Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!
1 Corinthians 9:16b

We live in a desert, the land parched dry. We have so much materially, even the poor amongst us are rich by historical standards. But we are not rich where it counts. We are parched dry, having almost forgotten what true water even tastes like.

We live in the barren bones of a society formed in more fertile times. Dry, dead, and mostly insensate. Distracted by vain things . Small things we have built our lives around. Souls that have eternal value, reduced to grubbing around in the dust, dead people simply existing.

We have truly lost the source of living water, Jesus himself. And the Church herself bears much of the blame.

For so many of us, we are peddling a false gospel, or a half gospel, shorn of the power to save. Like an inoculation to protect us from the real thing.

Because if the key is to save, then save from what? We instinctively shy away from the implication. Too risky, we may offend somebody. Let’s just talk about the Jesus who loves us. Let’s not inquire too closely what that love actually looks like.

Let us never mention hell. It’s unpleasant. People may think we are mean and judgmental. It’s not something for polite conversation.

And as we do so, we rob the gospel of its power. We preach a neutered Gospel, inoffensive and powerless. We offend no-one, and attract no-one.

What if instead we were to preach that hell is real? What if we were to let the cat out of the bag, and let people know that Jesus came to save us from something, not just to something?

Can you imagine any preacher now preaching as Jonathan Edwards did?

Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard to your welfare.

Um, no. That just isn’t seeker-friendly is it? Let’s catch our flies with honey rather than with vinegar. And then we wonder why so many in our church are biblically illiterate.

It isn’t love to neuter the Gospel. It is cowardice. Oh that the Lord would send a generation of preachers who have no fear of mankind, no desire to keep the peace, but the fire to give people the bitter medicine that our souls require!