Why Does Obedience to Scripture Matter?

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You may be seated.
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It's interesting with that song, I remember when Hope was born we used to sing that to her in the crib, we still do.
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I understand it's not the right context of what the word Hope means, but it was our way of reminding her of what her name was.
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If you'll take out your Bibles and turn with me to Hebrews, we're going to be this morning looking at Hebrews chapter 3.
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If this is your first Sunday with us or maybe you're relatively new to the church, I want to make mention that after service today we're having a congregational meeting and we're affirming some minor changes in our church's constitution.
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It's also the beginning of a new sermon series which is actually an old sermon series.
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Back in 2009 our church underwent a major change in direction regarding who we are and who we were as a local body of Christ.
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I wondered this morning coming in how many of you today were here when all that went down.
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I look out and so many of you weren't.
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So many of you were not a part of the church then.
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We have really seen such change in the church since then.
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It all started with a vision, an idea that we wanted to become a biblically functioning church.
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That was the phrase that became stuck in my brain.
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I believe the Lord stuck it there.
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It became the push behind so much of what we did.
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We did 26 weeks of study on what it meant to be a biblically functioning church.
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As a result of that we produced a new document of who we were.
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It was our first truly overhaul of the constitution that had been done in years, probably decades up until that point.
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Full overhaul.
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We didn't use the old one at all.
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We totally wrote a new constitution and several of you were part of that.
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Mr.
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Jack, Mr.
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Paul were part of the writing of that new document.
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Adopting that document was not the easiest thing in the world.
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In fact, I remember that it didn't please everyone and some people were so displeased that they met with me as a result of their displeasure.
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They called me up I want to come to your house or to your office and I want to tell you my thoughts.
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And my door is open, that's fine.
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I remember one man in particular who came to my house and he sat on my couch and I sat in my chair and we talked about the changes.
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I explained to him, I said, we need to be seeking to be under biblical authority as a church.
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We need to seek to structure the church the way the Bible tells us to structure the church.
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And he quickly told me with no shame and in uncertain or no uncertain terms he said, well, I do not believe that the Bible is completely true.
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He said, I just don't believe the Bible is true.
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At least completely.
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And I sat back and I said, you're in the wrong church then.
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And I wasn't trying to be ugly.
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I wasn't trying to be mean.
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I said, I can walk out my door and throw a rock and hit 15 churches that don't believe the Bible is the Word of God.
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I said, but even before we adopted the new constitution in fact a couple of years before we had adopted a statement of faith and the first line of the statement of faith, we believe the Bible is the Word of God.
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That was what we had said as a congregation.
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So even before all of that, we had already covenanted as a congregation, this is what we believe about the Bible.
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I said, so you're in the wrong church.
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If a person doesn't believe that the Bible is the Word of God, there are plenty of churches that would agree with you.
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I would agree they're wrong, but they will agree with you.
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But this ain't one of them.
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So part of our change involved adopting a constitution that was submissive to the Bible.
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And it affirmed our trust in the authority of the Scripture.
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And like I said, not everybody liked that.
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But it didn't matter because it was the right thing to do.
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Well it's been six years.
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That was 2009 I guess.
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Well, however you count the years, it's been seven years.
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And by God's grace that structure has served us well.
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We have, however, as I said earlier, found a few things over the years that need to be better explained, more accurately defined.
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So this morning after the congregational, or after worship, we're going to have a congregational meeting.
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And the reason for the meeting is to say, here's some areas.
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One of the areas that we've had to update is how we define marriage as a church.
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And that's something that social pressure has pushed upon the church.
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To have to define what it means when we say people are married.
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Who is biblically married, and things like that.
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We've had to restructure how we use our facilities, and who we allow to use our facilities and things like that.
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And again, because of the issues that face us socially.
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We've also restructured how we identify our elders and our pastors.
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Because I've tried to explain, and through this series I'm going to explain, there is nothing functionally different between an elder and a pastor.
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They're the same office.
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So if you have a copy of the new constitution, you'll see that we no longer make reference to pastors.
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We make reference to vocational elders and non-vocational elders.
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A vocational elder is a man who makes his family's living off of the ministry.
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And that means he has certain time dedications that are required, and certain things that are expected of him.
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Typically it's the preaching ministry of the church, which is me.
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I'm the vocational elder.
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And then there are other men who do not make their living or their livelihood from the ministry.
