David the king and saying “thou art the man.” Was this an easy message to preach? I doubt it. Was it a needed message, and did God honor it? Yes, it was a very needed message, and God honored it by granting David repentance and continuing his blessings on David’s life. But such blessings could only come after the preacher had delivered his message, a negative message to a sinning saint.
Someone says, “Well, I think it’s best to just pray about such matters and let God work it out.” Well, you are wrong because that’s not what we are finding in God’s word. In the Bible, over and over again, we find God calling men to preach against sins and sinners.
Have you read I Kings chapter eighteen lately? Do you not recall God’s preacher standing up against the false prophets of Baal on mount Carmel? He didn’t ignore them and hope that God would work it out. He PREACHED AGAINST SIN! That same preacher (Elijah) shows up in chapter twenty-one and pronounces God’s judgment with one of the most negative messages any preacher has ever had to preach, and he speaks to the king of Israel when he says it: “Thus saith the LORD, In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.” (I Kgs. 21:17-22) I doubt that Elijah enjoyed this task, but it was his duty. Too many Christians today are driven by desire and too few are driven by duty.
How would you like to have Nehemiah for a pastor? He didn’t tolerate sin either. He marched straight to the transgressors and took care of God’s business: “. . . I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals . . . I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath . . . I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about the wall? if ye do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came they no more on the Sabbath . . . I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin. Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives? And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.” (Neh. 13:15-28) Nehemiah, like any good preacher, took God’s side against the transgressors. Those who refuse to do so are siding with the transgressors against God. It’s just that simple.
Isaiah 58:1 is also a dandy. It says to, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” How can we show God’s people “their transgressions” if we don’t mention the transgressions by name? Isaiah isn’t being commanded to go around saying, “Folks, I want to say that sin quenches God’s Spirit! Sin causes God to withhold his blessings from us! Sin deceives us and wrecks our lives!” Any preacher can preach like that every Sunday and never upset anyone or get anyone under conviction. To show someone their transgressions is to point out specifically the transgressions by name so that everyone present, especially the transgressors, can clearly identify the sin.
Jeremiah preached against sins. He didn’t speak in generalities. He got real specific and told the people what they should be doing and what they should not be doing (Jer. 25:2-7).
Let’s move on over to the New Testament and see what Jesus preached. Our Lord is baptized in Matthew chapter three, and he then begins his public ministry in the very next chapter. What do you suppose he said when he began preaching? He actually said something that we don’t hear much of these days. When the Lord Jesus Christ began his public preaching ministry, he used a word that is found many times in the Bible, but very few times in most pulpits: the word REPENT. Matthew 4:17 says, “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” John had preached this same message before Jesus (Mat. 3:2). In fact, John lost his head because of it (which is probably why most preachers refuse to follow his example!). Jesus, of couse, demanded repentance and dealt with the sin issue throughout His ministry.
In Matthew 15:3-9 we find Jesus preaching about sin and naming the sins. In the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus said, “I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7) Jesus said in Mark 2:17 that he had come to call “sinners to repentance.”
In John chapter four Jesus speaks with the woman at the well about the water of life. When she expressed an interest in having this water (salvation) Jesus brought up a particular sin in her life (John 4:13-19)! He spoke to her about her sin, yet many personal workers today wouldn’t think of such a thing.
In the four gospels alone the word “sins” is found thirty-one times. The word “sin” occurs eighteen times, “repent” is found nine times, and “repentance” is used ten times. Jesus didn’t ignore the sin issue, so whose example are we following when we ignore it?
What did Peter do when he learned that Ananias and Sapphira had sinned by lying about their gift to the ministry? Peter knew that Satan was the father of lies and that Satan would be glorified if this sin went uncovered, so he uncovered it by confronting the deceivers and preaching against their sin (Acts 5:1-5). Did God judge Peter for this? No, God judged the sinners and continued to use and bless Peter.
What about the sinful Christian at Corinth who had been “immorally involved” (to put it nicely) with his father’s wife? Did Paul advise the Corinthian Christians to pray for the man in hopes that things might improve? No, he told them to “deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” (I Cor. 5:5) In other words, DEAL WITH IT!
In I Timothy 5:20 Paul tells the young preacher Timothy to REBUKE those who sin BEFORE ALL. That’s public preaching against sin, not secret meetings in the pastor’s office.
He tells Titus much the same thing in Titus 1:10-13: “For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake. One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretians are alway liars, evil beasts, slow bellies. This witness is true. Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith.” Those who were sinning by teaching false doctrine were to be rebuked sharply. This was to make them ashamed of themselves and bring them to repentance. Part of a Christian’s duty is to make people ashamed of themselves (II Ths. 3:14-15). This is especially true of a preacher in his pulpit.
As far as we know, all of the disciples except one were put to death because of their preaching. Their preaching would often upset people—not always—but quite often. Yes, salvation through Christ was preached, but sin was also preached against. Idolatry was condemned. Immorality was con-demned. Sins of commission and sins of omission were condemned. God’s people were challenged to be a holy people (I Pet. 1:16), not just people who believe in Jesus. Our Lord said that people would know us by our FRUIT (Mat. 7:20), not by our profession. Paul said that this essential Christian fruit will not appear until the works of the flesh have disappeared (Gal. 5:19-23), so it is impossible to have a spiritual body of believers without preaching against sins. It was practiced by the prophets, by the Lord Jesus, and by his followers. If it is God whom we seek to please, and not man, then we must preach against the thing that God hates. We MUST preach against sins, and, if we love God, we will.
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