Hebrews 5:11-14
One of the most important things a person can do according to the nutritional experts is to eat a proper diet. A proper balance from the four food groups is essential to proper health and will lead to a longer and more enjoyable life. This is not only true in the physical world, but it is even more true in the spiritual world. That is why the Apostle Paul takes the time to paint a picture for us concerning this issue.
Most Christians do not eat the proper spiritual food. They eat a lot of junk food….stuff which does them no good but which gives them the feeling of fullness. It somehow satisfies them on a shallow level but does nothing to take them deeper into the spiritual life. In fact, most Christians never get beyond the most elemental food we have and that is milk. God did not intend for us to stay with the milk even if we try to make milkshakes out of it. He has a reason for starting us out on that elemental food, but He does not want us to stay there long. Just think how odd it would be for a grown person to still be taking a bottle or consuming nothing more than milk. We would all think that person to be rather odd. Well, odd Christians are the result of never going on to the proper diet which will mature a person and make them spiritually healthy.
So often, when a person comes to me with a question concerning scripture, my initial reaction is: What? Have you been a Christian as long as you have and you don’t know the answer to that question? Many times, Scriptural questions are asked which are at a grade-school level and I am mystified as to why they are not able to discern the situation any better than they can. I think it is because most people are satisfied with milk shakes and not beef steaks!
The pulpit is the place from which the people should be fed the word. It is incumbent upon the person occupying that pulpit as the Lord’s spokesman to be sure he is properly prepared and well-informed concerning what his message to the people is going to be. Usually, the people will go no deeper than they are led from the pulpit. Preaching should be a time that the pastor delivers a word from the Lord which will edify the people of the church. I believe that the Biblical approach is that the Lord inspires the preacher with a message; the Holy Spirit works in that preacher to produce a sermon and then the preacher is to deliver to the people the message from the Lord which was given to him. It takes time and effort to prepare a good, Biblical sermon which is doctrinally correct and which teaches something to the people. “Milk Shake” sermons produce people who can’t remember the sermon or the points until they get to the car after church. There is nothing of substance to remember. There was no central thought and no development of any sort of theme even though the preacher though he was hitting on all eight cylinders. The people had no choice but to try to digest a shallow “Milk Shake” sermon. They have taken their time to attend church. They are wanting to worship God and be instructed into how to live to please Him. But, the meal the were served was not spiritually nourishing at all. This should not be.
Too many preachers of today either don’t know what to do or else they are taking the cheap way out and trying to delivers someone else’s sermons. It won’t work that way. A sermon should come from the heart of the preacher because God placed it in there and it is surging to come out. Downloading and preaching another’s sermonic materials is an approach which is being used a lot today and the people are the worse off for it. In recent years, people have paid less attention to something that was verboten since writers started putting their thoughts down and that is plagiarism. Presenting materials as originating with a writer and not giving the real author credit for the writing is plagiarism. Preachers used to lose their pulpits for such a thing but today it doesn’t seem to matter.
Many preachers are engaging in plagiarism when they preach downloaded sermons or use someone’s materials extensively without giving them credit.
Another thing that is now on the scene which is even worse in my estimation is that AI has become a reality. Some “preachers” are getting on an AI site, giving it some scripture and a theme, supplying a scripture or two and then AI writes a sermon for them. I have read such a sermon, and while the English is correct and the punctuation is right, it is vapid. It has no spirit. It didn’t come from the right place. It is a “Milk Shake” sermon which is fed to people who get the impression that it came from God, inspired by the Holy Spirit and delivered by a dedicated preacher who studied hard in order to present a sermon to the people on Sunday.
It’s sad what is going on.
Actually, many of the problems in America today are tracible to the pulpits which have not given their people the proper leadership and inspiration. How can the people learn to live as God would have them live with the proper morals and viewpoints if the pulpits don’t transmit the Word of God with the power and authority of earlier days? They won’t learn deep principles consuming “Milk Shake” sermons when they really need, and indeed must have, the “Beef Steak” variety. Sadly, too many Christians have been fed so many weak and vapid sermons with no discernable point that they no longer know what real, penetrating sermons sound like. They think that anything they hear from the pulpit is great because they don’t know the difference.
I could go on but the point is well taken. Weak pulpits produce weak Christians that just go along to get along instead of taking the proper Christian stances they need to display. Personal lives suffer when they sit under weak preaching which is afraid it will run someone off or hurt someone’s feelings. God forbid!!
What we need today are preachers who will stand boldly upon God’s Word and proclaim “Thus Sayeth The Lord” no matter who is listening. No one is more valuable to a country or a people than a man who is invested with the Holy Spirit of God and who is bold enough to preach the truth of God’s Word no matter the consequences. The era which produced so many of the preachers who were bold and decisive in their preaching is fast dying off. We must have a new army of God-called men who will not deliver timid little treatises and who will not preach “Milk Shake sermons but will preach the wonderful “Beef Steak” message of God’s Word.
WFH….9-17-2025
