The Danger of Generic Preaching

“You are that man!”

I’ll confess that I’m naturally a bit of a chicken. I’m not one who loves confrontation, or who rocks the boat just to see the waves splash. And so I always get a bit unsettled when I read this interaction between Nathan the prophet and King David. Stress that “king” when you read that sentence. David has just committed adultery, has gotten her pregnant, and has had her husband murdered. Kings don’t really like it when you call them on stuff like this. But Nathan employs a terrific preaching tactic, he moves from the general to the specific.

Nathan and David could have comfortably chatted about hypothetical scenarios all day long. In fact the king likely found it to be a bit of a riveting conversation about the evil guy who steals a poor guys prized sheep. Nobody gets too upset when we make general comments. It’s when you say, “you are that man!” that you get in trouble. But without the specific statement then Nathan and David are just talking about an imaginary farmer losing his sheep. And that doesn’t change anyone.

The prophet Micah did the same thing in his day. Consider this:

Hear, you peoples, all of you;
pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord God be a witness against you,
the Lord from his holy temple.
³ For behold, the Lord is coming out of his place,
and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
⁴ And the mountains will melt under him,
and the valleys will split open,
like wax before the fire,
like waters poured down a steep place.

Nobody gets upset about this. In fact Micah’s audience is likely cheering. At this point it’s just a general truth that everyone believes; namely, God is a great Judge of all the earth. The presence of verse 5-7 is what differentiates Micah from all the half-way prophets of his day:

All this is for the transgression of Jacob
and for the sins of the house of Israel.
What is the transgression of Jacob?
Is it not Samaria?
And what is the high place of Judah?
Is it not Jerusalem?
⁶ Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country,
a place for planting vineyards,
and I will pour down her stones into the valley
and uncover her foundations.
⁷ All her carved images shall be beaten to pieces,
all her wages shall be burned with fire,
and all her idols I will lay waste,
for from the fee of a prostitute she gathered them,
and to the fee of a prostitute they shall return.

Now that is specific. That’ll get you in trouble. It’s pointed. It’s undeniable what he is saying and who his audience is. You can’t squirm out of that one. You cannot pretend you are on the same side as the prophet whilst bowing down to idols on the high hills of Jerusalem and Samaria.

We need specific preaching and not just general preaching. But it’ll get you in trouble. We live in a day and age that is polarized. When you get specific people will quickly put you in one of the poles. But it behooves us to be specific and to smash any pole that isn’t gospel. We must take a prophetic edge in our preaching. We have to be specific about the sharp edge of the gospel and it’s soothing truths. After all it was for the very real sin of very real and specific people that Christ very specific death is applied to.

Generic preaching will keep you out of trouble but it’s going to be robbed of it’s power. You can stand in the pulpit and shout very true things. And those true things can even be used by God to rouse the conscience. He is big after all. But it was this type of cold and lifeless preaching which permeated churches before the Great Awakening. It was when they recovered specific preaching that we saw the Spirit work in a mighty way.

So preacher, be bold. Be specific. And be loving. The gospel will wound in specifics but it’s anesthesia is also specific.

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