Preach Christ, not Morals

In our Biblical Theology course in school, we were assigned a passage that we were supposed to write a 4-page sermon on from the Old Testament. My passage was Isaiah 53, which you may know as the Messianic text that best exemplifies the “Suffering Servant.”. Our assignment included how to make that passage a truly Christian passage, so as you might imagine, we went to Acts 8, where Phillip uses that passage to preach the Gospel to the Ethiopian eunich.

We were then asked this question at the presentation of our sermon to the class, and we were asked this question blind:

Can you preach this sermon in a synagog or mosque?

Of course, my tongue-in-cheek answer was something like, “Not if I want to keep my head on top of my shoulders.”

The course instructor then gave the right answer – if you can, it’s called a moralistic sermon, and as pastors, we are called to preach Christ alone. Do that in the wrong place, and they will not invite you back at a minimum.

I was blessed this morning to find this quote from Darrell Harrison on Twitter:

Brother Darrell is no mere “Twit.”. Together with Virgil Walker, he has one of the best podcast in Reformed Theology, called Just Thinkin’. Check out that podcast. It’s worth a listen! He’s also Dr. John MacArthur’s social media guy. Wish I knew him personally. I’d love to pick that spiritual brain of his.