The NOW Podcast (Practical Advice for Pastors): Should We Preach Current Events?

Preaching the Word in Season and Out of Season

Welcome to Not Only Water. This podcast is dedicated to providing practical advice for new pastors. In 1 Timothy 5, verse 23, Paul tells Timothy to drink not only water, but to use a little wine for his stomach's sake.

This short piece of practical advice is the inspiration for this series. Get ready to dive into today's topic. Here's your host, Keith Foskey.

Welcome back to Not Only Water, practical advice for new pastors. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am your host. On today's show, we're going to be talking about the subject of preaching current events.

We've already discussed in previous episodes about the concept of sermon topics and whether or not you should choose messages that are subject-based or sometimes called topical messages, or if you should put yourself in a situation where you should preach through books or through entire narratives in the scriptures.

And as I said, my personal conviction is that the best way to carry on long periods of preaching, which if you are a pastor of a church, you're going to be preaching every Sunday. And so if you're preaching every Sunday over long periods of time, sometimes years in a church, then preaching through books is a way to ensure that you are not riding hobby horses, but that you are explaining the whole counsel of God and that you're proclaiming the whole counsel of God.

Now, sometimes that can become rather long. Sometimes, like me, I've been in Genesis now for about, well, around three years. And some of that, we took breaks, but for the most part, we've stayed pretty consistent, and it's a long series.

And some people wish I would break away and do something different every once in a while, and that's fine, and I do do that. Periodically, I'll take a break. Sometimes other men will preach, or other elders will preach.

So when we talk about the subjects of what we preach today, what I want to address is, because we've already talked about those other things on a previous episode, today I want to talk about the idea of preaching current events.

I'm going to read a scripture passage. This is a passage we're all familiar with. I think I've referenced it on the show before. But it says in 2 Timothy 4, verse two, Paul is commissioning Timothy. He says, preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. And so when Paul says this, he's giving the command here. He's giving the command to preach the word.

So that's the subject that we are to preach. That's the content that we are to preach. We are to preach the word, and that we are to be ready to do so when we are in season and out of season. And that can be interpreted in different ways as to what Paul meant as far as, you know, whether or not we are, what condition we're in when we're preaching.

But ultimately, we are to be able to preach anytime. We are to be ready to preach. We are to be ready to be called to the pulpit to preach, no matter what season we're in, because that's what we're called to do as pastors.

We are called to preach. And we are to do so being willing to reprove, rebuke, and exhort with patience and teaching. And so Paul is giving a little short synopsis here of what we are to do in preaching the word.

And so the question then becomes, well, if we are to preach the word, does that mean that we should or should not avoid the subject of current events? And I'll give you a great example, because this week just happens to be one of the times where there's a major current event going on in the world.

And I can imagine many pastors are going to be adjusting their messages to include something about what's happening. This is, right now we are in May of 2022. It is May 5th at the time of this recording.

And in this particular week, a major conversation is going on about a leaked decision by the Supreme Court, a leaked document about a decision by the Supreme Court where they may be overturning Roe versus Wade.

Now, if you're not familiar with that, that has to do with abortion. I'm sure that you are. I mean, most everyone in America knows about Roe versus Wade and about why it would be important to have that decision overturned.

Conservatives, many conservatives are very excited about the potential that this can be overturned. Many liberals are not. And I hate to distinguish it that way, but that's sort of just the simplest way.

Those on the right tend to be pro-life. Those on the left tend to be pro-choice. And by modern nomenclature, neither one of those are exactly the right way to say it. It really is to be anti-abortion or be pro-abortion.

And those who are anti-abortion are excited that Roe versus Wade could be overturned. So keeping that in mind, the question comes up, well, should a pastor mention this? Should a pastor talk about this?

Should we adjust our message based upon current events? And right away, I just want to mention for full disclosure, today is Thursday. Last night I preached, it was Wednesday night. And on Wednesday night, I was already preaching on the subject of marriage.

I was in Proverbs chapter five. I was talking about the value of the wife of your youth, which is the discussion that we're to take delight in the wife of our youth and that we're rejoicing her. And I said, I used the current event as a segue into the conversation by addressing the fact that abortion is often the result of unwed pregnancies that in that it certainly is not limited to that.

But we see a lot of people who have children that are out of wedlock that they choose to abort them because they are not prepared for them. They don't feel like they can take care of them. There's all these reasons and justifications.

