A Mark of a Good Preacher

One of the most difficult aspects of expository preaching is to take an ancient text or biblical truth and apply it to a contemporary culture that is many years removed from the original source.

Don't misunderstand me. I am in no way implying that the Bible is not relevant to today's society. I and Madison would both adamantly argue that the Bible is relevant to men and women today just as it was in the day it was written. However it is an important task of the expositor to ensure that the passage's meaning is illuminated as well as its application.

Having said all of that, I am currently reading a book entitled 131 Christians Everyone Should Know published by Broadman and Holman in 2000. Oddly enough, as the title indicates it offers brief snapshots of the lives of men and women who had vital, and some who had detrimental, influences on Christian History.

In the chapter of John Chrysostom there is a quote from a sermon of his about the dangers of the theater, which I feel that despite the fact it was preached some time after 398 A.D., it would well resonate with modern hearers. He is preaching a sermon that seems to focus, at least in part upon the dangers of lust.

I offer to you a great quote from the text.

"Long after the theater is closed and everyone is gone away, those images [of 'shameful women' actresses] still float before your soul, their words, their conduct, their glances, their walk, their positions, their excitation, their unchaste limbs...And there within you she kindles the Babylonian furnace in which the peace of your home, the purity of your heart and the happiness of your marriage will be burnt up!"

All I can say is, "wow!" With just a few word changes, that quote might speak volumes to the rife plague,that is devastating the modern family, which we know as pornography. My, how things don't seem to change much!

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.