A few years back I spoke with an elderly, well respected, minister. He told me about a passage of Scripture that he was preparing a message on. I pointed out that the point he was making was not what that verse meant. His response, “Yea, but it preaches good.”
Sadly we have too many that are satisfied with preaching “good” rather than presenting the simple truth of Scripture. In the book of Acts the Bereans are commended for searching the Scripture to see if these things were true. Can you believe it, they had the nerve to check up on none other than the Apostle Paul to see if he was telling the truth.
Many time Biblical truth is taught and preached by taking Scripture from context and twisting it. Even doctrines that are clearly taught in Scripture and do not need bolstered by changing the meaning of other texts. The Word must be preached as it is.
A number of years ago an individual who was not sure whether they believed in a God or not went to church with a person who had been a light in their life for years. That morning the preacher made such a pitiful attempt at the Word of God that the visitor left and commented, “Who hired that idiot!”
The blood of many will be on our hands when we do not handle the Word of Life honestly. We wrest the Scripture to our own destruction. Even when the truth we are trying to convey is Scriptural we must make sure that the passage we are using actually teaches that truth.