And I said, if we were to follow God's plan and limit sex to marriage and limit childbearing to marriage, then a lot of the abortion problem would go away on its own because that is so much of the abortion issue is held between people who are having sex outside of marriage.

Of course, it wouldn't eliminate the issue. I didn't say it would eliminate the issue. I said, but one of the big problems is people have sex outside of marriage. They produce children outside of marriage.

And of course that produces the desire for abortion. So I did not change my message, but what I did was in my, because I was already preaching on marriage. I was already preaching on that. What I did in the message was I allowed the current event to provide me an illustration.

Now, last week on the program, I talked about how do you find illustrations? Sometimes the illustrations do come out of current events. Sometimes what's going on in the world will matter. We can address it.

We can talk about it. We can use that as an illustrative sermon topic. I'm sorry, illustrative sermon point, but not necessarily the whole sermon. Just this is part of my illustration, part of my introduction, something like that.

Preaching a Current Event Sermon When the Moment Demands It

So with that being said though, what about sermons that are entirely moved by the subject of a current event, something that's happening? And I wanna go back to my first sermon because the first sermon that I ever preached was a current event message.

And it was in 2001 on 9 -11, which was Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, was on a Tuesday morning. Two airplanes flew into the Twin Towers in New York and one flew into the Pentagon and one went down in Pennsylvania.

And I believe it was Pennsylvania. And all of these things changed the world. We all know that 9 -11 changed the world. And the Wednesday night after 9 -11, so many people were in church. I mean, here at our church, people packed the house.

People were just here crying. I remember there was a man who was supposed to be on an airplane that day. He was telling his story. There was all these things that were going on. And that Wednesday night was basically just a time of mourning, mourning for our country, praying for people who lost loved ones, 3 ,000 people dead in an instant.

It was a terrible day. So during that Wednesday night, one of the elders came to me and he said, we want you to preach Sunday. Now this was, I was not one who had done a lot of preaching and teaching up until this point.

In fact, I say oftentimes, this was my first real sermon that I remember. We want you to preach Sunday. Because the elders were aware that I had already been teaching. I had already been doing some things around the church.

I'd been saved for a few, a little while at that time, a couple of years, I think at that point. And our pastor had been in an accident. So I began to think, what do I need to say to our people? What do I need to say?

And so I ended up preaching Romans 13. And the reason why I preached Romans 13 was because Romans 13 talks about the authority of the government as an avenger on those who do wrong and that the government does not bear the sword in vain.

And so what I did was I went to the pulpit and it was probably a very short message. I wish I had it recorded. I don't think that I could ever find a recording of it. Maybe it's in the, maybe someone has it on a device somewhere.

I think we were recording sermons at that time. Maybe it's on a tape somewhere. I don't know, it'd be awesome to listen to it now to see where I was 20 years ago. That is more than 20 years ago now. But what happened was that sermon was the sermon that I preached because it was the current event of the day and I felt like it needed to be addressed.

And I've often wondered, is that wrong? Is it wrong to address a current event? And I don't think that it's necessarily wrong. And I'll give an example from the life of Charles Spurgeon. And I think I'm telling the story correctly.

I'm telling this from memory, but I believe there was a time in Charles Spurgeon's ministry where there was a terrific train wreck that had happened. When I say terrific, I mean terrible, rather. A terrible train wreck that had happened in England and many, many people had died.

It was sort of their 9 -11. It was not necessarily a terrorist attack, but a train derailment and many people on the passenger train had died. And people specifically known to the church in that Spurgeon was the pastor had died in this horrific event.

And so Spurgeon took to the pulpit and addressed specifically, and his sermon is available, you can look it up, where he addressed specifically this accident, this time where many, many people had died.

And he felt like it was needed to address the brokenness, to address the pain, to address the suffering, to address the sovereignty of God in the midst of a terrible event. And so that was what Spurgeon chose to do.

And again, some people might say, well, he was wrong for doing so. He just kept on preaching the text that he was preaching. And that would have been fine if he would have just continued with whatever he was doing.

Now, Spurgeon was not one who preached verse by verse anyway. So using him as an example, some people might think it's a little insincere because Spurgeon didn't go book by book, verse by verse anyway.

When to Step Out of Your Normal Expository Series

But if you are a person like myself, who is normally going verse by verse, book by book, it's going to be more obvious when you deal with a particular topic. Because if people are used to you going verse by verse, book by book, and they come to church and they open the bulletin, and today's sermon is not, like for us this week, people expect it to be Genesis 42.

