Christ We Proclaim (part 2) - [Colossians 1:28-29]

And so, let's turn our Bibles to Colossians chapter 1. I know it's going to be hard, but let's just hang in there as we now continue to worship the

Lord by listening to His word preached, Colossians chapter 1. We're in a season of the church that's a really neat season, exciting season.

Just bought 55 acres of land, seeing what the Lord might do. Will we have a new building there?

What's going to happen? We could lose a chairman of the board of elders, a godly man, Dave Jeffries, as he moves to Texas.

And still, we continue on because there are other faithful men here and those who are in the pipeline in leadership.

And I know this is subjective, but I just feel, I'm using that word on purpose, this is just a neat time at the church.

I know it's a neat time at the church because we're on the receiving end of God's blessings. I think if we were persecuted, we wouldn't have a hard time responding with obedience.

I think if we were living in catacombs afraid of the IRS and the government, I think we would fare fairly well.

But now in a time of prosperity, how do we act? What do we do? And I thought, before we get back into 1

Corinthians 7 next week, let's one more time look at Colossians chapter 1, verses 28 and 29 so we can see what are the essentials of a

Christ honoring church. And we're going to quickly find out that the essentials are not going to be what the world would say.

And so as we looked at two weeks ago, by the way, wasn't that strange last week? No worship service.

I was here. I preached to an empty house. I don't know why you didn't show up. Actually, when it's a state of emergency, we can't drive,

Scott walked and I think was out driving to go somewhere. And the police pulled him over and said, you're not supposed to be out. So did anybody happen to show up last week?

We had somebody, a faithfully elect. And what'd you do? OK. Well, the air conditioner was working last

Sunday. So in these two powerfully packed verses,

Paul shows us what a Christ honoring church is. Colossians 128, him Christ we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling with all his energy, that he powerfully works within me.

Paul is in prison and he writes to the Church of Colossae, this is what I want you to do. And so in review, the first essential for a

Christ honoring church is the church must have the right purpose. The right purpose.

I don't know if you shoot guns at all, but if you've got the wrong aim, you've got the wrong bead, you're not aiming small to miss small, you're going to miss your target.

And here the target is not a new building. That's not why we exist. We get the new building.

We don't get the new building. We are the church. The goal of this ministry is not more income, more people, more press.

That's not our goal. We have marching orders and we have the goal here of what? What does the text say?

Three times using the word everyone, so it's not just leaders, it's not just those in the know, it's everyone should be made mature, present mature, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

That is the goal of the ministry, whether there are 30 people here, 3 or 3 ,000, we want you to be mature.

That's our goal. As you increase in maturity, you'll look more and more like Christ, won't you?

You'll be able to say by the Spirit's power, no to sin more often, yes to righteousness more often, and God is glorified when the church begins from one level of glory to the next, like 2

Corinthians 3, to look like Christ Jesus. That's why we exist, the maturity of the saints.

You say, what's the goal of the worship service today? The worship service is to exalt the triune

God, and when you exalt the triune God through His Word and through His ways, you grow, you learn, you are mature.

That's my motive, so that you'll more resemble Christ Jesus. You'll live up to your position in Christ Jesus.

And look at the text that Paul and the leaders may present. It means to offer or to yield.

I love weddings, when we have a wedding here, and I get to ask the question right down there, who gives this bride to be married to this man?

And the father then presents the daughter to the groom, and he says, what

I do. That's the kind of language. To offer, to yield. I don't care about explosive growth.

I think I said it two weeks ago. It's more of a problem when all the people show up. If there just would be 300 and we would cap it, my life would be a lot easier.

Two services, buildings, what about this, all these other issues. But we preach the Word, and if God adds people, then

He adds people. You know what, mature saints, you say, why would

I want to be a mature saint? Well, one of the reasons you want to be a mature saint, because then when a trial comes, you can handle it more biblically.

When temptation comes, you can buttress yourself against that temptation, because you are more mature.

Show me a little child who's three years old, and put him in a tempting situation, and what do they do?

I've seen some of those cameras, where they film what's going on in the room, and they'll say to the kid, you know, there's some brownies over here.

