The Lord Does Not Need A Rambling Man

I can't stand the rambling preacher. That fellow that spends his time talking about everything but his lesson. The guy whose lesson on the Prodigal Son includes sections on picking peas, the best hitter in baseball and temperature of last night’s dinner. Maybe it bother me more because I fear that I may just be that guy. Rambling might be entertaining (usually not) but it is definitely not edifying. For the preacher, his purpose is to build up his listeners with his words not just fill time.

But that qualifier isn’t just for preacher however;

“Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.”

Ephesians 4:29

This verse gives us a purpose (edification), a place (according to the need of the moment), and a plan (give grace) for our speech. It also commands us to limit speech that doesn’t fit in that role. When we ramble on about things that don’t do this, we violate our purpose.

Oh, but how easy it is to be a rambling man. We can get on a topic like a dog on a bone and never let it go, never mind that it’s time and purpose have long since gone. We spend more time talking about unimportant things that we never get around to the thing that truly need to be said.

When a preacher rambles he gives the unintended message that God’s message isn’t all that important. When God’s people squabble over minutiae, it gives the message that these things are more important than they really are. Jesus said that “out of the heart the mouth speaks”, if we spend most of our lives complaining about the issue of the day, gossiping on the “goings on”, or ranting about our latest slight, what does that say about our heart?

We talk about what we care about. What does it say if we never get around to talking about the Lord?

Comments

I Know All Those Words, But That Sentence Makes No Sense To Me

Let’s say you travel back in time six hundred years or so. Luckily, you happen across a fellow that speaks English. Upon hearing your tale, he describes you as nice, smart, and handsome. Wouldn’t you feel good? You shouldn’t. As Sol Steinmetz in his book, Semantics Antics , explains; Nice originally meant someone who was foolish, ignorant, senseless, or absurd (middle English 1300). Smart for the first 300 years of its use meant causing pain, sharp, cutting, or severe, a sense that survives in the idiom "smart as a whip.” Handsome wasn’t complimentary. When coined around 1425, it just meant easily handled; it didn’t have its current positive connotation until 1590. You might think he said you were a kind, intelligent, good looking bloke, when in reality he said you were a foolish pain easily dealt with. Words have an annoying habit of changing meaning over time in the same language and it becomes even more compli...

Master Your Self

In a contest for the toughest president of the United States, it would be hard to go against Theodore Roosevelt. He was known for his “manly” pursuits hunting big game, climbing the Matterhorn, participating in boxing match while president. (These weren’t play fights, he lost the vision on one eye because of them!) Once before he was about to give a speech an assassin shot him in the chest. Roosevelt refused to go to a hospital and insisted on giving his speech, still wearing his blood-soaked shirt! Teddy might have become tough but he wasn’t born that way. He was a sickly child that suffered from severe asthma that almost proved fatal. As was a young boy, doctors discovered that he had a weak heart, and advised him to get a desk job and not strain himself. He was homeschooled because of his many illnesses and spent most of his time indoors. But then as a teen his father, whom Teddy Roosevelt revered, told his son, “ ...

Until Midnight

In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back. I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...

Ecclesiastes 12:10

Search This Blog