Preaching to No One in Particular

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Ministers and preachers have a dangerous tendency to emphasize timeless truths to such an extent that they wind up preaching to no one in particular. And yet the letters to the Ephesians, Galatians, Corinthians and Romans are quite different — this is because their respectively different stories require that that God’s eternal Word be brought to them in varying ways. God’s Word comes, always, to particular people.

You are a people currently being attacked, slandered, and lied about in various creative ways. Some of it comes in the form of attacks on your elders and pastor, some of it comes in form of insult to you. We have reminded you before of our duty to rejoice when this happens; our Lord Jesus was emphatic on that point.

But there are other aspects of this which we must understand. First, this is not happening to a people that were leaving everyone else alone. We are being fought against precisely because we started it. We have declared war and have engaged the adversary at many places, and in many ways. It is gratifying, in one sense, that the adversary has finally determined that it is necessary for him to return fire. So the difference between us and our foes is not that they fight and we do not. It is that we fight fair and they fight dirty; we fight with spiritual weapons and they with carnal. We fight with the truth and they fight with lies.

Secondly, we have to understand that this is nothing new. God’s faithful servants have always had to deal with this. Paul was such a great apostle; who could possibly oppose him? But during his life, a sizable portion of the Church did just that, and told monstrous lies about him. We think David was such a wonderful man; everyone just loves his psalms. But during his life, he had to say, “False witnesses did rise up; they laid to my charge things that I knew not.” They opened their mouth wide against him, and said, “aha aha, our eye hath seen it.”

For the faithful, wars will never cease. All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Beware when all men speak well of you. But take heart also; we have armor that lies cannot pierce.

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