True Fellowship with God & His Church | 1 John 1:3

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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So, you can see from your bulletins today, the name of the sermon is,

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True Fellowship with God and His Church, and based on 1 John 1, verses 3 -7.

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True Fellowship, True Koinonia, with God and His Church. That's the theme for today's message.

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And, I wanted to also give an update on the church, and what's been going on regarding our founding, and the founding documents, and that kind of thing.

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So, my phone is not acting nice again.

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Okay, apologies, let me switch. I was prepared for that this time, so, actually,

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I'm so dumb. I actually, I printed out my notes today, so, we're covered.

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So, we're carefully trying to work out how to operate as a free church, that is neither incorporated nor licensed by the state, because Christ is our only head, not

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Caesar. And, we are called to be a prophetic voice to the outside world and to the political sphere.

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So, we are taking our time to ensure that we do things decently and orderly, before we start accepting donations and things like that.

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I believe that God has us right where we need to be, and He's leading us into doing these things with patience, and with much biblical deliberation.

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So, and I'm also very deeply grateful for all of you who are with us. We really, truly have some amazing saints that have encouraged and helped us tremendously throughout this process.

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And, one of our dear sisters found an excellent ministry from Peter Kershaw called HushMoney .org, which was, it was funny that the same exact phrase that I was using when

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I first brought this up, in the message that I gave on 1 John, the first message, about how the, describing how the federal government silences churches with these supposed tax benefits.

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Because there's another aspect to this in which a 501c3 church status requires you to first become a corporation, a corporation that is governed by the state.

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And, you become subject to the church, to the state's jurisdiction. And the state becomes your head, therefore, and tells you what you can and cannot say as a church.

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So, essentially, you become a state church licensed by the government. And this is unacceptable, according to the

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Word of God. We cannot allow this. We must be able to speak freely according to God's Word, and not, like the

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Apostle said in the book of Acts, that we listen, you know, judge for yourself whether we must listen to God rather than man.

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So, churches really need to wake up to this and stop taking the hush money that they don't even need. We need to trust

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God for this. And, some more history about where this 501c3 exemption came from is that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the one who proposed this amendment that placed restrictions on 501c3 organizations.

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And, he was not a friend of the church by any means. He was an enemy of the church.

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And, the Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U .S. Tax Code since 1954 that prohibits all 501c3 nonprofit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates.

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And, as part of his political agenda, Johnson had in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence that the church always had on shaping public policy.

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Prior to 1954, there was no such thing as a 501c3 church. So, this is all barely new.

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Like, this is only 50 -some years old. All donations, contributions, gifts, etc. given to churches were automatically tax deductible under the old

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English common law known as the Law of Charities. Then, in 1954, Senator Johnson, from Texas at the time, sponsored legislation which brought churches under the new 501c3 section of the

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Internal Revenue Code. In the early 20th century, some politicians, including

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President Donald Trump, have sought to repeal the provision, arguing that it restricts free speech rights of churches and other religious groups.

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In fact, on May 4, 2017, Trump signed an executive order to defend the freedom of religion and speech for the purpose of easing the

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Johnson Amendment's restrictions. And, sadly, you know, Biden is completely tyrannical with respect to this issue as well, and he is not helping the church at all.

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And so, that's why we're deeply grateful for ministries like Peter Kershaw and Chuck Baldwin who are helping to set churches free from state bondage.

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I'm personally also very grateful for Pastor G. Craig Lewis' messages. He's the one who first brought this to my attention many years ago, whom

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I mentioned before. So, we want to be very careful with what commitments we make and how we relate the church to the state.

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But, like I mentioned last time, this is a blatant violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution. It explicitly says that Congress shall make no law whatsoever with respect to any religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

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So, this is unacceptable for us. Now, we continue to covet your prayers so that God will continue granting us the wisdom to govern

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His church according to His word and to serve under His sole headship. Amen? So, the issue of how to properly govern a church in light of the state also closely relates to what 1

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John tells us about what is true koinonia. Koinonia is, like I mentioned before, to have something in common with, have something in common, common fellowship.

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Now, if we turn to our text for this afternoon, 1

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John 1, verses 3 -4. So, in verse 4, the word says,

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And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things to you so that our joy may be complete, or your joy may be complete.