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But they do serve in the same equal capacity with me as a pastor or elder in the church.
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And see, what we're doing with starting this new series, is I'm going to take you back through a biblically functioning church with updates.
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So we're calling the series A Biblically Functioning Church Revisited.
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We're going to do the same series we did before, but with updating it in regard to who we are today.
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Who we are seven years later.
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So, let us sort of begin.
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I want to say this sort of from the outset.
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It's a sad reality that not too many churches are concerned with this issue.
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Not too many churches are concerned with being biblically functioning.
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Instead, they're concerned mainly with being numerically successful.
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Biblically functioning is secondary to whether or not we're numerically successful.
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And when I first started studying this subject, that was an issue because when I was studying this, you know, 2007-2008, I was really focused on this subject.
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2009, I was studying for this.
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You know what? I would go to the bookstore and I would look for books on the subject of biblically functioning church and what that looks like.
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You know what? I didn't find a lot of books on that.
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Instead, I found books like Secrets to Church Growth.
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Ten Ways to Make Your Church Larger.
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Ten Mistakes Churches Make in Reaching People.
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That was what the books were about.
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In fact, what I had to do, really, I had to actually switch.
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I had to move from the church section of the bookstore to the theology section.
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To the ecclesiology.
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Because I don't care what the world says works.
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Because pragmatism is not how the church should be run.
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By the way, if you don't know what that word means, pragmatism means you're a person who does whatever it takes to get something to work, no matter the means to an end.
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You understand? No matter the means, the end is what is most important.
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Let me explain to you what happens with that.
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You end up creating a lot of false converts that way.
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Because what you win people with is what you win people to.
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If you win people to entertainment, you have won them to entertainment.
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And as soon as they quit being entertained, guess what happens? They fall away.
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If you win people with emotions, and you have won them to an emotional appeal, guess what happens when the emotion stops? They fall away.
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Pragmatism, emotionalism, minimalism, and moralism are the four biggest problems in the church today.
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Pragmatism says do whatever it takes to get them in, doesn't matter what you do.
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That was pragmatism, what did I say? Pragmatism, emotionalism.
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Emotionalism says get the emotions going and get them to make their decisions based on emotions.
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Minimalism says give them the least amount of information possible so that you don't confuse people and give them the least amount.
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Don't try to grow them as a people.
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Don't try to challenge them as a people, but keep everything as minimum as possible.
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Usually you'll hear this, well what's the least people have to know to be a Christian? That shouldn't be a question we should be asking, but that's often what people do ask.
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And moralism, just give them rules to live by and everything's fine.
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None of that is the gospel.
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And if we win people with the gospel, that's what we will win people to, is to the gospel.
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What you win them with is what you win them to.
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And we want to win people with the gospel.
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So many have been more concerned with numerical success than they have with obedience.
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And as a result, churches are a mile wide and an inch deep.
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They have thousands of members and very few disciples.
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So my concern again in this series is for us to learn what the church is supposed to be, how it is supposed to operate, and why it's important.
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And that's the question of the day.
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We want to be a biblically functioning church.
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Why? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Why does that even fall into the purview of our question? Why be a biblically functioning church? Well let's stand together and read from Hebrews.
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And we're going to read a rather obscure passage, but it's a passage that I hope you'll understand why I have chosen in a few moments as I begin to explain it.
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We stand for the honor of God's word and we're going to read...
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The actual passage I'm going to deal with is chapter 3, verse 7a.
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That means the first half of the verse.
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But I want to read in context.
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So we're going to read verse 7 all the way down to verse 11 because that's all a passage taken from the Old Testament.
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If you have a Bible that subsets things over, you'll notice it's set over like a poem.
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That means it's a quote.
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This is what it reads.
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It says, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years.
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Therefore I was provoked with that generation and said they always go astray in their heart.
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They have not known my ways as I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that as I seek to preach the word that you would keep me from error as I am a fallible man and capable of preaching error but for the sake of my conscience and the sake of the ears of your people, I pray that you would keep me from that.
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Bless them with a message which comes from your word and I pray that you would, Lord, open the hearts of those who may not know your son to hear the word of God calling them to repentance today and faith in Him.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.
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When we're reading the Bible and especially when we're having Bible studies and we're talking, a lot of times we will use different ways to address certain books of the Bible.
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Like I might say, turn to Paul's letter to the Romans.
