A Severe Famine

This is Pastor Ron Glass of the Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, NY—your pastor for the day.
In Old Testament Israel, a famine meant something. God promised His people abundance for obedience. If Israel failed to live according to the righteous requirements of God’s covenant with them, the Lord said that “the heaven which is over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you, iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust; from heaven it shall come down on you until you are destroyed” (Dt 28:23-24). When Israel forgets God, according to the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32, “they will be wasted with famine” (v. 24).
In the waning years of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, the Prophet Amos delivered a sobering message from the Lord: “‘Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord God, ‘When I will send a famine on the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water, but rather for hearing the words of the Lord” (Amos 8:11). God’s judgment would be signaled by the cessation of prophetic activity. That meant that the Lord would stop speaking to a nation who refused to listen.
This truth brings me to a heavy burden I have for evangelical Christianity today. Last month in my radio devotional I emphasized the critical importance of diligent Bible study. We are to handle the Word of God with precision and accuracy, “cutting it straight,” as Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15. Those who stand in the pulpits of our churches are to “preach the Word” (2 Tim 4:2). Evangelical, Bible-believing churches must be committed to the primacy of preaching. Increasingly, however, our churches are undermining the authoritative declaration of God’s Word. This often takes the form of increasing the amount of time devoted to music and decreasing that devoted to preaching. Preaching itself is often a pastiche of video clips, object lessons, personal anecdotes and stories—with some Bible thrown in for good measure. Expository preaching—the kind of preaching that builds strong churches—has largely fallen out of favor.
In addition, many churches have eliminated the Lord’s Day evening service, again reducing the opportunity for the teaching of God’s Word. A considerable number of churches no longer have Sunday School, particularly for adults. And although many churches have emphasized small group ministries, the depth of teaching in such groups is often minimal. Inundated by electronic media, God’s people don’t read much any more, and when they do, it’s usually not Christian, and when it’s Christian, more often than not, they’re reading fiction.
The problem also extends to pastors, especially younger pastors, as seminaries have altered their curricula to include less of biblical languages, biblical content, and biblical theology. Pastors enter pulpits less prepared than previous generations to teach the Word of God with precision, accuracy, credibility, and authority. The impact of all of this, therefore, is a growing biblical illiteracy among pastors and people alike—a famine for hearing the words of the Lord!
I am burdened for the future of evangelical Christianity in America. We must make the Bible our priority once again. The Lord told Joshua, “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success” (Josh 1:8). Throughout its pages, the Bible makes this point repeatedly. God’s work rises or falls on God’s Word. There is no substitute for Scripture: books, videos, small groups, conferences, web sites or blogs—none of it can replace the preaching and teaching of the God-breathed revelation contained in the Bible. I therefore exhort starving Christians and famine-ridden churches: it’s time to get back to the Bible!
This has been Pastor Ron Glass of the Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York, your Pastor for the Day. Visit us on the web at www.wrbc.us.