Negative Preaching

Fifteen to 20 years after I started preaching, I began hearing people say, "Negative preaching; ... His preaching is too negative; ... He's a negative preacher." Before that time, I had never given it any thought. I assumed that when a preacher urged people to accept Christ, obey the gospel, and live godly, he was being "positive" and when he preached against sin and worldliness, he was being "negative." I considered this to be balanced preaching that all can appreciate.

It is my impression that critics who use these expressions think that "negativism" is a criminal offense, but do not see themselves as negative. Seemingly they think that this is about as low as a preacher can sink and God is so displeased that he cannot wait to deal with such perverters in a most severe way. In a twist of Paul's words of Romans 16:17; they seem to say, "Mark preachers who preach negatively and avoid them at all cost."

Some years ago I heard of a large metropolitan church whose elders warned their ministers (they had several) that if a word of negativism came from the pulpit, the guilty one would be fired, which is being pretty negative. I do not know if any were fired for this reason, but I do know that many Bible spokesmen would not be allowed to preach from that pulpit. For example, God could not preach for that congregation. He might wish to preach the ten commandments. Eight of them are negative. Jeremiah was told "to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to plant" (Jer. 1:10). Four negatives and two positives; a two­to­one ratio. The apostle Paul instructed Timothy to "reprove, rebuke and exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine" (2 Tim. 4:2). Again, a two­to­one ratio in favor of negativism. Jesus could not preach in this church. At times he was a negative preacher. A simple reading of his denunciations of the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23) would warrant this conclusion.

Seemingly some want a preacher to be a combination of Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, and Bob Hope. In 20 minutes he can impart to them a few pearls of wisdom, some thoughts on how to win friends and influence people, an admonition always to think positive, and a few good one­liners to keep all in good humor and awake. Never mind that sin may be widespread in the camp, and the saving gospel is not presented.

I once heard of a man who preached God's Word on a weekly radio program and "let the chips kill where they may." The station manager offered this suggestion, "You should make your sermons more positive and less negative." The preacher said he would take that under advisement. The following week, he told the manager: "I have decided to do as you suggested. I'm going to be 100 percent positive for what the Bible teaches as right and 100 percent positive against what it says is wrong." He did not change his messages, but now he was a "positive" preacher.

The bitter denunciation of negative preaching may be a variation of "if you don't like the message, shoot the messenger." Through the ages, God has told his spokesmen to cry aloud, tell this people, lift your voice, speak, preach, and prophesy. Often the man of God was to be against bad things. I have never found one passage where God gave the command to "eliminate all the negatives and accentuate only the positive." When a teacher "tells it like it is," toes are stepped on, and to get even with the preacher for exposing sin, he is branded as negative. In today's wishy­washy world, that will destroy him. Paul charged Timothy to:

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering ant doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables (2 Tim. 4:2­4)

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