Vineyard Church of Knox County
On Biblical Relevance
Sermon Audio from Sunday, September 28, 2003 — What do the following facts have in common with each other:
* In 10 minutes, a hurricane releases more energy than all the world's nuclear weapons combined. * If you put a rat in cola, it will dissolve. * The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver". * Average life span of a major league baseball: 7 pitches. * There are four cars and eleven light posts on the back of a ten-dollar bill. * A snail can sleep for 3 years. * Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than new cars. * Women blink nearly twice as much as men. It's useless information. There is no use for this information in your life. It does not impact your life in any way, does not change your life one bit. It's useless. This useless information is funny to consider because it's harmless and irrelevant. But useless information that comes from the pulpit is not so funny to me. Many of us have experienced irrelevant sermons. When I was searching for a church during my first year of college at the C.O.W. I sat and listened to a sermon on the architecture of the church sanctuary, how the old, stately room was designed to look like a ship. That was the sermon. Or you may have experienced a sermon that was very solid biblically, delivered with impressive language, but that had no real-life application to your life. To those preachers, I say with Rick Warren, "It's not enough to simply proclaim, "Christ is the Answer." We must show people how Christ is the Answer. Sermons that exhort people to change without sharing the practical steps of how to change only produce more guilt and frustration." To be honest, when I hear a sermon that has absolutely no application to everyday life, I walk out of church a bit angry because I know that if Jesus were preaching in the church today, he would always make some kind of real-life application.