They do weird things like, if you don't eat that brownie, when we come back after five minutes, we'll give you two brownies.

And you just watch that kid. And they're just kind of looking at it and everything, and finally they just have to go for it.

And then all of a sudden you bring in a ten -year -old kid, they can understand delayed sanctification, delayed gratification.

And if you don't eat that, you get two later, and they can hold off. And it's the same thing. As we learn and grow, we have a better idea of what the world offers, and what it actually gives.

Who Christ is, evangelize. We evangelize better, pray more, give better.

So we want you to be mature for lots of reasons. False teachers, on the other hand, they want you to stay babies.

Because then they can manipulate you. Paul says, everything about me drives me to the constraint of having

Christ proclaim so that you are mature. See that word there, mature? Maybe your text says perfect.

It means wholly devoted to God. All -sighted, wholly true.

Solomon said, let your heart therefore be wholly true to the Lord your God. You want your kids to grow up?

We want our church to grow as well. Turn with me, if you would, to Ephesians, just for a quick second.

You'll see a mirrored language there. Ephesians chapter 4. By the way, if you show me a congregation,

I'll tell you everything you need to know about the leadership. Because if the leadership is driving the church towards a view of Christ so that they might be mature, as you see a maturing church, you know that the leaders have been faithful to discharge their duty, to preach the

Word. But show me a church that's immature and not maturing, and I'll show you leaders who are doing the wrong thing.

Maybe they want all the power. Maybe they want all the prestige. Who knows? And Paul here says, as God gives, in verse 11, apostles and prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, why does

He do that? Verse 12, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the

Son of God to a what? Mature man. To the measure of a stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Paul says, my privilege is to preach the Word in such a way that you'll grow, you'll learn, you'll...

Actually, if you look back at verse 12, the equipping of the saints, it means to prepare.

When I was a kid, and I was goofing around with my brother who was nine years younger, I'd pick him up by the arms and I'd swing him around.

And I was trying to teach him a physics lesson about centripetal force. And I was swinging him around and then all of a sudden, arm out of socket.

Just hanging. And then it's like, don't tell dad, don't tell dad, don't tell dad. I'll give you my

Tinker Toys, don't tell dad. Log, you know, Lincoln Logs. Some of the young people here are going,

Lincoln Logs? What's a Lincoln Log? I hate walking behind people now.

They should be ticketed for texting. Walking through the mall. I'm just on my way. And they're just like this.

But anyway, it's dislocated. I'm just trying to keep you awake. Dislocated.

And what the doctor would have to do is hold the elbow a special way. Our mom could do it. And then it's just turned the right way.

Oh, and it goes right back in. That's the exact word that's used here in Ephesians.

Dislocated bone, shoulder, right back in. Kind of chiropractic adjustment. Realigned. So the body is edified.

And we don't stop as leaders until you're glorified. I'm happy when new people come.

I'm happier though, when you as a mature person goes out and preaches the gospel to someone else and they get saved.

And then you say, come with us. But no church's success should be rated by numbers, cash, buildings, attendance.

We want you to be mature. By the way, if our goal is maturity, listen, where does entertainment fit in?

If our goal is everyone, everyone, everyone mature so you look more like Christ, as we proclaim

Christ to you, you become more and more mature in every area. You are growing. God declares you just.

He then works out salvation in you, sanctifying you over and over and over, and you arrive in glory.

We do that through the preaching of the Word in Christ Jesus. Where does entertainment fit? Is entertainment fine?

Well, it's fine, but it doesn't fit anywhere in the local church. G. Campbell Morgan, the pastor previous to Lloyd -Jones said, when amusement is necessary to get people to listen to the gospel, there will be failure.

This is not the method of Christ. To form an organization and provide all kinds of entertainment for young people in order that they may come to Bible classes is to be foredoomed to failure.

Christ -honoring churches, number one, have the right purpose. Number two, they preach the right person. Take a look back at verse 28 of Colossians.

Let's go back to Colossians. The right purpose is maturity. Christ -likeness.

