A Bible timeline chart and teaching the Bible

A very active retired pastor of 40 years gave me quite a caning with this Scripture 1 Tim 1.4 “nor to be taken up with with myths and never ending genealogies.. “. After I had been preaching about the death burial and resurrection of Jesus had simply made some interesting observations.

He answered “No”, when I asked him if I had said anything that was heretical. I went on to quietly explain that that particular Scripture was referring to the false teachings and philosophy of Gnosticism, not of genuine enquiry. He could not accept it.

This was a pastor who had laboured in the gospel of 40 years and yet he did not understand about Gnosticism and the problems that Paul spoke of in this passage. A congregation is not going to have much hope of understanding these things if the Pastor does not.

Tragically, a large proportion of pastors preach light weight messages, are so very shallow so that the congregation hardly grow in the Bible and interpretation skills. Pastors love to preach ‘moral essays’ and ‘warming affirmations’ because, if we truly ‘love’, others, this is what we will do.

It seems that the most important thing is, that we are very positive and ‘nice’ to everybody. It’s just too bad, if God’s people are falling through the cracks ‘for a lack of knowledge’ (oracle).

Think about it, the more ‘relevant’ Christians become, to the world, the less relevant christians are in reality, to the world.

There is far more to the Kingdom than ‘feel good’ messages and favorite topics. Teachers preach on a text from Song of Solomon as well as a piece about a man of courage from 2 Samuel; topical sermon from Luke followed by the a firm belief in god of Jeremiah or the integrity of Lot.

After preaching portions from here and from there, through the Bible we need then to put it all together in a clear, understandable way for our congregation.

These days a flood of new ideas and publications come under various names that have a liberal bent. If we were to be taught the basics of Church history, we then would not be so doomed to repeat it.

Let us correctly prepare the Church to understand God and the Bible, but piecing together the fragments of his Word into a beautiful seamless mosaic.

It’s not a difficult thing to accomplish, we just need to put in some study and prayer.

John 17:17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. (NIV)