2 Chronicles 18:28
So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah went up to Ramothgilead.
Jehoshaphat is like many Christians today; it did not matter what the preacher told him to do; he had already decided to do his own thing. Earlier in this chapter, Jehoshaphat asked Ahab to enquire at the word of the LORD. Ahab honored his request and called four hundred prophets to prophesy what the king paid them to say. However, Jehoshaphat realized their message was a paid advertisement from Ahab, and he requested another prophet. Ahab said there was one prophet, Micaiah, but he never prophesied good. When Micaiah came, he prophesied and told Jehoshaphat that his endeavor with Ahab would go bad. Yet, the next thing we see is the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king of Judah went up to Ramothgilead.
Jehoshaphat’s mistake was that it did not matter what the prophet said; he had already made up his mind to do his own thing. The only reason he wanted to have a real prophet was to appease his conscience that he listened to a real man of God. He wanted to be able to say that he was spiritual, even though he directly disobeyed what the prophet said.
Sadly, many believers do the same thing with their lives. Just because you go to a good church and have a real man of God who preaches truth does not mean you are right with God. There are thousands of people who attend church every service who look good, but are disobedient because they never obey what God tells them through the preaching of His Word. I am glad you go to church, but why do you think you can do what you want to do when it goes directly against what you have heard through the preaching of God’s Word? Do you think you are the exception to the rule? Do you think you can get away with doing your own thing after God has spoken to you through the preaching of the Word?
Just because you think the preacher is preaching against you does not mean he prepared the sermon just to get at you. Your pride is being exposed when you think the preacher preached a whole sermon at you. You think too much of yourself when you think a pastor will make his whole congregation spiritually starve just so he can preach a whole sermon toward you. Could it be the Holy Spirit took the sermon to preach at you? Could it be that the God of Heaven who loves you is trying to use a sermon to caution you about your way of living?
I pastor a larger church, and I am always amazed when I get reports from someone who tells me someone is upset with my preaching because they felt I singled them out with the whole sermon. I study for my Sunday sermons on Tuesdays. By noon on Tuesday, all of my sermons are prepared for the following Sunday, and my church knows this. Yet, something can happen at the end of the week in someone’s life, and when they hear me preach, they somehow think I am preaching at them. What someone ought to think is that the Holy Spirit is working through their pastor to keep them from doing the wrong thing.
Let me challenge you not to just be a hearer of the preaching, but a doer of it as well. Take the preaching personally, but not that the preacher is preaching at you, but that the Holy Spirit is using the sermon to help you. Be the person who not only hears the sermons, but obeys what they are saying to your heart.
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