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Last week, I said that true fellowship or koinonia of the church is grounded in and defined by the doctrine of Christ, who is the

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Logos of Life, the Word of Life that John mentions in the second verse. And as another clarification here, when

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I said that Christ is both the living Word and the written Word, what I meant was that Christ is obviously the living

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Word. He is a person. He is a living person. But His thoughts and doctrine are also the written

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Word, because He is the source. He is the source of the written Word, the written Word of God, the

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Bible. That is why He is both. And that's exactly what John tells us. The Logos of Life is the message of the gospel, the message of salvation, that Christ died for sinners, and it's the person of Christ Himself, the incarnate

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Christ, the pre -incarnate Christ, all of the above. And so, this is what constitutes a true church with a true fellowship, a true koinonia, one that holds to and believes the common doctrine of Christ and His Word, preaches the

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Word faithfully, and lives out His Word according to Christ's commands. And the historic

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Protestant and Reformed church has always recognized this in their confessions, in the confessions. For example, and I've read this, those of you who have sat with the classes that I've taught and the studies that I've led,

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I've made reference to this plenty of times in the past. Article 29 of the

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Belgian Confession is the section on the marks of the true church. And it says this, the true church can be recognized if it has the following marks, the marks of a true church.

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The church engages in the pure preaching of the gospel. It makes use of the pure administration of the sacraments as Christ instituted them, which is baptism and the

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Lord's Supper. And it practices church discipline for correcting faults.

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In short, it governs itself according to the pure Word of God, rejecting all things contrary to it and holding

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Jesus Christ as the only head, the only head. Churches should therefore not incorporate because Christ is both the universal and local church's sole head, the only head.

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And we must reject the federal government's anti -Christ policies along with the cesspool of hypocrisy, godlessness, and immorality, and all other things contrary to God's Word.

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It is as Matthew 6 .24 says, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

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You cannot serve both God and mammon, possessions, things, right?

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You cannot properly serve God according to His Word while compromising with government hush money.

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That's just the bottom line. And the article, the

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Belgic Confession continues here. By these marks one can be assured of recognizing the true church and no one ought to be separated from it.

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No one ought to be separated from it. We must therefore, in other words, maintain koinonia, fellowship, with a faithful local church.

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That is our responsibility as believers, which is what 1 John says. Have true fellowship with us.

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Like the Bible says in Hebrews 10 .24 -25, Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

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And the article continues here. As for those who can belong to the church, we can recognize them by the distinguishing marks of Christians.

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So first it explains the marks of the true church, and then it's going to explain the marks of a true Christian. Namely, by faith, and by their fleeing from sin and pursuing righteousness, once they have received the one and only

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Savior, Jesus Christ. They love the true God and their neighbors without turning to the right or left, and they crucify the flesh and its works.

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These are the evidences of a true believer. And just an excellent summary of what the

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Bible teaches on this matter. And similarly, the 39 articles of the

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Anglican Church has a pretty good section about this as well.

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Article 19 is of the church, and it says this, The visible church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments be duly administered according to Christ's ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same, or required to the same.

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As the church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch have erred, so also the church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters of faith.

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So this article here has an additional helpful section explaining that, recognizing that the church of Rome is not a true fellowship.

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It's not a true church because it doesn't have a true fellowship. Why? Because they err in matters of faith, in matters of doctrine, in matters of life, and religious practice.

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So that is how we can judge true and false fellowships in churches and believers, which we have the obligation to do biblically.

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So now, I know a lot of what I'm saying here goes against the grain of popular...

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the way things are commonly done. Most churches are 501c3. Like 90 % of churches are 501c3.

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And so, we do need to show balance and grace because of this reality that, unfortunately, most churches have entangled themselves with the state in this fashion.

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So we should be understanding and encouraged, but continue to encourage other churches to stop compromising with the state and to do the right thing, and make

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Christ their only head once again. So, now we can start shifting our attention to the second koinonia that John addresses in verse 3, and to our question from last week.

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So, the first koinonia was about true fellowship in the church with us, with the believers.

