Can Pastors Preach Other Pastors Sermons?

Is it ethical for pastors to preach sermons that they didn't write? That's just one of the questions we'll be answering on today's edition of CORE Christianity.

Well, hi there. This is Bill Meyer, along with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. And this is the radio program where we answer your questions about the Bible and the Christian life every day. We would love to hear from you and our phone lines will be open for the next 25 minutes or so if you have a question. So pick up the phone and call us at 833-THE-CORE.

That's 1-833-843-2673. You can also post your question on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts. You can watch us live on YouTube right now and send us a message that way. And of course, you can always email us at questionsatcorechristianity.com. First up today, let's go to Kevin in Verdesburg, Indiana. Kevin, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Hi, guys, I appreciate what you all do. Here's my question. It's in regards to Leviticus 18, 22, I believe it is, where Moses writes, a man shall not lie with a man as he does a woman.

This is an abomination. I hope I got that right. A friend of mine at work, we were talking about it one day, and they tried to argue that it originally was meant to say a man shall not lie with a boy as he does a woman. And that later on got lost. And then they changed it to a man shall not lie with a man. And you're more seasoned than I am. And I want to, you know, get the expert opinion on that.

Hey, Kevin, thanks for giving us a call. I use the ESV translation of the Bible, Leviticus 18, 22, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. You know, this is an argument that has cropped up in more recent days, especially as you think about the sort of direction where our culture is going and the way people think about sex and sexuality. And not just here, but in other places, especially in the New Testament, where Paul talks about homosexuality or practicing homosexuality. And there are people who say, well, what he was really getting at there was pedophilia.

And of course, that was something that was prominent at that time in the Roman world. But that's not necessarily what the focus is when Paul is having these kinds of discussions. You know, I'm thinking of First Corinthians chapter six, verse nine, where Paul says, Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And then he gives the Corinthians this wonderful encouragement, and such were some of you. In other words, these aren't things that keep people from experiencing the grace of Christ and salvation. Jesus saves these people.

He merciful to, gracious to, calls them to himself. Such were some of you, Corinthians, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. And that word homosexuality there in First Corinthians chapter six, it actually translates to different Greek words that would have referred essentially to the passive and dominant partners in a homosexual relationship, in a homosexual sex act. And I think this is just a way that people are trying to get around the clear teaching of the Bible, what the church has affirmed for thousands of years. You know, I'm always suspicious of new interpretations that basically say everyone has gotten it wrong up until this point. The entire church has read this wrong. You know, we should be suspicious of that because there have been godly men and women and theologians who have come before us who have embraced this. You have understood the scripture to speak clearly on this issue because it does. And so, no, you know, to what your friend in this conversation that you were having, what they were suggesting is just not the case, that when the Bible talks about homosexuality, it's limited to pedophilia. So thank you for your question, Kevin.

God bless. It is very concerning, Adriel, that so many try to distort God's word to kind of fit their own views, their own proclivities and basically say, no, well, you know, Paul didn't really understand what he meant or we didn't have a clear view of science back then. And I'm hearing these arguments come up regularly.

Yeah. And, you know, especially when we're talking about sin and the kinds of things there in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul is very clear, he says, don't be deceived. The people who do these things, who practice these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And that's why it's so important that we get this right, because if we're telling people, oh, yeah, you know, this is okay, you know, like the prophets, the false prophets in the Old Testament that Jeremiah describes, the ones who would say peace, peace, where there was no peace.

They wouldn't address the sin that was keeping people from God. And so we have to speak very clearly on these issues for the sake of the eternal souls of those who are listening to our message. Amen. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez.

Let's go to Barbara in St. Louis, Missouri. Barbara, what's your question for Pastor Adriel? Well, in reference to the commandment that states not to have any graven images of anything in the heavens and below the earth and under the sea and anything that has come, you know, from the heavens. And that can apply, so I understand, to the nativity, you know, because we don't know what all these people look like. But wouldn't that also apply to any images of the Last Supper, any images of Noah's Ark, because everywhere you see paintings and sculptures and all kinds of items and images of the nativity and the Last Supper and the Noah's Ark, where people are trying to revere and honor these people. But according to the commandment, we're not supposed to be doing that, so it can be confusing.

