Preaching the hard bits

[Kevin Rector]

I've been toying with the idea of preaching the hardest five passages of scripture. I preached Psalms 137 at my last church (verse 9 is a doozy). What do you think are the hardest texts to get your brain around? I'm not looking for the hardest to live out (the Sermon on the mount has plenty of that). I'm talking about texts that sound offensive, atrocious, or downright wrong to our modern ears.

[Jeremy D. Scott]

I think the list could be different according to our different understandings of Christ, but mine might include:
Luke 14:26 - Jesus tells us we must hate our mother and brother
Acts 5:1-11 - Ananias & Sapphira
Romans 1:18-32

[Steven Martinez]

Job 13 is always fun. Especially verse 15, Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him.
I preached on that passage in December (the third week of Advent... JOY!) and the next day my liver went into complete failure. I think the idea of feeling that God is slaying you or at least not helping you is difficult to comprehend.

[David Gerber]

Ezekiel 23:20
Anything from Song of Solomon.

[George Wallace]

Joshua 10:40
Thus Joshua struck all the land, the hill country and the Negev and the lowland and the slopes and all their kings He left no survivor, but he utterly destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded.

Joshua 11:20
For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, to meet Israel in battle in order that he might utterly destroy them, that they might receive no mercy, but that he might destroy them, just as the LORD had commanded Moses.

Leviticus 10:1-3
Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them.
2And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.
3Then Moses said to Aaron, "It is what the LORD spoke, saying,
'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy,
And before all the people I will be honored.'"
So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.

2 Samuel 6: 6-7
6But when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it.
7And the anger of the LORD burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God.



Those verses above and others might be hard to Preach in some settings, but not in all.

Blessings
George

[Rich Schmidt]

I agree with George that the God-commanded-genocide verses are the toughest. (If that's what George was intending by the ones he quoted?)

Add to that any of the passages about people going to hell.

Both of these "sound offensive, atrocious, or downright wrong to our modern ears."

Edited to add: If you do the hell ones, you might also do verses that talk about forgiveness being available to all. I've had folks in my church really struggle with the idea that God can forgive anyone -- even those we think deserve the hottest hell.

[Billie Goodson]

I agree with George that the God-commanded-genocide verses are the toughest. (If that's what George was intending by the ones he quoted?)

If I was a preacher, these would be the toughest for me as well.


Add to that any of the passages about people going to hell.

Both of these "sound offensive, atrocious, or downright wrong to our modern ears."

Edited to add: If you do the hell ones, you might also do verses that talk about forgiveness being available to all. I've had folks in my church really struggle with the idea that God can forgive anyone -- even those we think deserve the hottest hell.

I know that some churches (or more accurately, members) will express the opinion that hell is not preached enough. Those that clamor for the "fire and brimstone" sermons of "yesterday" are not completely gone.

In my opinion, I would strongly agree with Rich that hell without the availability of forgiveness would be difficult and the two seem inexorably linked. In my own opinion, it seems to be a disservice to people to not preach the existence of hell, but not solely as a method of scaring them. I don't particularly care for the "turn or burn" sermons, but I think we have to acknowledge the evil in people's hearts and that this is a universal condition of the unrepentant but yet, there is a hope and a future found in the promise of God. Rich, does that in any way work toward your thoughts you edited in?

[Rich Schmidt]

I know that some churches (or more accurately, members) will express the opinion that hell is not preached enough. Those that clamor for the "fire and brimstone" sermons of "yesterday" are not completely gone.

In my opinion, I would strongly agree with Rich that hell without the availability of forgiveness would be difficult and the two seem inexorably linked. In my own opinion, it seems to be a disservice to people to not preach the existence of hell, but not solely as a method of scaring them. I don't particularly care for the "turn or burn" sermons, but I think we have to acknowledge the evil in people's hearts and that this is a universal condition of the unrepentant but yet, there is a hope and a future found in the promise of God. Rich, does that in any way work toward your thoughts you edited in?

For me, hell is difficult because (1) it is eternal/permanent and (2) there are plenty of "good" people who will go there. By "good" I mean people who are generally decent but flawed human beings who die apart from Christ. I've done funerals for these folks, and all of us have people in our churches who have relatives who have died in this condition. It's hard to think of them being permanently excluded from God's presence, much less to think of them in fiery torment. Nobody wants that for them.

