The Bible tells me so (no matter how repetitively)
Shall I ruin a classic Christian children’s song for you? I think I will. Let’s sing along to the refrain of “Jesus Loves Me, This I Know”:
“Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / The Bible tells me so.”
How many of us would sing these lines with annoyance now? I mean, they were good as kids, but now, well … It’s pretty dang repetitive, don’t you think?
Show of hands: Who here has ever disliked a pastor’s message because it was the same old message you’ve heard a thousand times before?
I see. That’s a lot of hands. (Okay, the show of hands thing doesn’t work too well in this medium. Whatever.) I’d say the majority of us fall into this thinking at some point or another.
There are lots of ways this dislike can manifest itself. Whether we feel like the pastor goes over the same concept every week or we feel like the message has been “plagiarized” off another sermon, it’s very easy to feel discontent with the preaching at a church.
And yes, it is true that there are some passages more highly trafficked by your average pastor. But many continue church-searching and -hopping just because they say they’ve “heard it before.” They say that the sermon they heard had no “meat” to it.
To clarify, it’s okay to be upset by a sermon if there were questionable theological issues within it. But to be upset because it was a “basic teaching” you’ve heard before — that’s where I’d draw the line.
In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul emphasizes how he went about evangelizing to the church there. He says, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2).
This message — Jesus Christ crucified — was one that the Corinthian church needed to hear when they first heard the gospel, and it was a message they still needed to hear in that letter. Paul even tells the Corinthians that they aren’t ready for anything more than that simple message: “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh” (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).
When we dislike a message simply because we think we know everything about that topic, we are thinking of ourselves way too highly. We are thinking we’re better than the Corinthians, when what we should be thinking is, “Are we really that different from the Corinthians?” In reality, the true infants in Christ are the ones who think that they don’t need to hear about “Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
The gospel doesn’t need man trying to “spice” it up; it’s already spicy enough. The more we try to make “uniqueness” a part of the church, the more we allow weird stuff into doctrine and the less we edify one another with the good, simple news of Jesus Christ and what he did.
Next time we start thinking, “Wow, this could really have been a lot deeper,” perhaps we can reorient our focus to something a little less pessimistic. Even better, we can be humbling ourselves to the message of simplicity, thanking the Lord for how good such simple news can be.
Everyone needs to hear the basics continually. This is why we take Communion: to remember Christ’s basic work on the cross. There is not a thing in the world more complicated than that basic work. And that’s what’s beautiful about the gospel.
“Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / Yes, Jesus loves me / The Bible tells me so.”
Gilmer is the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion. Follow him on X