Yeah. Well, I don't think that that command would extend to images of, for example, you know, a painting of Noah's Ark. Really, specifically, it's about not making images of God. And so, you know, if we have a strong view on this, then yes, it would apply to, you know, images of the Last Supper where people are depicting Jesus Christ because he is the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. When the apostles talked about placarding Christ, if you will, before the church, they said that they did it not through paintings that they would paint, you know, Paul, you know, Peter, they weren't artists who would paint with a paintbrush, you know. They did it through preaching. Galatians chapter 3 verse 1 makes this absolutely clear. That's how Jesus and his gospel is billboarded before the church.

It's through the preaching of God's word. But with regard to the second commandment and making graven images, it's not just don't, you know, draw anything. You can't draw anything.

There can't be pictures of anything. And of course, I think the confirmation of this, Barbara, is the fact that in the tabernacle and in the temple, you did have this sort of imagery. You had angels, you had trees, you had these pictures, if you will, that were there that were symbolic, that depicted these greater realities. And so it doesn't extend to everything, but we are commanded not to make images of God. Thank you for your question. Barbara, appreciate you being a regular listener of Core Christianity.

Well, let's go to a Facebook question that came in. This is from Julie, and she said, I saw recently that well-known pastors are using other pastors' sermons without crediting them. Should a pastor just use his own material, or can he use other material as long as he gives credit for it? Yeah. Well, I mean, there is such a thing, and there's quite the controversy going on right now in various parts of the church about plagiarizing sermons, you know, so pastors who will just listen to someone else's sermon and then basically repeat that sermon.

And, you know, there are all sorts of reasons why an individual pastor might try to justify that kind of behavior, but I don't think it's okay at all. I think that that's a real issue, a real problem. Now, that doesn't mean that, you know, as you're studying, and I mean, I do, this is a passion, you go through the text, you exegete the scriptures, you're reading some of the best, you know, historical information, some of the best commentaries, getting more insights in that way, thinking through how to preach the passage of scripture. And so usually, you know, you might find a quote here or there, and I think it's important that we do say, this is a quote. I'm currently quoting C.S.

Lewis and not pretend like we're the ones who came up with that great insight or that great phrase. And so it is okay to use other sources and to explain that you're doing that, but it's not okay just to sort of rip that information off and then pretend like it's your own or preach it like it's your own. Preaching the word of God, I do this every week, every single Sunday, you know, every week I'm preparing a sermon to preach on Sundays. It's not an easy thing. You know, pastors, many pastors, I feel this way. You know, we're wrestling with the text of scripture all week, exegeting a passage of scripture, and then really thinking about how to preach it, how to apply it to the people that God has placed before us.

And it is this sober high calling. I think about what Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 1. He says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom. We talk about a solemn charge. I charge you in the presence of God and Christ, the judge of the living and the dead, by his appearing, by his kingdom.

What is he charging Timothy with? Preach the word. That's what we're called to as ministers of the gospel is to preach the word, not to borrow other people's sermons and to preach that. And again, that doesn't mean we can't learn from other preachers, but we have to be really careful. Frankly, I think it's dishonest, but it's also just not a good way of shepherding the flock that God has put before you as a pastor because your particular congregation has specific needs. There are ways that you can apply the text of scripture to your flock specifically that you won't actually be able to do that if you're applying someone else's sermon to your congregation. And so we have to really think hard about the passages of scripture that we're studying to preach to our church and then to think about where am I going to apply the gospel? Where am I going to apply God's word to the people in my particular church who are suffering with this particular issue? And I think that's part of what it means to be a faithful pastor. And if we can't do that, well, then we're not handling our responsibility as ministers of the gospel well. And so it's okay to use other resources. Make sure that you mention that you're doing that. It's not okay, I think, and it's not pleasing to the Lord to just borrow other people's sermons and preach their sermons.

It's lazy. And at the end of the day, it won't properly nourish our particular church in the way that God calls us to. Good counsel. This is Core Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. If you have a question about the Bible or the Christian life, you can call us right now. Our phone lines will be open for the next 10 minutes or so. Here's the phone number to call. It's 833-843-2673.