If they open it up and it's not Genesis 42, they're gonna be saying, okay, what's going on? Is there something going on within the church that needs to be addressed? Is there something going on in society that needs to be addressed?

Why is the pastor going off of his normal verse by verse exposition? And you may have to explain what's going on. Not that you have to explain in the sense of having done wrong, but to help the church understand why you're doing what you're doing.

There are times where it's okay. Just a few weeks ago, we were ordaining, or not ordaining, we were commissioning a new deacon. So I took a Sunday away from Genesis to preach on what it means to be a deacon and why we ordain deacons.

And we talked about the word deacon and how it means to serve and how the deacon must have the gift of service. And so there is an example of when I think it's appropriate, if you are a person who preaches verse by verse, book by book, to take a step out.

If the church needs to hear something specific and you as the shepherd and with your other elders are shepherding together and you feel like the church needs to hear this, or if there is something going on in the world that you feel like you need to address from the scriptures, not just from your opinion, not from political pundits, not from talking points, but from the word of God, then I think that that can be appropriate.

Don't Let Current Events or Holidays Set the Church Agenda

However, I wanna say another thing. It should not become the expectation of your people that you are going to address everything that happens in every event of every, because there's always current events happening.

There's always going to be these events of life that just, that happen, news stories. Right now there's a war in the Ukraine that's going on between Russia and Ukraine. And our church chose to support some missionaries temporarily who were over there doing work.

And so we did a fundraiser and did that, but that didn't cause me to do a special message about Russia or a special message about Ukraine. We just did an act of service in that, and that's fine. So that is just another way of saying, don't allow yourself to have to feel like you have to deal with every single thing that comes along.

And don't allow yourself to be the guy who is always being led around by the newspaper, always being led around by social media, always being led around by every latest doctrinal fad that's being argued on Facebook and Twitter.

These are not the things that we're called to do. We're not called to be fad preachers. We're not called to be current event preachers. We're called to be preachers of the word, preach the word, in season and out of season, rebuke and exhort and correct.

Do these things, reprove, rebuke, exhort, with complete patience and teaching. That's what we're called to do. Now, a couple other quick things. What about special days? This is really gonna be a judgment call on your part.

This Sunday coming up is Mother's Day. I'm gonna be preaching in Genesis because I love mothers, and we do a special little thing for mothers on Mother's Day at our church. We do a little gift. We reference the mothers.

This Sunday we're gonna sing a song based on Psalm 139, which talks about being formed in my mother's womb, God knowing me before I was born. And so we're going to have some references to Mother's Day, but ultimately the honoring of the mother does not mean necessarily the changing of the sermon.

I don't follow a hallmark liturgy. I'm not being forced every time we have a holiday because there's holidays every few weeks. And if I was going to do a special Valentine's Day message and a special Mother's Day message and a special Father's Day message and a special St. Patrick's Day message and a special 4th of July message and a special President's Day message and a special Thanksgiving message.

And I mean, you figure every month of the year, I'm going to be pigeonholed to have to do a message about this particular thing versus preaching the word. So considering what I just said, do we have to do a special Mother's Day message?

No. Is it wrong to do it? No, I've done it several times. I've stopped to talk about the value of mothers. I've even used it sometimes to talk about negative things that go on in culture, like the rise in unbiblical feminism and things like that.

And sometimes it's a surprising Mother's Day message like that, you know, oh, we didn't come here today to do Proverbs 31 again. So, you know, if you want to preach a Resurrection Day message on Resurrection Sunday and your church is expecting that and that's what you're going to do, that's fine.

But if you're preaching through Genesis and you decide to keep preaching through Genesis on Resurrection Sunday, no one should be disappointed to hear the word of God. And this is where I wrote something specific I want you to hear.

Train Your People to Expect the Word of God

Train your people to expect to hear from God, not Hallmark or the New York Times. If they come expecting to hear the word, that will be more important than anything else. Whether you're preaching to them on the current event or not, whether you're preaching to them about the special day or not, train your people to always, always, always expect to hear from the word of God.

And then when you preach the word, they will leave knowing that you have done what God has called you to do. And they have heard from God and his word. This ends today's episode of Not Only Water. I hope that it is an encouragement to you.

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That does help us out a lot. Thank you for listening to Not Only Water. My name is Keith Foskey and may God bless you.