How do you get there? He says with a summary sweeping overview, three words, Him we proclaim.

Jesus we proclaim. Preaching. The right preaching or the right person, maybe we'll call it the right person preached.

We proclaim Him. It's an announcement. I have an announcement. It's about Jesus today. It's not about me.

It's not about the elders. It's not about Paul the Apostle. It's about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Of course the pastor can have an anecdotal story about himself or tell something about his brother dislocating his arm.

But the issue is, I hope he can, the issue is Christ, you come to this church, you bring a friend.

I used to go to churches before and I'd think, I'd better not ever bring my friend to that church because I have no idea what they're going to do.

I don't know. I don't know what they're going to do. I mean people going and doing the dead fly up here and jumping all around and I don't know, laughing and doing things.

I'm afraid to bring a friend. And then you do bring a friend and the whole time you're just going, God help me,

God help me, God help me. Please. And you're watching their faces. There's all this shenanigans going around.

By the grace of God, if you teach a Sunday school class and you say to yourself, no matter who comes today,

I have a message for them. It's Christ Jesus, the God -man, the incarnate

Son of God who came and died on a cross and was raised from the dead. That's who I have to offer you. I don't have anybody else.

If you're bored with him, I don't know what to tell you. The God -man, that's who we are going to proclaim. Paul was smart enough.

He could have proclaimed himself easily. He says, I have an announcement. By the way, that's a present tense.

Over and over and over. If you're an apostle or anyone else, you preach Christ.

A teacher, Sunday school teacher, your parent, that's what you should teach your children. And he says something here in a language, the

Greek language, it's hard for us to understand. We preach Christ. It's easy to say, we preach about Jesus, but here with this language for emphasis, we preach

Christ. That's how you know who we are. 2 Corinthians 4, for what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.

You want to bring a friend to the church? We'd love you to bring a friend to the church. First, preach them the Gospel and then say, I'm going to take you to a place where what you hear is, they sing about Jesus, they read

Scriptures about Jesus, they pray through Jesus' mediatorial advocacy, and they preach about Jesus, they baptize and talk about Jesus, they have communion and talk about Jesus.

If you don't like Jesus, this is a bad church for you. That's what we do. That's what you do when you teach your kids.

This is not a system of philosophy that Paul preaches. He's preaching the Messiah. I love

Heidelberg Catechism. They knew what it was like to preach Christ so that you would mature. Listen to this.

It's just brilliant. What is your only comfort in life and death? You're in your deathbed.

What's your hope? What's your comfort? You've got a long life to live and you're just in high school or college. What's your hope and comfort?

It's a horrible world. What's your hope and comfort? Unsaved spouse. What's your hope and comfort? Unsaved kids.

What's your hope and comfort? Money, success, credit cards, big house, got it going on with the portfolio.

Listen to Heidelberg Catechism. That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul both in life and death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood and has set me free from all the power of the devil.

He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my Heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head.

Indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, He assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

That's proclaiming Christ. Spurgeon said, when I cease to proclaim salvation by faith in Christ, put me into a lunatic asylum for you may be sure that my mind is gone.

And I like Paul because he practiced what he preached. Go to chapter 2. Paul is saying, we proclaim

Him, we proclaim Him, we proclaim Him. You read Colossians 1 .15 .20. He proclaims

Christ. And now in chapter 2 as well. He practiced what he preached. This is what

I'm after. I'm after not here for some peppy pickup sermon to get me through another week.

I'm here to have someone say, you know all these things that you look at the world and the system and things that are competing for the glory of God and for your attention, there's somebody else who's greater.

There's a greater God and when you see Him, what the world offers is just fake.

It's plastic. It doesn't stand up to it. Here's the Golden Gate Bridge. Take a look at it.

Why are we focused over here on Plato Bridge? Colossians 2.

Paul is just showing people, look at who Christ is. Focus on Christ. Keep your gaze on Christ.

Glance at the problems. But you gaze on Christ and you watch what happens. Colossians 2 .13.

And you who were dead in your trespasses, in the uncircumcision of your flesh spiritually,

God made alive with Him. It's all about God. It's all about Christ Jesus.