833-THE-CORE. And if you're a parent or a grandparent, we have a great new free resource that we'd like to make available to you. Yes, it's called Seven Things Children Teach Us.

And again, this is a free resource. We've been offering it for a couple of days now, and there's a lot of excitement around this one. I think parents and grandparents are excited to think through this. And you know if you are a parent or a grandparent that you do learn so much from your children, that the Lord uses them in interesting ways to encourage you in your walk with the Lord and to teach you things even about faith.

And certainly Jesus made this clear in the New Testament as well as he set children for it as an example of faith. And so get a hold of this resource, Seven Things Children Teach Us. All you have to do is go to COREChristianity.com forward slash offers to find it. You can actually download it right there. It's a PDF, Seven Things Children Teach Us. You can also call us for that resource or any one of our resources at 833-843-2673.

That's 833-THE-CORE. Let's go to Crystal in Independence, Missouri. Crystal, what's your question for Pastor Adriel?

Hi. I was wanting to know what the Bible, I mean I've read the New Testament, but I was wanting to know what it says about divorce. I know that it basically says the only reason that it's acceptable to get divorced is if there is adultery. But I've had people tell me that mental and emotional abuse is another reason that it's acceptable to get divorced, but I don't think that I've read that, and so I have a lot of guilt about getting divorced. But I was wondering to know, like, are you supposed to be alone after that?

That was kind of my question. Crystal, thank you for giving us a call, and may the Lord Jesus bless you and be with you, and I can tell that this weighs heavily upon your heart. Now, of course, you mentioned a couple of passages in scripture. There is the conversations that Jesus has in the New Testament about divorce, and he talks about infidelity, adultery being a grounds for divorce. Another one that we sometimes will point to in this discussion about divorce and marriage or remarriage is in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, where Paul talks about abandonment. If one spouse essentially abandons another, if they just sort of leave, and honestly, I would say that abuse can be a form of abandonment. This is a very complex situation.

Certainly, we try to be really careful. I try to be very careful on this broadcast, not to give people, you know, here's the answer in regard to the situation, because I don't know your situation entirely. But I would say that legitimate grounds for divorce, one would be that infidelity, another one would be abuse or abandonment. So that's the view that I take. I think the thing that is biblical, I think you can make a strong case according to the scriptures in that, so that if, for example, a woman is being abused by her husband, if he's technically abandoned the relationship, if he's harming and hurting his wife, yeah, that would and could lead to a legitimate ground for divorce, for the dissolution of the marriage. And we know, Crystal, that that's obviously not what Jesus intends for marriage, and that in marriage, you know, things like abuse are just absolutely horrible, especially because what is the husband supposed to be in a marriage?

The husband is supposed to be a picture of Jesus who laid down his life for his bride. And I don't know your story entirely, but I do know that if that's not what your husband was doing, if your husband was not loving you as Jesus loves the church, but if on the contrary what was happening was he was abusive and manipulative and had in that sense begun to abandon the relationship, well, there are serious issues there. And so it could be that you aren't bound to be single, that kind of a thing, but it's a complex issue, and I would encourage you, I don't know, Crystal, are you a part of a church? When you went through this, were you a part of a church?

Did you have people giving you counsel during this time? Well, I mean, yeah, I was a part of a church, but they didn't reach out to me or anything at all, and when I just stopped going to that church and I started going to a different church later, because I did feel kind of abandoned by the church itself, but yeah. But I am going to a new church now, but I don't know all them very well yet. Well, let me just tell you, Crystal, Jesus does not abandon you, and he loves you, and I can tell that you want to honor him and that you want to be faithful to his word. I would encourage you to get plugged into this particular church that you're a part of, to grow in the fellowship there, to continue to get wisdom from the people who are near you in your life.

Again, I don't know the ins and outs, all the details with regard to what happened with your divorce, but I would say that there are cases where abuse does warrant a divorce and where an individual like yourself could go and get remarried. And so I would just say continue to grow in the grace of Christ, to know that Jesus does not reject you, that he loves you, that when we come to him brokenhearted, what does the word say? He's near to the brokenhearted, to the contrite in spirit.