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Or I might say, turn to the second letter of Peter.
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Peter writes to the church here.
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Or I might say, go to the writings of David in the Psalms.
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So we often identify the earthly author with the book.
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But when we come to Hebrews chapter three, and by the way, we don't know who the writer of Hebrews was.
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Interestingly enough, historically, we do not know.
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We believe that they were under apostolic authority.
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Some believe it was the Apostle Paul.
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Some believe it was Barnabas, his assistant.
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Some believe it was Silas.
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Some believe it was Luke.
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I tend to think it might be Luke.
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Luke had a particular writing style.
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And there are some things that tend to lean that way.
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Doesn't matter.
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The point is when he quotes the scripture in verse seven, notice what he says.
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Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says.
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He didn't say, therefore, as David wrote in the Psalms.
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Because that's what he's quoting here.
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He's quoting Psalm 95 verses seven through eleven.
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He's quoting from the Psalms.
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He's quoting from an author we would have known.
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David, the writer of the Psalms.
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And what does he say? He says, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says.
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Now, what makes that so important? Well, somebody said, why would you preach a whole sermon on half a verse? You're not even saying the whole verse.
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Well, the reason why this deserves our attention is the simple fact that it confirms to us one of the things that we understand about scripture, and that is this.
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It's one of the major tenets of our faith.
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And that is the inspiration of the Bible.
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We believe that the Bible ultimately comes from God and not from men.
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When I say Paul's letter to the Romans, or when I say Peter's epistle, or when I say David's psalm, I'm saying that in the instance of saying this is the earthly writer of this book, but its ultimate author is God.
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Earlier this morning we had someone read to us 2 Timothy 3.16, and if you're a person who has not memorized a lot of scripture, I would encourage you to memorize 2 Timothy 3.16.
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All scripture is Theanoustas.
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You say, what is that? Theanoustas is the Greek.
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The Greek word theos means God.
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Pneumos means breath or air.
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It's where you get the word pneumatic, like if you have a pneumatic tool or pneumatic tire, it's the same idea.
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And when it says all scripture is Theanoustas, it means all scripture is breathed out by God.
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In fact, if you have the King James Version, it says all scripture is inspired, but in the newer translations it says all scripture is breathed out by God.
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And what this teaches us is that the words that are written down came from the very mouth of God.
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This book does not contain the word of God.
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This book is the word of God.
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There is a difference.
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You see, the existential argument is that this book simply contains the word of God.
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And it only becomes the word of God when you accept it and believe it as the word of God.
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And certain parts can be the word of God and certain parts can't because it's all up to you as the person existing who makes the existential choice to procure it as the word of God.
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That's nonsense.
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That's relativism.
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That's foolishness.
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It either is or it isn't.
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Truth stands.
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As my mama would say, the truth is going to stand when the world is on fire.
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That's right.
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Truth stands.
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And it doesn't contain the word of God.
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It is the word of God.
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And this teaches us in 2 Timothy 3.16 that every word of the Bible comes from God.
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It's what the Holy Spirit has said to us.
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And we see this in Hebrews 3.
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And I like what John MacArthur says on this particular passage.
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Hebrews 3.7.
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He says this in his commentary.
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He says, Here is one of the clearest testimonies in Scripture to its own divine inspiration.
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The writer of Hebrews is saying that the Holy Spirit was the author of Psalm 95.
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Inspiration is the Holy Spirit speaking through the minds of God's human instruments.
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What the psalmist said was not his own opinion or his own choice of words.
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When he wrote these words, the Holy Spirit was speaking through him.
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That is divine inspiration.
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The Holy Spirit was involved in the writing of every word of Scripture and that is why it is a sin to the first degree.
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And this again, quoting MacArthur, it is a sin in the first degree and opens the floodgates of every kind of heresy possible to deny the verbal inspiration of Scripture.
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And I think that honestly the best place to see this, people ask me sometimes, why do you believe in the inspiration of the Bible? Why do you believe the Bible is true? I say because Jesus did.
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Now I will confess Jesus didn't say this about the Old or about the New Testament because at the time of the living of Christ, the New Testament wasn't written.
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But Jesus confirmed God's authority on the Old Testament when He was going about talking to the Pharisees and to the Sadducees and to the scribes and when He assumed that they should obey what the Scripture said.