He made us. He co -quickened us. Father, Son, and Spirit.

Salvation of the Lord. Spurgeon said, that must be

God's work. Many man may reform himself, but how can man give himself a new heart?

God did it. Some people buy houses and they fix them up. It's a good job to do.

Fix them up. Well, when God saw our house, it couldn't be fixed up.

Just put the new windows in, it'll be fine. A new roof, it'll be okay. Some new plaster, it'll be fine.

God says, here's how this house is going to be fixed up. Wrecking ball. Destruction.

Because we didn't just need a little fixing up, we needed a complete, I was going to say makeover. That sounds stupid.

Don't just need a little paint job. Because everything in the house is broken.

The electricity doesn't work. The roof doesn't work. The walls don't work. The phone doesn't work. Nothing works.

So what does God do? He regenerates us. He quickens us. He makes us alive.

And by the way, if two people in the universe could make us alive, I'd preach both. But since only one can make us alive, we with Paul and everyone else preaches

Christ Jesus. See, if there's two saviors, you wouldn't mind if I preach two people.

Let's preach Jesus and let's preach Glenn Beck.

I'm amazed how Christians listen to Glenn Beck and then what he does is he has theological words but with different meanings.

And we hear what we want to hear as we listen to these false messiahs. But if there were two saviors,

Buddha and Jesus, you wouldn't mind if I didn't say, Him we proclaim half the time.

But there's only one that can take a sinner who's dead and trespasses in sin, whose heart is uncircumcised, and then

God says, you're now alive. Live. With the same power that He creates the universe,

He recreates people. Listen to S. Lewis Johnson yesterday. He said people are like, you know, in numbers.

You mean to tell me God can make a donkey that talks? Who can make a donkey talk?

And S. Lewis said, he said to the guy, who can make a donkey? Who can take a donkey and make them alive?

So Paul is saying, that's why I talk about God. We believe in monergism. God alone working in salvation.

Do we respond? Of course. But who's on first? The cause of your salvation. Right there in the text.

Take a look at it again. God made us alive. We were impotent spiritually.

Churches want us we proclaim, pastor we proclaim, congregational size we proclaim, buildings we proclaim.

I'll show you a church that's on its way down into spiritual dwarfism. But here,

He made you alive. So that's why Paul says, we preach Him. Not man and God as co -authors.

Not man alone. God forbid. And then He just keeps going. This God that Jesus, that Paul proclaims,

Jesus Christ, He does all kinds of things. Here's a God I proclaim to you. Verse 13,

Having forgiven all your transgressions. Can you imagine? If you're a Christian today, God has granted you forgiveness.

Just how many sins can a person commit in their lifetime? Just how many sins does it take for God to banish you and do eternal judgment because of His justice?

And God is forgiving us every one of our sins? We all have skeletons. We all have issues.

And here the word for forgiveness is where we get the word grace. He granted us a favor.

Can I ask a favor of you, please? Oh, I'd like to do you a favor. The favor God gives at the expense of His Son is forgiveness.

And this is not the word for missing the mark sin. This is transgression. It's at the end of a sentence, emphatic, high -handed sin.

That's why I love these verses in the Psalms. How blessed is he whose transgression is what? Forgiven.

Oh, Lord, if You should mark iniquities, who could stand but there is forgiveness with You? Armica, who is a

God like You who pardons iniquity? Paul says, you know, I'm just going to keep proclaiming

Christ. Look at the next part of the verse. In verse 14, rather. He cancels out the debt of sin. That's why we proclaim

Christ. Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile towards us.

This debt, that's where we get the word from chiropractic. Chiro is hand. There's a debt against us.

And it's written in hand, as it were. This is just a good way to think about it. And so if I got a debt against you back in those days,

I would write it on some animal skin, probably, and I would write it, and I would give it to you, or I could keep a copy as well, write one for myself.

And here the text is saying, God can take something like an eraser and erase the debt that was against us for all of our sins erased.

