Your Word Is Truth

A fantastic preacher named Smedly Yates preached at our church last Sunday. Our regular pastor was at a conference, and as Pastor Yates grew up at our church and has family here, he graciously came here from Tempe, AZ, where he pastors a church, and spent the weekend—first preaching to the men at a Saturday morning breakfast, then feeding us the Word on both Sunday morning and evening. And boy, were we fed. He preached from 1 Corinithians 1 and 2…on the foolishness and power of both the gospel message (morning sermon) and the method of bare proclamation (evening). This post is borne out of that evening message, and I’m going to quote liberally and shamelessly from my notes (I’ll share links to both messages at the end of this post). This sermon was EXCELLENT. One of the best things about it was that he put his finger directly on one of the biggest problems with modern churches today, besides false doctrine/watered-down, erroneous, eisegetical preaching (that which uses...

Wherever there is a faithful and discerning believer willing to step out on a limb and warn others about a false teacher or teaching, there is always a crowd of professing Christians there to start the outcry: “You’re causing division in the body of Christ! Just leave them alone! Plenty of people are getting saved and are being helped by this person/ministry/teaching! You’re just sour, or jealous, or bitter and unloving!”…etc. On and on the accusations go. I’ve been on the receiving end of this myself. If I’m honest, though, I’ve been there…when I was younger in the faith; more impressionable, more naïve, and less understanding of the scriptures that familiarity, growth, teaching and study give those who have maturity. And while I don’t claim to be a mature Christian, I’m certainly not a baby anymore. I’m maturING, praise God. He in His wisdom and preservation have kept me from falling into dangerous traps of many wrong teachings and teachers, and given me a love for Scripture ...