Preaching: Morally Wrong Teaching

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." —John 8:31-32

No one can know truth except the one who obeys truth. You think you know truth. People memorize the Scriptures by the yard, but that is not a guarantee of knowing the truth. Truth is not a text. Truth is in the text, but it takes the text plus the Holy Spirit to bring truth to a human soul....

Charles G. Finney taught that it was wrong—morally wrong—to teach objective doctrine without a moral application. I have gone to Bible classes and listened to men who were learned in the Word of God. Still I have come away as cold as a pickled fish. There was no help, no lift in my spirit, nothing to warm the inside of my heart. The truth had been given to me just like a proposition in Euclid or a mathematical formula from Pythagoras. And the answer is, "So what? Let's go and have a soda!" Are we aware that we can give people objective truth without moral application? If God's moral Word is true, it means us. And if it means us, we ought to obey it. That is life. That is knowing the truth. Faith Beyond Reason, 64-65.

"Forgive me, Father, for those times I have been guilty of 'morally wrong' teaching. Send Your Spirit both to embolden my preaching and to move the hearts of my hearers to action. Amen."