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In fact, what He says, if you want to write down a passage or even if you want to go there and look with me, Matthew 22 Jesus is speaking and He says in Matthew 22, 29-33 He says, but Jesus answered them, you are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.
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For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given a marriage.
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This is following the question of the Sadducees.
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They're asking the question about the resurrection, whether or not somebody can be married.
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If a woman marries two men and everybody dies, who is she going to be married to in the resurrection if one guy dies and another guy.
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And Jesus says, you don't even understand the Scriptures or the power of God.
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In the resurrection they don't marry, they're neither given a marriage.
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There's not marriage in Heaven.
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In fact Jennifer and I, I have a little sign in our bedroom I made it for it says, I know we can't be married in Heaven, but can I at least sit next to you when we get there.
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I love my wife and I hope that in eternity we'll be brothers and sisters in Christ not married.
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But anyway that's just, I understand that.
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This relationship is an earthly one and it has a special place here.
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And Jesus is saying that.
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And He says, and as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God? I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.
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What did Jesus just say? He said, have you not read what God said? What is the assumption that Jesus is making in that statement? When you read the Scripture you're reading what God has spoken.
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That's a powerful inference and a powerful truth.
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Have you not read what was said to you by God? Now people ask the question, well how did the miracle of inspiration happen? That's an important question because I think that it has been misunderstood.
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I think people often look at the writers of Scripture sort of like first century fax machines and they sort of had maybe like a quill pen in their hand and a piece of parchment and they just sort of zoned out and started doing this kind of thing and it's sort of like automatic writing, like you see the psychics or whatever try to pretend to do, you know, and they have this sort of thing that happens.
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That's not the way it's described to us in the Bible.
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If you want to know what the process of inspiration is you go to 2 Peter 1 and he describes it for us very simply.
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He says, number one, he says know this first of all, 2 Peter 1 20, he says know this first of all that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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That's what inspiration is.
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These men are not giving their own interpretation.
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I cannot tell you how many times I've talked to people and I've said, well, the Bible says this and the person will say, no, that's Paul.
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Paul said that.
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God didn't say that.
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I said, now slow your roll because that's crazy because what you're saying is that Paul just on his own initiative and under his own authority just wrote what he wanted to write without any consideration for the Spirit of God that was leading him.
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That's your attitude.
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Number one, a lot of people don't like Paul, especially people who don't like things like the doctrine of how men and women are supposed to be in the church and things like whether or not a woman is supposed to be a pastor things like people don't like Paul when they talk about things like predestination and election because he talks to them about that.
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People get all offended by that and say, well, that's just Paul's interpretation.
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Peter tells us it's not.
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It says, no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man.
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But men spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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I always think about like a ship.
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A ship keeps people from falling into the sea.
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And so too did the Holy Spirit keep the men of God who were writing the Word of God from falling into error.
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He was the one who carried them along in their writing.
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He didn't change their writing style as I said earlier.
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Luke has a very distinctive style of writing that was different than the Apostle Paul.
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Luke was a Gentile.
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Paul was a Jew.
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Paul was trained as a Pharisee.
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Luke was trained as a physician.
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They have two very distinctive different writing styles.
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Peter was a fisherman.
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His writing style is much different.
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John, of course, also man of the land.
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He wasn't an educated doctor.
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Some of the simplest Greek in the New Testament is from John the Apostle.
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Some of the most elegant and beautiful as well.
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Some of the most difficult is from Hebrews.
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It's written in a high classical form of Greek.
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Much more difficult to read.
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Probably written by someone like a physician.
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Someone who would have had more training in that area.
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But it doesn't mean that these men are writing on their own initiative.
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God is using them as a vessel in the same way God would use me to preach.
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And John MacArthur to preach.
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And I'm certainly not putting myself on the same plane as him.
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But we're both preachers of the Word of God.
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And R.C.
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Sproul and these other men.
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God uses us to preach the Word of God.
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And each of us preaches according to the gifts God has given to us.
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And I'm not saying we're infallible.
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Don't get me wrong.
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But God is using this.
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God uses the preaching of His Word.
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God undergirded these men to keep them from error.
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And that's why we call the Bible inerrant.
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It's so funny.
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Because I used to say inerrant.
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And people thought I was saying that the Bible is inerrant.
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No, no, no.
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Inerrant means without error.
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Inerrant.
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Without error.
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The Bible is infallible and inerrant.
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What's the difference? Inerrant means it doesn't have any error.