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Second koinonia is this. In addition to determining what a biblical church fellowship is, what should our koinonia, our fellowship with God the

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Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ, look like? How should we relate to God now?

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This requires biblical discernment so that we can judge true and false koinonias, or fellowships, of churches and of God.

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We need to know biblical discernment. And here is another very important point of application.

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It is, therefore, your responsibility to judge and find a biblical church fellowship and to determine how to properly fellowship and relate with the triune

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God according to His Word. It is our responsibility. Nobody is going to do it for you, and God is not going to just reveal it to you by osmosis or through prayer.

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You have to study diligently and take responsibility for this.

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God will guide you through prayer, but you must do your homework and judge for yourself, like the Bible says, according to the

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Scripture. It is dangerous to over -spiritualize the judgment of true and false churches with unbiblical notions, such as,

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God hasn't led me to that church, or God hasn't told me to leave my church yet. And this is completely false and contrary to what the

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Bible says. On the contrary, God commands us to judge for ourselves. We must make that judgment.

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1 Thessalonians 5 .21 categorically says, Test everything. Examine all things.

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Hold fast what is good. Amen? It's plain. It's very, very clear.

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And back to 1 John now. In 1 John, if we turn to chapter 4, in 1

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John, John is going to talk about this a little bit more as well, later on. In 1

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John 4, I'm going to read verses 1 and 6. 1

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John 4, verses 1 and 6, which reads, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, test the spirits, to see whether they are from God.

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For many false prophets have gone out into the world. We are from God. That's verse 6.

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We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us.

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By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. Amen?

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So God has made it our responsibility to discern and judge those who truly know

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Him and truly listen to God, to the God -breathed teaching of the apostles. Very important lesson here.

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We must understand this properly because so many different false pieties and notions of,

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Oh, well, God doesn't let me to do this or God doesn't let me to do that or to leave my church. You have to judge. You have to judge the teaching of the church.

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You have to judge what's going on in the church. Are they practicing discipline? Are they administering the sacraments faithfully? Are they preaching the word faithfully?

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That's our responsibility to do. And so, likewise, we must judge how to properly relate to God according to Scripture.

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Which is what 1 John is showing us by the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith. The Analogia Fide and the

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Analogia Scripturae. That's John taking other parts of the Scriptures, other teachings of the

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Bible and incorporating them into his letter in 1 John. And so, this brings me to another clarification that I wanted to make from last week.

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One of the main reasons why we must have our powers of discernment trained by constant practice, constant practice to distinguish good from evil, that's

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Hebrews 5 .14, is because oftentimes the errors are not so obvious to spot.

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And we must learn to chew the meat and spit out the bones so that we can mature with more solid doctrinal food to advance from milk to food, to doctrinal solid food.

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This applies to many of the errors that I've mentioned before already. Pietism, mysticism, anti -doctrinal and anti -intellectual movements that put an emphasis on experience or on emotion over and against doctrine and understanding, which is the main priority according to what

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God says. Now, these are all erroneous ways of relating to God.

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But their errors are often clothed or disguised in pious -sounding language. They sound very pious.

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And the people in error are oftentimes completely unaware of their own biases and imbalances because they often assume their errors and faulty traditions as being biblical instead of carefully investigating the matter which

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God clearly instructs us to do, which I previously mentioned, to test everything, to test all things.

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And a few more here just to make the point. Proverbs 16 .16

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How much better to get wisdom than gold? To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. So in other words, the analogy here that the

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Scriptures repeatedly makes about wisdom is wisdom has to be dug out. You have to dig wisdom out of the

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Scriptures. We have to study it. We have to listen to good teaching and preaching to dig out wisdom from the

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Scriptures. We must seek it out. You have to mine for wisdom and dig it out of God's Word and from the sound doctrine and teaching of faithful men.

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Proverbs 25 .2 also says It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search them out.

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Searching out a matter. Investigating things to make sure that they are true.

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Just like the Bereans did in Acts 17 .11. Right? The apostles themselves came, brought the teaching of the

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Gospel, and the Bereans did the right thing by submitting their teaching to the Scriptures, to the Old Testament at the time to see whether those things were so, were true and confirmed in the

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Bible. That is how we must do all things. Everything. So these people with these erroneous beliefs and traditions and the pietists and stuff like that, they will say pious things like,

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Oh, we don't hold to traditions of men. We hold to Scripture alone. We just hold the Bible.