What's the point? Paul is trying to say, no matter how many times you've sinned or what you've done in your past,

God erases it. I'm thankful for that. I know

He can do a work that I can't do. Friends, I can't even erase sins out of my own mind that I did before I was saved and after I was saved.

Yet God can erase every one of those sins. If two people could erase them, then I'd preach two people.

The sin debt against God has been blotted out. It means to wipe off or to erase.

You've got a black marker. Except like upstairs in the room at IBS, sometimes I go up there to teach a class, and I think, somebody has taken indelible ink and doodled on my wall.

Not my wall, whatever it is. Whiteboard. You know what? In ten years from now, we're not even going to know what a whiteboard is because it's all going to be linked up to the computer like they have now.

I think Dave Myers knows something about that. And it's,

I can't get it off. Scrub. From now on, I'm going to say to Caleb Johanson, I got a job for you. Okay, I'll do whatever you say.

Scrub that off. You can't do it. Friends, even if we could deal with our sins by this.

You know what? I've sinned a lot in the past, but I'm not going to sin one more time as long as I live. Our sins in the past that have been indelibly marked against the law of God must be punished.

One sin, right? That's James 2, verse 10. And yet God relieved the debt by punishing

Jesus in our place. Isaiah 43, I am the one who wipes out your transgression.

Same language. Paul can't stand it. He just keeps going on. Look at the text in verse 14.

And he's taken it out of the way. Not just wiped it out, but takes it away. Same language.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then with finality, what does

Paul do? He talks about this Christ who, having done all this, verse 14, nailed it to the cross.

The document itself is gone. The charge that was put above Jesus was our charge.

And then it gets better. You don't need crazy Christian quote -unquote

TV. If you want spiritual warfare, watch this. Verse 15, Paul is preaching Christ.

He wants the church of Colossae to grow up. You preach Christ at Sunday school, your kids mature. You preach

Christ at home, your kids mature. Preach Christ from the pulpit, they mature.

And here, what else did Jesus do? Could there even be anything else? He vanquishes Satan and all the hordes of Satan.

And when He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him.

He disarmed the rulers. Here's the picture. It's figurative language all pointing to one thing.

Jesus triumphs over evil and Satan and his minions. But here's the language. It could be two different ways you could look at it.

That here Jesus is, and all the demons are grabbing Him from every side, trying to pull

Him down. Trying to hold on to Him. Trying to grab Him. And they're just trying to kind of gorilla glue themselves on with their nasty fingernails, as it were, and they're attached to Him.

I mean, this is figurative language because these are, for the most part, invisible beings, unless they would inhabit someone.

But they're all grabbing Jesus. And it's like Jesus, like a bad tunic, just rips them all off.

He displays triumph over them. Or it could be the demons, as it were, had weapons and they had arms and they had different things to attack

Jesus and He just strips them of their weapons and armor.

Puts them to public shame. Either way, Jesus is triumphing over them and that's what the text says.

Having triumphed over them through Him. Back in the old days, if you were an adulteress, they'd cut off your hair and the society would just treat you like a pariah.

Here Jesus, publicly, makes all these look like a pariah in front of everyone.

Triumphed over them through Him. So Paul has practiced what he's preaching. By the way, if you have weak faith,

I'm starting to get hot. How about you? We're just going to reload for a second. If you're weak and struggling,

I can't seem to do that. I don't have enough strength. Life is difficult. It's hard to be a

Christian and say no to sin. It's hard to love my wife like Christ loved the church. It's hard to submit to Him.

It's hard to evangelize. I feel weak. I've fallen last week. I don't seem to measure up.

Life is difficult. This is kind of a down season in my life spiritually. Why do you think we proclaim

Christ? Because a weak faith that has the right object is where we want to go.

Listen to Sinclair Ferguson. True faith takes its character and quality from its object and not from itself.

Faith gets a man out of himself and into Christ. Its strength, therefore, depends on the character of Christ.

Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others. Oh, I struggle with my salvation.

What do you do if you struggle with your salvation? Years ago, I struggled with my salvation. What do you do?

I need my salvation assurance back. I need my assurance back. I need my assurance back. I need my assurance back. I'm focused on my weak faith again and my weak assurance, and I'm going to find myself never getting out of that.

