I once preached on divorce from Mark 10: "What God has joined together, let man not separate … Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her." "Our first reaction to Jesus' words," I said, "is to look for loopholes, to bargain, to soften the blow of his words. That's why we don't hear him speak and race to confess our failure and restore to honor God's will for marriage." In the next breath I said, "Many of you here are divorced. Some of you are remarried. What's done is done. It is neither my responsibility nor my wish to lash divorced and remarried people with Scripture and send them away feeling guilty or aggravated. I suspect all of you who have experienced divorce have had more than your share of guilty feelings. Divorce is not the unpardonable sin. But it is sin. If you have confessed and repented of that sin, then let's get on with your life." Within hours, a woman from our congregation sat in my office. "You just don't understand what I've been through," she said. She proceeded to tell a horrible story of what her ex-husband did to her. Given her circumstances, my well-intentioned sermon seemed harsh and uncomprehending. It would be easy to dismiss her complaint. She may have simply refused to own up to her contributions toward the failure of the marriage. But I find that callous. Pastors need to be tough, but toughness without spiritual discernment deteriorates into spiritual abuse. She had come to the sermon seeking bread and found a stone. In retrospect I trace that sermon's failure to haste and the lack of passion with which I handled the tension between compassion and conviction. Only six, short paragraphs developed the tension between the eternal will of God and the experiences of people whose failed marriages have marred that will. But haste had a more devastating partner in the failure of that sermon. Those six paragraphs were entirely cognitive. Rereading them now with that woman's heart-cry in my ear, they seem cut and dried, distant from her pain. She heard no hint of how I had at times struggled to admit that in some marriages divorce actually made more sense than staying together. If I could preach that sermon again, I would take half the sermon to develop the tension in my commitment to God's eternal plan and my commitment to the people who have marred the plan and have, sometimes, been broken in the process. I'm grateful for that woman. She was one of God's instruments to reshape my heart so I could grow more consistent in preaching God's Word without compromise, but also with compassion. The following principles maintain the balance for me. No apologyConviction-driven sermons need no apologies. I make no apology for holding before people in a clear light—but not a lurid one—the sins of our generation and calling us as Christ's people to turn away from them. Not too manyToo many conviction-driven sermons will make a congregation self-righteous. Nothing makes us feel so righteous as exposing another person's glaring evil, especially if it is an evil we are never tempted to do. My righteous indignation at computer hacking is as pure as the arctic snow, because I have as much interest in the subject as I do in soil samples from Bangladesh. When pastors preach often and strongly against specific sins, their preaching becomes predictable: It focuses on sins that do not tempt most of the congregation. If it focused on sins they were tempted to commit, the preacher might have a revival on his hands; or more likely, a riot. Since that is usually not the focus, the congregation goes away satisfied, congratulating themselves on how upright they really are. Furthermore, that kind of preaching raises a question about the pastor and his people: What are they hiding? Is all this predictable condemnation of someone else's sin a ruse to keep them from facing up to some awful truth about themselves? I don't ever want to go away from church feeling satisfied with myself. I want to go away feeling satisfied with our Savior, who restores my soul, who leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake, and at whose right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Too much preaching against someone else's sin compromises this. Add yes to noConviction-driven sermons tell only half the story. "Put off," says the wisdom of the New Testament, "your old self, which is being corrupted by deceitful desires … and put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." Denouncing sin has a place in pastoral ministry. But in order of intention, it is not first place. Yes, we need to know what to say no to. But above all, we need to know what to say yes to. In a Ten Commandments series, I pictured each commandment as a doorway in a large wall. We say no to the behavior each forbids in order to pass through that doorway to the other side. There we find paths that lead to joy and union with our God–what older theologians called "the beatific vision." With this in mind, I preached two sermons on each commandment. The first sermon expounded the meaning of the commandment. The second said, "Let's assume that we obey the commandment. What possibilities for holiness does it open up for us?" These principles, faithfully applied, restore my perspective when confronted by the evils of our time—and the temptations to become rigid and uncompassionate about people caught in those evils. They restore in me the realism to focus primarily on our God and not on our evil. They restore in me the realism to consider more carefully the actual people listening to my preaching and what might be going on in their souls as they listen. At the time of writing, S. Bowen Matthews was pastor of Brandywine Valley Baptist Church in Wilmington, Delaware. This article originally appeared in Leadership journal. For more articles like this one, visit www.Leadershipjournal.net. Copyright © 1995 by Christianity Today International.    ForgivenessReceive the healing that letting go can bring.  Healthy Problem SolvingPrepare to work through the times when everyone doesn't agree.  A Woman's Hidden PainWomen desperately need the comfort only other women can give. Recovery from Loneliness How can we provide and promote healing for those who are lonely?
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