So, You Want To Teach Or Preach The Word Of God

So, you want to teach or preach the word of God

James 3:1 – 12

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

[Warning about teaching] 3:1 Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter judgment. 2 For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well. 3 Now if we put the bits into the horses’ mouths so that they will obey us, we direct their entire body as well. 4 Look at the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. 5 So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! 6 And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. 7 For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. 8 But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. 9 With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; 10 from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way. 11 Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? 12 Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.

There is a similarity between teaching and preaching the word of God. That similarity is that in either situation, part of what you’re doing is teaching people what the word of God means and how they should react to it. Because you want to do this, there is an extra burden placed upon you, as explained in the third chapter of the book of James. Ask yourself the question: why do you want to teach or preach the word of God? There are so many people that are doing this because they feel it edifies them and, frankly, that’s the wrong reason for doing it.

Now I can say this because in my doctor of ministry studies on leadership in the church, I discovered that three-quarters of the pastors were pure egocentric people or had a very strong egocentric part of their personalities. What this means is that it was more important for them to be the center of attention on Sunday morning than it is to actually teach what the word of God is truly about. Now I am not saying that they were not teaching the word of God properly. I’m talking about the motivation to teach the word of God.

Therefore, a good question for you to start with is what is motivating you to do this. Frankly speaking, when the Lord Jesus called me to preach the original meaning of Scripture, he did not show me this passage. My response was that I did not know the Bible to be able to preach it. I did not want to go out and tell people falsehoods. However, I was told in my calling that I would learn what the scripture was about. I would learn how to discover the original meaning of the Scripture, and I could explain it in a way that people today could understand and accept it. I was not told in the calling or even as I explored the calling that there is an additional responsibility placed upon an individual who is going to go out and either teach or preach or do both for the word of God.

If you’re going to do this, you really take on an enormous responsibility. According to the author of the third chapter of James, if you teach or preach the word of God, you will be held to a higher standard than a normal person. Why? You are instructing people how to live by God’s word. Therefore, if you get it wrong, people could behave in a way that is contrary to the word of God. This is an exceptional responsibility to take on, and it’s something that you have got to take seriously.

Early on, as I explored my calling, I was sitting in a church where I heard the preacher talk about Trinity in a way that did not seem right to me. They referred to the lady as the angel lady and she talked about Trinity in an angelic form. When I took my theology class at seminary, it was very clear that angels had nothing to do it Trinity. In other words, angel lady was 100% wrong in our understanding of the doctrine of Trinity and should not have been out there preaching about it because she was telling people heresy. Now how God and Jesus deal with her is, of course, up to them, but how many people did she infect with falsehoods?