A Preacher's Legacy by David Pawson

Author:David Pawson [Pawson, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Religion, Christian Life, General, Christianity
ISBN: 9781911173274
Google: W19FswEACAAJ
Publisher: Anchor Recordings Limited
Published: 2017-05-14T22:00:00+00:00

4

From Content to Method

What I am pleading for is contextual preaching. Most people think that by context we mean the verses before a verse and the verses after a verse – the immediate context. Modern Bibles are helpful in dividing the prose into paragraphs and the immediate context is the paragraph in which a statement occurs. Without the paragraph you could get quite the wrong meaning of a verse.

Let me give you some examples. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Now I want you to think of something – any one thing – you can do with Christ that you couldn’t do without him. Was money what you thought of? Well, that verse is about money, and its context is managing to live on whatever income you have. In the context, the paragraph, Paul says, “I have learned to be content with much or with little because I can do all things with Christ who strengthens me.” I have discovered that two-thirds of some congregations are in debt and are rarely told that being in debt is stealing. You can steal in two ways: by taking something from someone else that doesn’t belong to you or by withholding from them what belongs to them.

When you are in debt you are holding money from someone to whom it belongs. The Bible tells us not to be in debt. Through Christ you can get out of debt, and stay out of it. Now let me make it clear that having a mortgage on your house isn’t debt, but getting behind on a payment is. In these times of pressure, people who have mortgaged themselves to the hilt are going to find themselves in debt and get behind with payments. So that verse becomes very relevant to preach today, but it is always preached in a very spiritual way that has nothing to do with money—but the context is money. The context is being content rather than covetous, and therefore, not buying things that you don’t need.

Let us take another example: “In Christ,” says Paul, “there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.” The feminists love that verse, the homosexuals love it, and they say, “In Christ there is neither male nor female” which, if it means that Christians are neutered when they are converted, means that same sex marriage is perfectly acceptable to Christians since there is neither male nor female. But the context of that verse tells us that it is about our vertical relationship with God, and not our horizontal relationship with each other. In the horizontal we are still male and female, and we still have different roles and responsibilities. In our vertical relationship with Christ, my wife is a son of God according to that passage because the context says that we have all been baptized into Christ, we are clothed with Christ, we belong to Christ, we have accepted his identity,

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.