daily java

Daily Java: Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?  (Galatians 4:16).

Shooting the messenger. People hate to hear bad news and sometimes will transfer their hatred of the news to the bringer of the news.

A preacher has that problem. His job is to tell people what God says. That in itself is a rather audacious thing, to claim to speak for God. However, it is one of the main jobs of the prophet.

In the Old Testament, the prophets that brought bad news knew that they did so at their own risk. People didn’t want to hear bad things. Sometimes they were persecuted, imprisoned or put to death. They would be told, in effect, change your prophecy and everything will be alright. Tell us something better and we will let you live.

That is kind of like shooting the doctor because he told you you had cancer. Or shooting the mechanic because he told you your transmission had gone out. It is foolish. And you still have cancer and a bad transmission.

Some preachers give in to it and decide that the hassle, the anger, whatever, is not worth it, and just tell people nice stuff. You can usually tell a church that only hears good stuff from the pulpit. It is dead.

Nice stuff has its place in preaching (reprove, rebuke and exhort, 2 Timothy 4 says), and you have to have a lot of it. But if that is all you do, the church will die and go to hell. And the preacher knows it will be on his watch.

The prophets in the Old Testament knew this and for the most part kept their mission strong. They did what God said and told people what God said. The people didn’t appreciate it for the most part, but those who listened turned from their sin and were saved.

Being a preacher is hard that way. You never know what you will say that will prick someone. They have a problem in a certain area and you preach on it, many times without even knowing it, and they get mad. “You just did that to make me mad,” they might say. Your response may even be on the order of, “Who are you?”

You may not even know them, yet what you said hit a sin problem within them. And they will be mad at you for pointing it out.

Quite frankly, people don’t pay preachers enough to put up with abuse. Preachers do it out of both love and commitment to the will of God. Just like those Old Testament prophets did.

Usually, the preacher is doing you a great favor by pointing this out. And usually, he does it in love and concern for your well-being. Oh, occasionally, some wacko will holler and point for the sheer pleasure of it, but that is rare.

And they are not your enemies when they tell you things you don’t want to hear. They are messengers of a loving God who wants you to change.