Sometimes a profound point can be made in 10 minutes, but continually growing in understanding of who God is and what he has done needs a certain regular and on-going commitment of time. If most sermons are only 10 minutes long, it might take 20 years to cover all the subjects that are worth covering. But we need more than that. It is easy to be simplistic in 10 minutes, to present only one side of the story. But Christian life is complex.
People do not automatically grasp how the cross of Christ should affect the way we treat our neighbors, and they do not automatically believe everything they hear. Many aspects of Christianity take more than 10 minutes to explain.
The sermon has to be for new people as well as for long-time members. Ideally, churches should offer discipleship classes as well as sermons. The classes would be more doctrinal and explanatory, with opportunity for questions and discussion. They would be geared toward specific groups, such as new Christians, teenagers, pre-teens and others. Then, the sermons could be shorter, with more of a motivational orientation, based on a short passage of Scripture.
Motivation cannot come out of thin air or from a certain speaking style — it should come from truth about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. The sermon must include some solid instruction, not just clever sayings and nice ideas. For articles about specific sections of the Bible, see www.
Bible study and doctrinal study is a form of worship, and may be done in a worship service. The sermon should be used for both instruction and encouragement.
Doctrinal subjects can be addressed through biblical, expository sermons. Christians realize that faith in Christ goes much deeper than just good feelings and inspirational sayings, and they enjoy and appreciate being fed in all the good things the Word of God has to offer. I am not advocating long sermons. There is no virtue in talking longer than people can pay attention. However, speakers should do their best to explain the Word of God, explain something of its significance, to show how it relates to faith in Christ, how it relates to practical matters of life and death, and how it is based on what God has said and done.
That will take some time, and it will take some work from the audience as well as from the speaker. How long should a sermon be? It depends partly on the culture, on what the audience is used to. Many university classes are 50 minutes long, but they are not 50 minutes of lecture. The class is interactive, with opportunity for questions and discussion. A good length for a sermon may be about 30 minutes, with flexibility for special situations.
Although apostolic doctrine was central to the life of the earliest churches, this centrality has not always been easy to preserve.
Indeed, many of the great reforming moments that came later were really moments of recovery. Lost ways of doctrinal thinking and lost biblical doctrines were retrieved and made central once again. They are today, too. The Spirit of truth was heard in the apostolic teaching. Now it is heard through Scripture and through those who teach and expound that Scripture accurately. The spirit of error lives on in false teachers. The Spirit of truth and the spirit of error each have their respective audiences.
It is the very truth under attack. They are to persist in this doctrine, follow it, guard it, stand firm in it, and hand it on intact. They do not venture outside of it, for that is where faith becomes shipwrecked 1 Tim. They resist its alternatives.
They know this truth is entirely sufficient for life despite uncertainties and suffering. Later, of course, this truth was formulated into the Protestant principle of sola Scriptura. This is why Paul speaks of it as he does. This word, translated here as sound, is used also of physical health.
These glorious features of the body of Christ should be the identifying characteristics of all mature believers. Mature believers are essential in achieving the purpose and fulfilling the call to which the church has been called. How do we produce mature believers? In an age when doctrine is chided and dismissed as arcane, Paul reminds us that biblical sound doctrine is the golden chain through which all the above facets are linked.
Without sound doctrine, the chain falls apart and is good for nothing. We could put it another way: Without sound doctrine, the church falls apart. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Paul is clear that the primary means by which believers are matured and grow up in the faith is through the teaching and practice of sound doctrine.
Therefore, the church must not only be concerned with the unity of the body, the abiding fellowship with Christ, and Christ-likeness but also in the knowledge of sound doctrine. In other words, Paul is offering the church a warning. In their immaturity, children will believe just about anything you tell them. As a boy, if it were up to me, I would have eaten Snickers bars for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Children are undiscerning and have to be carefully taught, educated, and molded. My mother recounts the story of how unafraid of the water I was when I was a young boy. We would vacation to the beach, and I would immediately run into the ocean completely unafraid of the potential dangers of hazards.
I had to be instructed that flotation devices were an absolute necessity until I learned to swim. At that point in my maturity, I was unable to discern between the danger of drowning and my desire to have fun.
Paul says, young believers are like children, they are undiscerning, unable to differentiate between what is true and what is false.
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