“He is Preaching That at Me”

Sometimes when people are listening to a sermon from the pulpit they think about how someone else needed to hear the lesson. They don’t try to apply the lesson to themselves, it’s always someone else who “really needed to hear that lesson”. Occasionally, someone will get angry at the preacher because they feel that, although the preacher doesn’t name any names, he is preaching the sermon at them in particular. The truth is, we should ALL feel that the preacher “is preaching that at me”. Lessons from the pulpit do a limited amount of good unless the listeners are going to make personal application of the material presented. None of us are so good, so righteous, so knowledgeable, so strong in the faith that we can truthfully say that we don’t need to listen to the preacher or that the lessons don’t apply to us. As an example, consider the apostle Peter. In Acts 2:17 Peter quotes from the prophet Joel, “‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh’”. Later Peter has to have it pointed out to him that this included the gentiles. In Acts 10:34-35 Peter says, “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality. But in every nation whoever fears Him and works righteousness is accepted by Him.” You would think that Peter would have learned the lesson by this time, but in Galatians 2:11-14 Paul records an instance where he had to remind Peter of this fact once again. If an apostle had to be reminded of things from time to time and had to be reminded to make personal application of God’s word, why would we think that we don’t need the same reminders? Peter seems to have taken his lesson to heart. In 2 Peter 1:12-15 he says, “For this reason I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me. Moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease.” Every time we listen to a sermon presented from the pulpit we should think, “he’s preaching that at me” and we should apply the lessons to our own lives first and then help others to do the same.