So when you find someone who's got assurance of salvation issues and they theologically believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, et cetera, but they're struggling with those things, what do you tell them?

Do better. Keep going. Pray more. Stop it. You could say a variety of things, but here's what you should say.

Let me remind you who Jesus Christ is again. Your faith isn't the Savior. Your will isn't the

Savior. He's the Savior. And so you preach Christ Jesus to people, and as you preach Christ Jesus, then that person says, you know what, at least this is how

I did it 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. The claims of Christ Jesus, I believe them.

And I'm willing to stake my eternal life on these facts. It doesn't mean if my faith is not as strong as Billy Graham's or John MacArthur's or Mary Schleser's, but you know what, on my deathbed when

I die, I'm going to say Jesus Christ is Lord. He's the only one that I can trust. He's the one that I believe is the only

Savior, and He died in my place and was raised from the dead, and I'm staking all on Him. That's the work of the

Spirit of God. Weak faith, strong object. By the way, if you ask me, why do

I preach 45, 55 minutes on a hot day? Because I want you to grow. Number three, the right process.

Let's go to Colossians 1, verse 28, the right process. So how does a church honor Christ? Number one, since He bought the church,

He should determine what the purpose of the church is. So we need to have the right purpose, maturity. He bought the church.

He died for the church. He redeemed the church. He planned it all out in eternity past with the Father and the

Spirit. So we want to preach Him. He's the one whose fame needs to increase.

And lastly, you need to have the right process. And I call this Holy Spirit -energized sweat.

Holy Spirit -energized sweat. It's going to be a very easy illustration today. I hope this is

Holy Spirit -energized. Paul wasn't some kind of hyper person that said, it's lay back and let

God, pietistically just let God do all the work. He knew, like Kuyper did, if there's a pulley up in heaven that you can't see, but the rope comes down, one rope over that pulley comes down, and here's the rope of, it's the

Spirit of God who works. We can't do anything. The sovereignty of the Spirit of God. I'm grabbing hold of that.

Paul is simultaneously grabbing hold of another side of the same rope that says, we don't just lay back and let

God. We respond to God's grace with what? Work and toil and responsibility.

Is God sovereign? Is man responsible? The answer is what? God sovereignly works and matures

His church through the hard work of men and women. I love that.

Take a look at the passage. Him we proclaim, warning everyone. That's the first thing

Paul was required to do as he proclaimed Christ. How did he proclaim Christ? By warning.

You say, you know what? I am so tired of ministries that warn other ministries.

Warn about other ministries. They do this wrong. They do that wrong. Stay away from this.

I don't like that. Now, I think churches can be too much, we contend and everybody's wrong, and we're the only ones who's right.

And soon we're going to see you've got to teach the positive. But Paul said if you want to be mature, you're going to have to know what's right and what's wrong.

And if you've got kids over there, show me a kid. Sometimes your kids will come to me.

If you want to come and let them be babysat at our house, I'm going to get some jacks and some marbles and some safety pins and I'll put them all in the center of the room and I'll put your kid to the side and just let them go.

Over they go. What's the first thing kids do? Pick them up and put them in their mouth.

They've got to try them out. And if you're a good parent, what do you do? It won't take long for him to learn when that needle hits his tongue.

Parents do what? They put sense into. Now, it's a little bit different with a little kid because they can't understand all these things.

But you say, no, that's bad for you. That's wrong. Don't do that. And that's exactly what

Paul was doing. This is a bad teaching. If you want to grow, you will throw away your

Joyce Meyer books. That's what admonishment is. You will throw them away. And you will say, you know what?

First of all, she's not qualified to preach to men. Second of all, when you believe Jesus Christ had to pay an atoning sacrifice to Satan, something's wrong.

Yeah, but Pastor, he says stuff about these people all the time. Friends, I want you to grow.

I want you to learn. I'm not any better than anyone else, but I've been given a charge and here's the charge.

If you want to groan, I have groaned. If you want to groan, if you want to grow in grace, is what

I wanted to say, then I've got to put it into your mind. Wolf. Wolf.