Two thoughts make hell more "palatable": (1) the idea that God gives us freedom to reject him, with all the consequences that entails, and (2) the idea that God will not tolerate injustice forever but will one day balance the books and judge the evildoers -- again, not thinking of this abstractly or as "those people over there" but thinking of specific people who wronged/hurt/abused you. "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. So even if they seem to escape justice in this life, I can leave their fate in the hands of God.

However... going down this road makes the grace/forgiveness thing hard to stomach for folks, because that person who hurt them, wounded them, abused them, raped them, killed their loved one -- that person who deserves the hottest hell -- they might spend forever with God in heaven/paradise/the kingdom because at some later point, maybe on their deathbed, they repented of their sin and turned to God for forgiveness. Where is the justice then?

Those are my thoughts on why those passages are hard ones. Both of them lead us to the cross of Christ.... which is itself a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles...

[Billie Goodson]

Thanks Rich, I appreciate your response. You raise some excellent discussion, which is what I expected.



However... going down this road makes the grace/forgiveness thing hard to stomach for folks, because that person who hurt them, wounded them, abused them, raped them, killed their loved one -- that person who deserves the hottest hell -- they might spend forever with God in heaven/paradise/the kingdom because at some later point, maybe on their deathbed, they repented of their sin and turned to God for forgiveness. Where is the justice then?

Yeah, that is the tough part of the forgiveness/justice issue that we have to deal with. Something that puts some perspective on it for me was a talk I heard a year or two ago. The person speaking testified to having overcome an addition to pornography. They talked about how their addiction had led them downward in a spiral of seeking out greater depths of depravity as they became calloused to the images/actions they were seeing. Finally, they struggled through their addiction to the foot of the cross and found forgiveness. The path was not always easy, but this person now spoke to many groups about the power of their previous addiction and how it had so destroyed their life.

As the story went on, he spoke of a night when their teenage daughter came home. She was in tears and it was obvious something had happened to her. He tried to console her and she told him that her date had assaulted her. Later, he sat and angrily cried out to God about how God could allow this to happen. How could God allow someone to harm his daughter? He testified that in his anger, he heard a reply to his pain that said, "you have been doing that to my daughters for years."

While there are so many ways that we could go with that story, I think the reality is that we each have to realize that we have offended God in ways that we don't know. Rape is a violation of a person, it offends their sanctity. I think sin is an equivalent rape of God. We bring something evil and dirty to his creation. In fact, we even celebrate it at times. How much must that effect a holy God?

So, yeah, I agree that it would be tough to think about God forgiving that person that so seriously hurt us. But, I know my heart. I know my thoughts and my desires. How much more amazing that God forgives me for what I have done. Maybe some of those other people realized just how wrong they were... This is where we have such a lesson to learn about forgiveness and how our ability to forgive is so entwined with us understanding God's forgiveness. Mike had a recent thread about forgiveness -- something I have thought of since reading Wright's, "Evil and the Justice of God". I don't think I understand the reality of forgiveness as well as I should.

[Hans Deventer]

For me, hell is difficult because (1) it is eternal/permanent and (2) there are plenty of "good" people who will go there. By "good" I mean people who are generally decent but flawed human beings who die apart from Christ. I've done funerals for these folks, and all of us have people in our churches who have relatives who have died in this condition. It's hard to think of them being permanently excluded from God's presence, much less to think of them in fiery torment. Nobody wants that for them.

Nor can we understand the use of it. Without any chance to repent (and there is no second chance), what is the use? You did the crime, you pay the time? But, whatever crime a person may have committed, eternal conscious torment is by mathematical definition a worse punishment, in fact completely out of proportion, than any crime could warrant, making God unrighteous in sending people into that situation. Of course this is only so if we maintain the Platonic idea that people have eternal life within them.

I think we have two options: do nothing else in this world but trying to save people from this dreadful fate, from the moment you rise to the moment you get to bed, or not really believe it. Considering what I see most Christians do, I take it they went for the second choice and perhaps subscribe to the idea in theory, but deny it with their lives.