If you preach, make sure your preaching offers me Christ. I need him. I need to confess my sin and receive forgiveness each week. I need to see again that I’m raised up and seated with him in heavenly places each week. I need to encounter these truths in mind, in heart, and in body; in my whole self. Every text of the Bible speaks of them, so preach them to me. 

I’ve had the privilege of touring a few churches in my city in the last few weeks. A rare treat in its own way, to praise with different brothers and sisters and to see how other people do things.

It’s completely unfair to judge any church from one Sunday, and I won’t say which churches I went to or even how many of them I’m talking about. I believe each one I went to is a gospel-preaching church, but here’s the thing: on more than one occasion I didn’t hear it.

I heard preaching that was incisive about the human heart, preaching that made the Christian life seem practical and gave me concrete steps to take to follow Jesus, I was inspired and challenged, but no one offered me Jesus.

I dearly hope it was happenstance.

Honestly, I don’t just mean the preaching. On some occasions we also didn’t hear the gospel in the songs, or even the name of Jesus. I don’t think it’s a checkbox thing where if I don’t hear ‘Jesus’ or ‘Cross’ or ‘Resurrection’ we have a problem; but, what exactly is it that we’re offering people?

I don’t want to call out these churches, because I think this is more easily done than we think. I think it’s easy to praise God and to preach true things about the Christian life and go through a whole Sunday without offering Jesus. I think it’s possible to do so for multiple Sundays in a row. It’s possible to forget you’re doing it, possibly even fall into the trap of thinking we outline the gospel on special occasions when unbelievers have been specifically invited like a baptism service. We sometimes talk like this, ‘a gospel message will be preached.’

There is no other message!

What we all forgot and need to hold ever before our eyes is this: Christians need the gospel. If I preach a message full of true things that doesn’t hold out Jesus as the answer to them this isn’t Christian preaching. This is not to say you can’t be practical, you should be. It’s not to say you can’t give people things to do, you should. It’s not to say that you have to take away the sting of Jesus’ demands by reminding us that we can’t fulfil them so don’t try.

Rather, it’s to say that Jesus is the treasure I have to offer. I need to rest in God and worship him each week with the people of God.

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