Paul said after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. From among your own selves, men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.

Be on the alert. Remembering that night and day for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish you with tears.

Admonishing is good. Correcting behavior is good. Paul didn't say, well, you know what?

If I admonish by talking about false teachers or correct behavior, nobody will show up.

I was thinking the other day, to the glory of God, I can probably say about anything I want to you and you'll still come, as long as it's from the text.

Matter of fact, if I don't keep telling you things from the text, you'll leave. That's a sign of maturity.

Good job, church. A man said to Socrates, Socrates, I hate you because every time

I meet you, you make me see what I am. Why do we preach sin at this church?

Because we have the vanquisher of sin. And when you know how bad sin is, you know how great Jesus Christ is.

Here's a little recipe for you if you struggle with depression. Here's one factor that you need to consider.

Depression does this. I believe what the world says and I deserve this. I deserve it all.

The good life, the best life, the filled life, the money life, the life that they sell on advertisements, on TV and in the print.

I deserve this. And you know what the world delivers? This. And the gap between what you think you deserve and what you actually get in this day and age of what?

It's going to happen more and more and more when people think the government just owes me things.

Entitlement, entitlement, entitlement. And now it's going to be spiritual entitlement as well. I'm entitled.

Here is what I get. But the world doesn't deliver because A, God is sovereign. B, evil is real.

The world has fallen. And the difference is depression. So what does a faithful pastor or faithful apostle do?

He says this. This is what you deserve right here. You deserve this right here.

You deserve a hell so bad for sinning against such a holy God who created you, who designed you to worship

Him. And you just spit in His face and did everything you wanted, didn't believe

Him, attacks on His character, and you deserve hell forever. You deserve all your family, like Edwards would talk about there, standing at the gates of hell, every one of your family members, father and mother and brothers and aunts and grandparents, all standing there saying,

God, throw him in hell. He deserves it. Throw him in. He won't worship

Jesus. Throw him in. That's what we deserve. Yet what do we get based on Christ's work?

What do we get? He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Forgiveness. Adoption. Communion. Hope. Trust. We have everything.

And what's the difference between what you get and what you have been given? Mercy, grace.

But I'm thinking joy. Sometimes on my worst days, I'm driving down the street and I go,

I deserve hell. It's pretty good. That's why when I go to Hannaford and I say to the people, it's not like other parts of the country where people say,

Hi, how are you? You're a customer. You're valued here. Do you need a coupon? Somebody else has got one.

How are you? It happens right down here at this store. Are you sick?

So I have to make them talk. Hi, how are you today? Once I say that, they usually say,

I'm fine, how are you? And I say, I'm better than I deserve. They don't know what to do.

I mean, if you don't have a step in your jump thinking, God has chosen me in eternity past, I get to go to heaven.

I can't help you by saying, you know what? Here's how you have your best life now.

Your best life isn't now. You can have a wonderful life now with sin and pain and toil and hardship because we know the promises of God.

But the best is coming. John Newton said, my grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart and to heal the broken.

He teaches positively. We've got to finish this. He teaches positively, teaching every man. Doctrine.

Why do I have to know doctrine? Doctrine divides. I don't want all this doctrine, all this stuff. Friends, I'm trying to have you see

Christ, who is incarnate doctrine. A fact about God is doctrine. And if you want to grow and learn and say no to temptations and be more mature, have more joy, you need to have doctrine.

That's why we have IBS class. That's why we have doctrinal preaching. Jesus was a doctrinal preacher. Paul was a doctrinal preacher.

Isaiah was a doctrinal preacher. It just means instruction. That's all. Truth about God.

And they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' doctrine and the fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer.

He does it with wisdom. Look at the text. With all wisdom. There's a certain way to do it to make people see the relevance of admonishment, to see the relevance of teaching.

And then he has this great dependent sweat on God. Look at that in verse 29. For this I toil.

I'm a constant, tireless worker, struggling with all the energy that he powerfully works within me.