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We don't hold to men or we don't follow after men. Ironically and sadly, those who fail to recognize their religious biases and traditions, which we all have, it's unavoidable.

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We all have them, are the most ensnared and enslaved by them. If you fail to acknowledge your religious convictions and biases and traditions, you will be ensnared and enslaved and blinded by them.

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You're going to have these religious blinders on that won't let you to see the truth for what it is. And the point here is not to rid ourselves of tradition altogether.

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That's not the point. Not all tradition is bad. And it's impossible because the

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Bible and Christianity are ancient history. They're ancient. And humans are creatures of habit.

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God is a God of order, system, order, peace, and tradition helps to establish, helps to continue and to build on that order.

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Good tradition, biblical tradition, not the pharisaical tradition of men that replaced the commandments of God with the commandments of men.

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Amen. So the Bible says once again, we must test our traditions by the word of God, reforming the bad ones or throwing them out and upholding the good ones to test everything and hold fast what is good, including traditions that are good and sound and wholesome and biblical.

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So Romans 12, 9 similarly says, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast, hold fast to what is good, hold fast to what agrees with Scripture.

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And if it is good, like Jesus said, he who is with me, he who is with me is not against me.

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So if it agrees with Scripture, it is good. That's how we know if it is good. Does it agree with the word of God, with the whole counsel of God?

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Even the errors, however, are not necessarily explicit, like I mentioned, and are often cleverly hidden with like the pious sounding language and that kind of thing.

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But with discernment, they become more evident. That's why discernment is so important.

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We need discernment to spot these things out more clearly. Again, you will not necessarily hear pietists.

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This is what I was trying to clarify. You will not hear pietists and people like this explicitly say that emotion and experience are more important than studying the

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Bible and theology. They won't necessarily flat out tell you that. They will imply it by what they say.

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You will see it in what they teach, what they emphasize, what they stress as most important by what they do.

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That's how you know. You look at the fruit, look at the pattern, look at what they say is most important and what they do in their life, in their everyday life.

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The reason I'm drawing attention to these unbiblical spiritualities is because obviously a lot of us came from this unhealthy form of spirituality.

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And because more of their dangers lie ahead. These dangers are pervasive and they affect many areas.

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And because they are so common. They are incredibly common. This is very... Even in reformed churches and more conservative churches, they tend to be very common.

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And there are many dangers to over -spiritualizing due to these imbalances.

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Even from men who are generally often very sound. Now, I want to lay out a maxim here.

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A very important maxim. By maxim, I mean something...

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A true statement. A true principle. Theology has consequences.

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Theology has consequences. And bad theology bleeds over to every aspect of our lives.

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Our doctrine and our practice. It bleeds... It affects everything. Just like good theology affects all of these areas as well.

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That is why it is critical to make sure that our doctrine is sound. Is based and grounded in the

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Word. One of the most important ways that we have true fellowship with God and His church is the faithful preaching of God's Word.

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That is... When John is saying, have true fellowship with the Son and with the Father. One of those ways which we relate to God and we nurture our relationship with God is through the faithful preaching of the

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Word, which we read in the Confessions as well. And we read in... We're going to look at the

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Scriptures here shortly. That's why I also mentioned the points about preaching last week.

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Preaching is critical. It's a critical ingredient to our... How we relate... How we judge both things.

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A true fellowship in the church and a true fellowship with God. It's how we judge both properly. Now... But bad theology and bad preaching advice can come even from great men of God like Charles Spurgeon.

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Okay? This is why we need to have our ears open and we need to be careful to discern and not make assumptions about anybody.

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They may be sound in one area and be terrible in another. And we're going to see a good example of this.

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Now, Spurgeon was an excellent writer and an excellent preacher. But he also had some strong biases and imbalances.

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I recently saw a documentary about Spurgeon again by Vision Video. You can watch it on YouTube. That celebrated how he prepared his sermons.

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And what he recommends in his lecture is what too often passes for true biblical koinonia and piety with God.

