And as they departed, Jesus began to say unto the multitudes concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind? Matthew 11:7
The pond was deep with murky water, and all around its edge grew cattails, alders, and other bushes and plants. As a gentle breeze blew across the pond, it stirred the leaves on the bushes, and sent the cattails bowing and waving, including one on which perched a redwing blackbird in fine song. The scene was lovely, rustic, and peaceful, and for all its great beauty and serenity, there were few of us to witness it. There is not much excitement to a pond half full of cattails waving in the breeze. And that is the point Jesus was making as He reminded the multitudes of their journeys into the wilderness to see John the Baptist. John’s message was full of substance and conviction, and it gripped people’s hearts. His uncompromising approach is the only kind of preaching that accomplishes anything.
The religious world knows little about genuine preaching. So-called preachers occupy their congregations with soft words, gentle jokes and anecdotes, and soothing messages that urge people to try to be a little nicer to their neighbours. Like the gently swaying cattails around a lonely country pond, the messages of such men and women do little more than to lull people into a sense of complacency and calm. There is nothing about the need for repentance, about the anger of a holy God against vile lifestyles and cruel selfishness, about the hopelessness of sinners coming short of the glory of God, about the holiness of God and His Heaven and the inability of sinful people to rise to any level of acceptability with such a holy God. No, the messages of much of Christendom are little more than weeds waving in the breeze, for all they accomplish. John’s message was nothing like that. And faithful preachers today will be nothing like that either.
The Word of God is faithful in its portrayal of sin and its consequence, or God and His holiness, of repentance and its necessity, of the Gospel and its exclusive power to bring sinners to God. The uncompromising message of man’s ruin, God’s remedy, and man’s responsibility will not draw the large crowds of religion, but it will produce results. Religion’s message has saved no souls and brought no sons to Glory. But the Gospel, the same message that the apostles preached, the same message that the martyrs died for speaking, the same message that the reformers unleashed, the same message that faithful preachers today herald forth, has always been the power of God unto Salvation.
May our preachers never compromise the full message of the Gospel. And may our lives and testimony never hide any of the truth of the Gospel. -Jim MacIntosh