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Infallible means it can't err.
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And the Bible describes itself in both ways.
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God supernaturally kept the writers of the Word from error.
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And what we learn is not only is the Bible God breathed, but it's also trustworthy.
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God spoke the Word of God that we might have His Word.
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Well, today I want to give you three insights into how we should regard Scripture as the local church.
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We've looked at why we should consider the Scripture because it's God's Word.
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It's infallible.
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It's inerrant.
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Well, what are some things that we should consider as a church when we're making decisions? And this is on the individual level and on the corporate level as a body.
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Why does it matter that we're a biblically functioning church? Well, number one, we should regard Scripture as God speaking.
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We've already said this, but I'm going to say it again.
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We should regard Scripture as God speaking.
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Looking back at Hebrews 3.7, Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says.
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Is the Holy Spirit God? According to the Bible, He is.
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In fact, if you go back to the story of Ananias and Sapphira, how many of you remember that story from the book of Acts? What happened with the story of Ananias and Sapphira? Well, Barnabas had sold some property, and he had donated the money to the church.
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And apparently, there were some accolades that he received because Ananias and Sapphira see what happened with Barnabas donating his property, and they said, well, we want to have some accolades as well, so we're going to sell our property and we're going to give it to the church.
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But, they got money and when they received the money for selling the property, they said, boy, there's a lot more here than the church needs.
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There's a lot more here than we need to give.
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And so, they give a portion of what they sold the property for.
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And Peter asks Ananias, the man, is this the full amount that you sold it for? And Ananias says, yes.
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And Peter says, was not this yours to do with what you will? Which, by the way, proves that the early church was not communistic or socialistic.
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Don't mean to take a hard left turn there, but people argue that the early church was socialistic because everybody sold and collected together to give.
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That's not how it worked because, number one, not everybody sold everything they had because some people kept what they had so that they could have churches in their homes.
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If everybody sold everything, everybody would have been out on the street.
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That didn't work that way.
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There was not a collectivism, communism.
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It wasn't forced collectivism.
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By the way, communism and socialism is thievery because it's forcing.
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You can't have forced charity.
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It's no longer charity.
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Okay, I'm going to go.
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I better stop.
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The point is forced charity is not charity.
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But the point being, he looks at him and he says, was it not yours to do with what you will? But you have lied to the Holy Spirit and you have not lied to men but to who? To God.
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Right there, the Apostle Peter clearly tells us that when the Holy Spirit speaks, it's God speaking and when we speak to the Holy Spirit, we're speaking to God.
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The Holy Spirit is God, no doubt.
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So the Holy Spirit speaks, it's God speaking.
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This is why we see in Acts 1.16 it says the Scripture had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David.
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Acts 28.25 and disagreeing among themselves they departed after Paul, having made one statement the Holy Spirit was right in saying to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet.
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Mark 12.36, David himself in the Holy Spirit declared, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand.
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Over and over and over again, when we read in the Scripture, we read something very simple.
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When God, or when we read the Scriptures, we're reading God speaking.
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Now why is this important? Well it's important because so many people read the Bible and they say, well I like this part and I don't like this part, or I'm going to believe this and I'm not going to believe that, I'm going to obey this but I'm not going to obey that.
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And what are we doing? We're becoming cafeteria Christians folks, where we go through the little line and we pull out the pudding and we leave the green beans, or we pull the sweet tea and we leave the juice box.
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It's what we do in a cafeteria, it's not what we do with the Bible.
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But it is what often happens.
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We like the parts we like, we don't like the parts we don't like, so we obey what we like and we don't obey what we don't like.
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That's not treating it like God's Word.
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That's treating it like we are the sovereign rather than He.
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Number two, not only should we regard the Bible as God speaking, but we should regard both Testaments with the same authority.
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Both Testaments have the same authority.
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Look again in Hebrews 3.7, what is He quoting? 7 and 11 quote Psalm 95.
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What is the Psalm? The Psalm is the Old Testament.
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I can't tell you how many people have told me over the years, well God in the Old Testament was mean.
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The God of the Old Testament was really harsh.
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I like the New Testament God.
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You know what I always remind them? Number one, the Old Testament doesn't talk much about hell.
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In fact, the doctrine of hell as we understand it cannot be fully fleshed out from the Old Testament Scriptures.
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You'll get some portions in the end of Daniel and a few other places, but the full orb doctrine of hell, you know who it comes from the most? Jesus.
