Preaching for Life Change
S. Bowen Mathews
January 1, 1997
We need to know what to say no to. But above all, we need to know what to say yes to.
—S. Bowen Matthews In late winter 1988, I preached on divorce from Mark 10: "What God has joined together, let man not separate.… Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her." "Our first reaction to Jesus' words," I said, "is to look for loopholes, to bargain, to soften the blow of his words. That's why we don't hear him speak and race to confess our failure and restore to honor God's will for marriage." In the next breath, I said, "Many of you here are divorced. Some of you are remarried. What's done is done. It is not my responsibility or my wish to lash divorced and remarried people with Scripture and send them away feeling guilty or aggravated. I suspect all of you who have experienced divorce have had more than your share of guilty feelings. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin. But it is sin. If you have confessed and repented of that sin, then let's get on with your life." Within hours, a woman from our congregation sat in my office. "You just don't understand what I've been through," she said. She proceeded to tell a horrible story of what her ex-husband did to her. Given her circumstances, my well-intentioned sermon seemed harsh and uncomprehending. It would be easy to dismiss her complaint. She may have simply refused to own up to her contributions toward the failure of the marriage. But I find that callous. Pastors need to be tough, but toughness without spiritual discernment deteriorates into spiritual abuse. She had come to the service seeking bread and found a stone. Why? The Tension
In retrospect I trace that sermon's failure to haste and the lack of passion with which I handled the tension between ...
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