“Nothing Negative!” – FBC Morning Light (12/13/2023)

Well, a good Wednesday morning to you. I trust your week is going well. Here we are in the middle of it already, aren't we? Well, today we're reading Micah chapters 1 2, beginning another one of those minor prophets in the Old Testament, near the end of the Old Testament, so we're winding down the year, and then we're also reading Revelation chapter 10.

I want to focus on a verse in chapter 2 because I think it's timely. I think what Micah reports here in this chapter is echoed pretty loudly today. Micah is a prophet sent by the Lord to proclaim his message of warning of potential or imminent judgment on the part of his people.

It's coming upon his people in both Samaria and in Judah. You read that in chapter 1, the very first verse. But in chapter 2, verse 6, here is the response that he's getting from some of the people, and I would encourage you to read this in the ESV.

It, I think, has the clearest rendering of the text. Here's what the people say. Do not preach, thus they preach, and particularly the ones who are preaching this. Let me clarify, because the word preaching is used here twice.

There are those who are false preachers, there are those who are preaching to the people, who are tickling the ears of the people, and those who are preaching like this say to the true prophets, the true preacher of the word, they are saying, do not preach, thus they preach.

One should not preach such things. Disgrace will not overtake us. Do you hear what they're saying? There are those who have the view that preaching should only be, shall we say, positive. It should only be uplifting.

It should only be encouraging. When you go to church and you hear the preaching of the word, it should always make you feel good. You should always leave feeling better than when you came in. That just should be the effect of the preaching of the word.

There is a small element of truth to that, and I'll get to that in just a moment, but by and large, that emphasis is woefully inadequate, and even, I would suggest, dangerous, because that attitude looks at encouragement as very one-sided.

It looks at encouragement as only something that emotionally makes you feel better, makes you feel good about yourself, lifts the spirit, and so on and so forth, and fails to realize the positive value of warning, of challenge, of conviction, because in reality, the faithful preaching of God's word that confronts the sinner with his sin and warns him of the consequences of those sin, of the ultimate effect of sin, that, as the Bible says, the wages of sin is death.

The preacher who faithfully proclaims that aspect of God's truth is doing so to, now their future accurately, to see their need appropriately, and to see the gift that God gives to meet that need. So it's an encouragement to turn from sin and repent so that, in the end, you are truly spiritually healthy, not artificially emotionally pumped up, but truly spiritually healthy.

This is what Micah was trying to do in his proclamation of God's warning of judgment against his people. God was sending these prophets, he sent them over and over and over again to his people to get them and to encourage them to turn from their idolatry, to repent of their waywardness and their forsaking of the ways of the Lord, to repent of all of that, to return to the Lord so that they might be spared from the pain and the agony and the misery of the judgment that is certainly to come.

Think back the last couple of days and what we read in the book of Jonah. Do you think that when all was said and done, the people of Nineveh, who were spared, were upset with Jonah because he preached such a discouraging message?

No, they weren't at all. He came preaching a message that said, you are going to be utterly disgraced 40 days from now. You're going to be utterly disgraced. They took it to heart, they repented, they turned from their sin, and God relented of the disaster that he said he would bring upon them.

So 42 days later, do you think they were happier than they would have been? No-brainer, isn't it? Let's be very careful about our attitude toward the preaching, the proclamation of God's Word. If we look at it rightly, the faithful, accurate, truthful preaching of God's Word, even when it hurts, even when it's heavy, has as an ultimate intention the benefit of those who will, by faith, receive it.

And that, I suggest, is encouraging. So our Father and our God, I pray that we would not fall victim to this mentality that says, oh, we can't have any kind of preaching that is negative. No, any true preaching of the Word is truly positive in its ultimate objective, ultimate end.

To help us have that perspective, we pray, and we ask this in Jesus' name, and for his sake, amen. All right, well listen, I hope the middle of your week goes well today on this Wednesday. Have a good day, and may God bless you in it.