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The doctrine of hell eternal perdition where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched comes from the one who they always say, I don't like the Old Testament.
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I like Jesus.
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He's so sweet.
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He's so lip-wristed and nice.
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He's such a, you know, he's such a good guy.
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Jesus talked more about hell than anyone in the New Testament.
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He gave us the full orb doctrine of eternal perdition and yet they ignore that.
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Because again, that cafeteria mentality.
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I like the part where he says judge not lest you be judged, except for the part that came right after that where he says when you do judge, judge with righteous judgment.
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Because you have to judge sometimes because if you live your life without judging at all, you're going to die very quickly because you're not going to make good decisions.
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You have to make judgments at some point.
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Don't we teach our children to be discerning with who they hang out with and why they don't hang out with certain people because it's dangerous? And if you didn't you'd be a bad parent? Yeah, this is a duh moment.
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But people like that one verse, Matthew 7.1.
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They take that one little verse, they grab it, they hold on to it, they say judge not lest you be judged and that's all they know.
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They don't know the context, they don't know what he was talking about, they don't know anything about it, but they like that part and so I like Jesus.
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It's like, what was that one guy? I think it was, was it Gandhi who said I like Jesus, I don't like Christians? He doesn't like Jesus.
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Just take him to the word of God and read what Jesus said.
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He will quickly not like Jesus.
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Very simple.
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One of the failures in the modern church is what I call red letter Christianity.
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And you probably know what that is.
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What's red letter? Some people have a bible.
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Some of you might have one and I'm not condemning you, don't send me an email.
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I'm not saying you're wrong.
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But some people have a bible where the words of Jesus are in red.
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And there was a song, DC Talk, which if you're older than me, you might not know who that is, but it's a Christian rock band that was popular when I was a young man.
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DC Talk came out with a song.
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It's all in the red letters.
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There's hope in the red letters, there's truth in the red letters, there's love in the red letters, and it's all in the red letters.
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And they were talking about Jesus' words.
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Well, I got news for the writers of the song.
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It's not all in the red letters.
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It's all in all the letters.
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The same Holy Spirit inspired Genesis as it inspired Matthew.
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The same Holy Spirit inspired Obadiah.
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That little book that probably we haven't read in a few years.
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The same Holy Spirit inspired Leviticus.
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That one that usually causes people to stop their year-long Bible reading as they get there and they have a hard time trudging through all the priestly sacrifices.
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Yeah, that book is inspired the same way Matthew is, the same way Luke is, the same way Mark is.
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God's word is throughout this book.
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If we say we love Jesus and we deny the Old Testament, you know what we're saying? We're saying we love Jesus but we don't love what He loved because He held the Old Testament up as authoritative.
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That's silly.
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We cannot hold to a single verse or a single portion of verses and claim to be biblical.
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We must believe.
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We do believe.
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By the way, if you see the five solas, we have the little sign that has the five solas on it.
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And one of those solas is sola scriptura.
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Sola scriptura is we believe that the Bible alone is the sole infallible rule for faith and practice.
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Well, there's another Latin phrase that goes along with that.
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Tota scriptura.
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Not only do we believe the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith, we believe the whole Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith.
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Not just the parts that agree with you.
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That's part of a lot of people.
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I only like the parts of the Bible that agree with me.
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Well, guess who your God is? It's you.
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Third and finally, we say we've got to regard the Bible as God speaking.
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We've got to regard the Scripture, Old and New Testament, as having authority.
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Number three, we should regard obedience to Scriptures, obedience to God, disobedience to Scriptures, disobedience to God.
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That may sound simple, but it really is profound.
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When we look at the Bible, we are not reading Moses' feelings, Paul's prejudices.
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We're reading God's commands.
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Just because it's written doesn't mean it has less authority.
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People always say, well, I heard God speak audibly to me.
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I say, did what he say agree with the Word of God as it's written? Because if what he said agreed with it, you didn't need it.
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And if it didn't agree with it, you're wrong.
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Isn't that simple enough? There's a great cartoon, guy standing, looking at heaven, God, speak to me! And a hand comes out from heaven and says here, the Bible.
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Simple enough.
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If I am leaving the house in the morning, some of you heard this illustration, but I think it's a good illustration.
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I always use Ashley for this because she's the oldest and most responsible of my children.
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Most, most, supposed to be most responsible.
