My Facebook page was open as I prepared to go for Sunday service this morning. On it was a live feed from a church, and the pastor was speaking. As I listened to him, something restlessly recoiled within me.

You see, I have grown to religiously expect that Sunday morning, in a church gathering, when the pastor stands on the pulpit, God’s Word is to be passionately expounded. And so, when I saw a live ‘sermon,’ I listened.

I imagined the precious word of God popping from the pulpit, flowing through the pews like a river irrigating thirsty throats and satisfying the souls of men as the abundant eternal bread of life.

But I was wrong. I was painfully mistaken. The preacher this morning was not expounding Scripture. He was not feeding the sheep with the all-satisfying bread of life. Instead, he was giving financial lessons to famished souls. It broke my heart. I wept.

The book of Ruth starts by stating a startling paradox. There was famine in Bethlehem (Ruth 1:1). Can you tell the tension? If you don’t, remember that Bethlehem means House of Bread. The writer of the book of Ruth wants us to stare at the strangeness of such a scenario, of there being famine in the House of Bread.

But the dilemma is sterner. The indictment on Judah is such that the children of God turn to the foreign land for food. They move from Judah to Moab (Ruth 1:1).

My ordeal this morning is akin to the days of the Judges. There is starvation in the House of God, a longing for the bread that satisfies. That’s the sad irony. Of all places, if a man needed the living bread, ought they not find it in the House of God?

It should be evident that shepherds feed the sheep with Scriptural truths, refreshing their empty souls with the sweet solid food of the Word.

But as I ‘turned’ to the House of Bread, behold, there was famine. What was offered as a sermon this morning was nothing more than secular principles of financial freedom and self-help. Moab stared me in the face. The House of God feeds on a foreign diet.

This caused me to ask: how have our churches turned into corporations, merely Christianized capitalistic clubs and gatherings? How could I struggle to tell the difference between the sermon I just heard and Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad?

The book of Judges reminds us of why. ‘In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes’ (Judges 17:6).

When God’s people get preoccupied with secular solutions to sacred problems, they take their eyes from the precious Word of God. They starve.

We too seem to have forgotten that the local church is heaven’s outpost on earth, a beacon of light in a darkened world, an oasis in a desert and deserted place.

The Church of Christ is His body, bought by His blood, kept, and cleansed by His precious Word.

But from the look of things, Christ is presented as one who came to Christianize capitalism. It is as if His under-shepherds are simply success coaches.

Now, I think this comes from a (genuine and oft reasonable) proclivity to be relevant. Perhaps we want to speak in the language of those we reach. Admirable as it is, however, when we craft messages to keep our pews overflowing, without knowing it, we forsake the fountain of life. We risk becoming creative at the expense of doctrinal faithfulness.

A sermon is not a sanctified secular solution to business snags. Sunday is not a day for a skillfully crafted sales speech. It is a  time to sit under or pointedly proclaim God’s oracle which regenerates and reinvigorates souls.

So, ask yourself, what exactly did you listen to last Sunday?

Pastors must remind themselves of their call to feed the sheep, not entertain them. That was Jesus’ commission to Peter (John 21:15-17), and it was Peter’s call to the Church elders in Asia Minor (1 Pet 5:2-4).

The Lord’s flock is fed through expository preaching, not financial advice or health coaching. Pastors are heralds, proclaimers of salvation in Christ to a dying world. They are not consultants to corporations or financial advisors to sole proprietorships or companies.

Shepherds exist to train the sheep to hear the voice of the Master amidst chaotic and competing soundbites and noises.

Amidst this insanity, the Savior keeps His saints sane and saved by Scriptural exposition. Pastors ought to remember that every day. Preaching is God’s way of bringing bread to the hungry and enlivening the dying amidst the world’s many offers of false hopes.

We cannot ascend the pulpit and do whatever seems right in our eyes as in the days of the Judges.

Because there is famine in the House of Bread, we must not seek relevance at the expense of biblical faithfulness.

And I am not saying that the Gospel does not have implications for all of life, including finances. Neither am I calling for compartmentalization of our lives.

My point is that the call to pastoral ministry is a stern one, otherworldly, spiritual, and solemn. Pastors are not financial coaches. They are not motivational speakers. They are not leadership trainers.

Pastors are shepherds; they feed the sheep not with good sounding advice but with God’s enduring and enriching Word. Doctrine must ascend the pulpit or famine will descend on the House of God.

The pastoral call is primarily to be that prophetic voice to a slumbering world, to call Saints to the service of their Master. The goal is spiritual, not financial maturity. It is to present believers as a ‘chaste virgin to Christ’ (2 Cor 11:2), not as shrewd businessmen.

When mammon captures the pulpit, and when the world’s business gurus praise our Sunday sermons, it could be a call to search ourselves.

We cannot serve God and mammon (Matt. 6:24).

This morning’s Facebook live-feed reminded me of how many furnished pulpits are famished, and then I recalled Amos’ prophesy (Amos 8:11).

I ask again, what exactly did you listen to last Sunday?

As for me, my heart is stirred and saddened by shepherds who starve the Savior’s sheep, leading them out of Bethlehem to Moab.