Everyone loves listening to a sermon or message about the love, grace, prosperity and blessing of God, but when the pastor starts offering warnings to people, many members start glancing back at the exit.
In 2 Timothy 4:3, Paul tells the young pastor Timothy, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions."
Nowadays, people flock to pastors who preach things that they want to hear, but God is calling not just for pastors but for a congregation to love every aspect of His word.
The new covenant is not a covenant free of laws, corrections, warnings and rebuke. The gospel, and thus the covenant we now live in, is an offensive one because it teaches us that we are stupid and, by our own selves, we will probably ruin our own lives.
People don't want to hear that, though. They don't want to know about the trouble that they are getting themselves into or the consequences that come with drifting away from the grace of God. They want to hear that God loves them no matter what. And that's true! But people also need to know that sin is serious and it can destroy our lives if we live by it instead of the love of Christ.
Here are 4 reasons why warnings from pastors should be given as much weight as any other message.
Warnings are an extension of a pastor's love
A pastor who does not warn his congregation does not really love his congregation. There is a possibility that he only loves the high attendance rates and the approval of people. Imagine what kind of a father I would be if I did not tell my 3-year-old daughter not to cross the highway on her own.
Warnings are still a message of God's grace
God builds fences in our lives not because he wants to limit us, but because He wants to protect us from sin and from ourselves. While these "fences" are not our way to freedom as only God's grace is, God's grace will always point lovingly to the laws that God gives us and enables us to follow.
It's not our strength that teaches us to heed warnings, but God's grace will always automatically bring about a transformed life and a transformed heart that look for the warnings as much as the blessings.
Warnings help check the heart
The biggest danger comes not in receiving rebuke, but in the unwillingness to take it. Correction helps us check our hearts and determine if pride and untouchability have gotten a full grasp of it.
Warnings lead us in the right direction
A pastor will warn his flock only because he desires for God's will to happen in their lives. A husband who is warned about his closeness to women aside from his wife receives that warning because it is desired that he become the best husband he can be.
God's laws are an extension of God's enabling grace, which will always lead to God's purposes.
