2. When we only preach half-truths.
Paul the Apostle said that he was free from the blood of all men because he didn’t hesitate to preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27).
Preaching hurts when we ignore this admonition from Paul and merely preach topical messages based upon their passions and expertise.
Consequently, preachers will just feed their congregations messages on faith, grace, holiness, evangelism, inner healing, deliverance and prosperity. This will cause damage to congregants because every truth has conditions and qualifications; hence, if not balanced by other biblical concepts, it results in the negation of certain other truths.
For example, grace and truth came by Jesus Christ (John 1:18); not just grace, and not just truth.
If we preach truth without grace it is legalism; if we preach grace without truth it is antinomianism (the gospel without biblical law and standards), resulting in hyper-grace. Jesus said that some were in error because they knew not the Scriptures nor the power of God (Matthew 22:29).
He is speaking about balance. It is not enough to know the Scriptures; we need to have a great understanding of biblical doctrine, but we also need to experience the presence and power of God!
For example, I was in a Bible institute for one year in 1979. It was an anticharismatic, fundamentalist school with some faculty who studied the Scriptures for three to six hours per day, but they admitted struggling to pray five minutes per day. Thus, they taught out of a paradigm tilted greatly toward a soulish Christian experience bereft of the abiding reality of the Holy Spirit.
God is calling us to preach a balance of faith and works (read the book of James), grace and truth, and to pursue a life of loving God with our minds as well as our hearts.
One of the only ways to ensure a preacher or congregation is feeding the church the whole counsel of God is when they preach book-by-book out of both the Old and New Testaments so that every major biblical subject is dealt with. When we only preach topically, we run the risk of only preaching what appeals to us!