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Spurgeon wrote a very famous book called Lectures to My Students.

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And they are lectures that he wrote for students who were studying for pastoral ministry under his college.

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Very popular text. And it's a very good one. It has many good things in it. But Lecture 6, called

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On the Choice of the Text, is where he says something here that we want to take a closer look at.

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He says this. He's got very colorful language here.

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But notice what he stresses. Most of his time, he spends praying and waiting for a subject.

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And this is the main part of his study. He continues. What is the right text to preach on?

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That's the question he's asking. How do you know it? We know it by the signs of a friend. When a verse gives your mind a hearty grip from which you cannot release yourself, you will need no further direction as to your proper theme.

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When it grips you. When the text gets a hold of us, we may be sure that we have a hold of it and we may safely deliver our souls upon it.

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If it charms and fascinates you, or it weighs you to your knees and loads you with the burden of the

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Lord, know then that this is the message which the Lord would have you deliver. And feeling this, you will become so bound by the scripture that you will never feel at rest until you have yielded your whole mind to its power and have spoken upon it as the

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Lord shall give you utterance. Wait for that elect word, even if you wait till within an hour of the service.

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This may not be understood by cool calculating men who are not moved by impulses as we are.

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But to some of us, these things are a law in our hearts against which we dare not offend. We tarry at Jerusalem till power is given.

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So that was really hard to stomach when I first read it. I hope we understand why.

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This is really important. This is exactly what I was talking about earlier. Okay, so he basically says that a

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Bible text will not edify the church unless you first spend hours in prayer waiting for it and waiting for it to subjectively grip you.

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So until it subjectively stirs you up and does something to gives you an impulse, then the text is not going to do the people any good.

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That's literally what he's saying is a criteria for making a good sermon. Okay, this is Charles Spurgeon.

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Now, this is completely subjective nonsense.

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We have to reject this wholeheartedly and it's hardcore pietism with a blatant overemphasis on experience and emotion.

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So it's funny because Spurgeon is talking about me. I am one of those cool calculating men who would dare to offend his unbiblical sensibility of preaching and so are the apostles.

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According to this, the apostles themselves were cool calculating men. The Bible says, why?

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Because the Bible says to declare the whole counsel of God and that all scripture is profitable for us.

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All scripture is profitable to preach from. 2nd Timothy 3 .16

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Spurgeon is unwittingly denying this very verse by saying that you have to wait for some subjective response to grip you on a text before you can preach it to the church and benefit them.

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It's nonsense. So what we should do as pastors and what we should look for in a church is for the leaders of the church to pick a book and preach through it because it's the word of God.

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Preach through the whole counsel of God like I mentioned last week about the different kinds of preaching that we should do. The command is clear so there's no need to over -spiritualize the choice of a text to preach on.

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We have explicit instructions from God's word already. It's almost like saying, I'm going to pray about whether I should commit adultery.

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You don't pray about that. You don't do it because God commands you not to do it. Amen. This is where people lose the balance of false piety and spirituality.

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Like Acts 20 .27 says, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

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Preach the whole Bible. Preach all of it. Teach all of it. Doctrinally, topically, verse by verse, the whole nine yards.

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Preach the trees, the big picture, as well as the forest. That is our call. 2 Timothy 4, verses 1 through 4 is also excellent regarding this.

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I really like what the Amplified Bible says about it. It says, I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing in His kingdom.

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Preach the word. Preach the word as an official messenger. Be ready when the time is right and even when it is not.

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Even when it doesn't feel right. Keep your sense of urgency, whether the opportunity seems favorable or unfavorable, whether convenient or inconvenient, whether welcome or unwelcome.

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Correct those who err in doctrine or behavior. Warn those who sin. Exhort and encourage those who are growing toward spiritual maturity with inexhaustible patience and faithful teaching.

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For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine and accurate instruction that challenges them with God's truth, but wanting to have their ears tickled with something pleasing, they will accumulate for themselves many teachers.

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So the Bible is so plainly clear about this. However, the elders of the church still have a responsibility to discern the spiritual condition of the church and to preach on specific topics or issues accordingly.

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Like when I preached on church discipline or on abortion or on biblical eldership, right?