By the power of the resurrection, I struggle. Paul didn't have a good constitution. You say, boy, that guy really is sold out for the

Lord. He just got a good constitution. No, that wasn't Paul. He was a broken man.

And yet he labored. Look at that word labor. Or toil. It means to work so hard you sweat.

It means to work so hard you have to go home and sit down on your couch and go... And when you learn about Christ Jesus and what

He's done, and you're admonished and you're taught in a wise way, you're going to do that all the more.

I think many of you do it, but I'd like to encourage the rest. If you don't have a ministry that so exhausts you physically, mentally, spiritually, or any other way, that you go home and say,

God, I'm exhausted. You need to get one of those ministries. Because that will take your focus right off yourself.

I'm just so exhausted. But you know what? I'm weary in the work. I'm not weary of it. As the slogan goes.

It's to work hard. Actually, striving there is where we get the word agony.

Agony. According, verse 29, to His power which mightily works within me.

So here's the scoop. We have a really good time now at the church. It's an exciting time.

The Lord is blessing us. Do you know the Lord is blessing Bethlehem Bible Church? Not because of us, but because God has just chosen to bless us.

And we can have ten people, or we can have a thousand. Neither of those show blessing. Here's where the blessing has come.

He's maturing people. He's maturing people. Men and women are maturing.

And instead of calling me all the time, saying, Pastor, could you come and do this? You know the kind of phone calls I'm getting now? Pastor, I just wanted to call you and tell you what the

Lord did through me as I helped this other saint. It's exciting. But now it will be a good test for us.

The test of the new land, prosperity, new building. What are we going to do? It's going to be a good test for Bethlehem Bible Church.

So I want to remind you, my goal is for you to mature, to look more like Christ. And we're going to do that by preaching the

Bible. It's not going to be preaching all kinds of fundraising. I'm not going to pull out next week, I'm going to take

Malachi 3 out of context, 3 and 4 out of context, for a double ten -week whammy on how you're going to give like the

Old Testament. I'm not going to do that. We're just going to keep going. Chapter 7 next week.

By the way, read Chapter 7 next week at the end of it, and you'll go, who would ever preach a sermon like that in their entire lives? Betrothed?

But we're just going to keep preaching, because God uses that teaching, that admonishing, to make us mature. Our goal is maturation.

And here's the greatest news of all. Are you ready? I see a lot of fans going, if you're a Christian, one day you'll be perfectly mature.

When phones go off now, everybody's afraid to turn them off, because you'll be had. You have to have mercy on some.

You have to have judgment on the others. Ushers? I told you one time

I was... People falling asleep in church, that's worse than the phones. And I remember one time

I was super late, I was staying up all night long, in full -time work, full -time seminary, full -time ministry, preaching every week, and I sat in the front row one time at Grace Community Church, and I couldn't stop my head bobbing when

John MacArthur was preaching. It was the worst. John thought

I was slain in the spirit or something, I don't know. The right purpose, your maturity, the right person, preach

Christ the right way through labor energized by the

Spirit of God. Sunday school teachers, IBS teachers, personal evangelism,

Jesus Christ is the one we proclaim. He's the one. No maturity any other way.

And then it's so good, because whatever happens to our local church here, whatever happens to the buildings, if you're maturing, you mature.

A bunch of trees fell down on the new property last week, and there's some leaking in the roof and all this, and you know what? It's God's problem.

God will have to help us. It's nothing that major. As we come to the communion table, here's what we do.

We're going to proclaim Him with something super simple. The pomp and circumstance of the

Old Testament, nothing like it. Some people like high churches, smells and bells and liturgy, and vestments and all kinds of stuff and staffs.

That is all hearkening back to what? Israel. With all that pomp and circumstance, and now we come to the

Lord's table with sublimity, with simpleness. Here's what Jesus said when it comes to remembering me.

Here's how you remember the carpenter who added human flesh and died for sinners and was raised from the dead.

Here's how you remember me. No smoke, no vestments, nothing purple, no chanting, no trumpets, a piece of bread, and a cup of wine or juice.

I'd like you to bow your heads as I move down to the table and just ask the Lord to prepare your hearts to receive the