It sounds to me like that's where you are, and so right now what I want to do is just pray for you. Father, I thank you for Crystal. I thank you that she gave us a call, and I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would minister to her right now. I pray that that burden, the weight, the guilt that she feels, Lord, that you would give her a sense of your love and your forgiveness, that you would give her wisdom, Lord, in her particular situation, that you would surround her with godly counselors, Lord, who are faithful to your word and who can encourage her and walk alongside of her during this difficult time, that she wouldn't feel abandoned by you and not by your church, Lord. Would you bless her at this new church that she's at, and would you just give her clarity, Lord, as she thinks about these issues, as she continues to dig into the Scriptures, and as she looks to you, Lord, wanting to walk with you and to follow you, guide her and be with her and bless her, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You're listening to CORE Christianity with Pastor Adriel Sanchez. Let's go to Maria in Nashville, Tennessee. Maria, what's your question?

Yes, hello. Thank you. Mine may possibly be a two-part question about prayer. As a Christian, I struggle with telling people that I'll pray for them with a goal that they have. You know, please pray that, you know, my daughter will live through this car accident or disease or whatever. And I do earnestly pray during those times. But, you know, I want to be certain that we as Christians send off the right message whenever we commit to prayer. Just because there's a group or maybe hundreds or thousands of people praying for a specific issue or thing that's going on, I don't want to give a wrong sense of comfort because we know that that prayer and God's greater glory, what we're asking of God, it all relates to God's greater glory in the end.

That's what He answers, that's what His concentration is. We know that tragedies happen, people die, there's sickness, and the horrible things that do happen, but how do we, you know, I just want to be careful that my prayer isn't taken as such well. You know, we've got all these Godly people praying, so it's got to be a sure thing.

Yeah. And then, of course, we don't know, Maria, what the will of God is in every single situation. I think, you know, when people ask me to pray for them, if it's clearly something that I can say, you know, that's not God's, I don't think that's God's will for you.

If you're asking me to pray for something that I know would actually destroy your family or would lead you into sin, that kind of a thing, well, of course. Then in those situations, I think we can say, hey, well, here's what the Word of God says about what we should pursue. But in terms of praying for something like physical healing, we do know ultimately that physical healing is the will of the Lord.

We just don't know when that's going to happen. We know it's the will of the Lord because the body of Jesus rose again. And one day our bodies are going to be fully and finally restored at the last day, at the resurrection. And so God is going to heal all of His people, to raise them up, if you will, bodily, at the resurrection. But should God choose to heal someone right now, today, as we continue to sojourn in this life?

Well, we don't know. But it is okay for us to pray, I think, to that end, to ask the Lord to work for the good of another and for His own glory. But I totally understand, you know, the desire not to want to mislead people. And so I think we can say, yeah, I would love to pray for you. And at the same time, we could rest in the fact that God is working. Whether He heals or He doesn't heal, we know Romans 8 that He's able to make all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. And in the same way, we don't want to assume that God is just always going to heal someone and mislead people. We also don't want to assume that God just never wants to do that or always intends to leave people in a particular sickness. We just don't know. And so we go to the Lord with humility and pray in humility that the Lord might extend His grace and His mercy and know that He's going to do that whether He heals or not. Thanks for giving us a call.

Yeah. The validity of the resurrection and the validity of Scripture, well, there are all sorts of resources that are out there. In terms of the validity of the resurrection, there was a popular book, I think it was by Lee Strobel several years ago, called The Case for the Resurrection. It's sort of this journalistic approach where he interviews a number of people and makes, I think, a really strong case for the resurrection of Jesus. Others who have been, I think, focused on this area of apologetics, there's a guy named Gary Habermas. He has stuff on the resurrection of Jesus. And then a book we've offered here at Core Christianity is called More Than a Carpenter. It's a really short apologetics book that is going to give a lot of just sort of ready answers for questions about the resurrection and also questions about the authority and inspiration of the Holy Scriptures. And so I would say check out some of those resources.

Of course, another one that I've mentioned several times on the broadcast is The Story of Reality by Greg Kochel. And just to say, I love this question because it shows that you're wanting to dig into the Word and understand why it is that you believe what you believe. Friends, it's so important for us to do that, to know why we believe that this is true, because it is, and we can rest in that. And be sure to join us next time as we explore the truth of God's Word together.