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If I leave the house in the morning and I write down something, say, Ashley, you have these things that you have to accomplish today.
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This is what you're supposed to do.
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And I write it down for her and I leave it for her.
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That letter is my word.
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She doesn't have to hear me speak it, neither is she allowed then to say, well, daddy, you didn't say it, so it wasn't your word.
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It's my word, whether it's written or spoken.
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It's my word.
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And if she disobeys what I have written, she's disobeyed me.
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You understand? God's word is found in the Bible.
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A man told me one time, he said he was committing adultery on his wife and I called him to repentance.
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I said, you need to repent of your sin.
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He said, God told me it was okay.
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I said, no, he did not.
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No, he did not.
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Because God doesn't speak out of both sides of his mouth.
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He's not a liar.
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He's not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should tell a lie.
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He is not telling you it's right, because in the sixth commandment, he tells you, or the seventh commandment, he tells you, do not commit adultery.
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And he hasn't changed that.
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Tell me he told you it was okay.
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To look at what the Bible commands, no.
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And you say yes, is to say God doesn't know what he's doing, or that you're smarter than God, or that you get to be God.
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None of that's true.
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It's very simple, folks.
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The reason why I'm telling you all this is because years and years and years ago, when we first pulled together the biblically functioning church model, the simple model was this.
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The Bible tells us what to do.
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It tells us how to govern the church.
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It tells us how to minister to one another.
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It tells us how we ought to live in this world and how we ought to behave as the body of Christ.
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The Bible is the source.
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Who's the head of the church? Jesus Christ.
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Steve Camp, a Christian singer that I'm familiar with and we've had spent some time together, he was singing for the queen over in England years ago.
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And over in England, the church is the head, I'm sorry, the monarchy is the head of the church of England.
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There's an authority that goes all the way back to who was it, Henry VIII? And that authority, the monarchy has authority over the church.
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As they were leaving the church, as they were leaving the singing, one of the little duchesses or somebody came over to Steve and it was very nice to meet you and have you sing for us.
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Did you know that here we are the head of the church? And he said, that sounds nice, but Jesus Christ is the head of the church.
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And she goes, well, it's very nice for you to have been here.
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She came over.
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But that's the key, folks.
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Jesus Christ is the head of the church.
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That's what the Bible teaches very clearly.
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Jesus Christ is the head of the church.
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How does he govern the church? Through his word.
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It's very simple.
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He governs through this.
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He doesn't govern today through special revelations, open heavens, rain, storms, or anything else.
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He governs through the reading of the word of God.
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It's the elder's job, the pastor's job in the church to read and interpret and teach the word of God.
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It's the people's responsibility to minister to one another as they're trained by the elders and the teachers on how to do that.
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The Bible actually doesn't say I'm the minister.
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It says you are.
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Because the pastor and the elder's job is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
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And we minister to one another.
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It's a very simple program.
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The deacons stand as examples of service in the church.
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The elders stand as the teachers in the church.
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And the church ministers to itself as each one is gifted.
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As Paul said, a hand can't say to the foot, I have no need of you, and I can't say to the ear, I have no need of you.
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That's how the church operates.
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That's the biblical model.
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It's very simple.
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We overcomplicate it.
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But we should.
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So I'll digress to say this and finish my message by simply saying this.
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We have the word of God, the authoritative, inspired, infallible word of God by which we should govern our lives and by which we should govern the church.
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Why is it important? Why does it matter? Because it mattered to Christ, it mattered to the apostles, and it should matter to us that we be a biblically functioning church.
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Let's pray.
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Father, we thank you for the word of God that you have given us to govern the church.
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I pray for the men, the elders of the church, that you have called and ordained to lead.
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I thank you for the men, the deacons that you have called and ordained to be examples of service.
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And I thank you for every individual church member, individually and uniquely gifted within the church, to bring a blessing to the other members of the church as they work side by side, hand in hand, being the hands and feet of Christ to one another.
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I thank you for Jesus Christ.
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I thank you for his blessed gospel.
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For ultimately, Lord, our purpose in this church is to proclaim the gospel.
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And even if we're doing everything else right, if we're not doing that, Lord, if we are not proclaiming the gospel of Christ in the midst of ourselves and in the community, then we're not doing what you've called us to do.
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Lord, grant us a desire to be a biblically functioning church.
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And all that we say and do, in Jesus' name, amen.