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Because those are all topics that we had to deal with as a church. Any issues that are affecting the local body, that's also not to discount when we think the

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Lord may be leading us to preach a particular message either. I'm not discounting that altogether. I'm just saying, as the norm, we should preach the whole counsel of God and be intentional about it.

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Pick a book and preach through it. So, and even then,

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God leads preachers while they preach through books of the Bible. It is not any less pious or spiritual to preach that way.

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It's actually more faithful, more pious, and more biblical based on God's word and instruction, which we just saw.

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And there's many more scriptures that we can go through. In fact, last week, and even this week,

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I was struggling to prepare the messages. And I was really trying to put things together.

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And during my study, suddenly there came a point where scripture started flooding into my mind.

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And God helped me bring all of these scriptures to remembrance. And it helped me to complete the messages, to put it together.

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So God works in that. God works through these cool, calculating ways of preaching.

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He works in that very way. That's how He works. It's nonsense. I'm sorry, but it's just flat -out nonsense what

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Spurgeon is advocating here. We have to reject it. I hope we see why. God moves through and blesses that kind of deep, systematic, verse -by -verse, topical preaching.

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Spurgeon's advice on how to choose verses to preach from is terrible, unbiblical, and disingenuous.

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It's also extremely disingenuous, and we're going to see why. You're not supposed to pray or feel or grip sermons into existence.

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That's not how it works. That doesn't happen that way. And yet many see this as true piety.

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In fact, that documentary I mentioned, it was celebrating this very thing. Out of all the things they could have quoted from Spurgeon, they quoted that one part that I quoted you.

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It's just plainly false and unbiblical. You're supposed to focus on intentionally studying the verses you're preaching on and ask

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God to guide you in those studies. Ask Him for wisdom and to guide you like the

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Bible says. 2 Timothy 2 .15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who needs not be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth, rightly interpreting, rightly preaching it, rightly understanding it.

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James 1 .5 -6 says, If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask

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God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

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Don't rely on subjective impulses for guidance from God. Don't rely on that.

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Rely on the word of God and on studying the word and on the wisdom from God to help you, guide you, and understand it and through the faithful teachings of other men.

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So, Spurgeon himself and those who like this mystical sermon preparation also seriously fail to recognize the primary reason that Spurgeon's sermons were typically very good is because he read voraciously and studied diligently every single day.

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That is why Spurgeon's messages were so memorable and good and why many still read them today.

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It's not because he prayed and waited for a feeling. It's completely disingenuous to say that.

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We must recognize that God works through means including diligent study in the work of preaching.

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And I've learned this extremely valuable and important lesson from the means of other wise teachers such as Gordon Clark and the

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Southern Presbyterian theologian R .L. Dabney. Wise men will teach you that God uses means.

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God does not divorce his work in a church, in a pastor, in a sermon apart from means, human means of study, of diligence and preparation.

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And that includes prayer as well. I'm not discounting that. It includes prayer, but it includes these means as well.

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And it's what God has commanded us to do. So there you see, even a pastor as great as Spurgeon can still teach terrible theology due to unbiblical biases and imbalances.

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We have to guard ourselves. So now I want to lay down another maxim. One of the most important struggles of the

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Christian life is balance. Balance is one of the most important struggles of the

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Christian life. Balance in the natural versus the spiritual, balance in all matters of faith and life and practice.

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Balance is the key thing. You see many errors in the church from errors of legalism and lordship salvation and pietism and overemphasis on emotion and this and that.

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It's a failure to balance the priorities that God has shown us in the Bible. We need to keep things into proper balance and perspective.

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The first priority is doctrine. We must have sound understanding of the Word of God. That guides and drives everything else.

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That develops and firms up our convictions, our affections, and allows us to then biblically and faithfully express our faith and our emotion and our prayer and our walk and our sanctification and everything else.

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That is what we must balance out as Christians. And I'm trying to equip you all to discern good and bad preaching, good and bad theology, because they are the primary things that affect and determine good and bad fellowship with God and man, which is exactly what 1

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John is teaching us here, along with the rest of Scripture. So here's another specific example that hits much closer to home and which really surprised me as well.

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Let's play a guessing game of Name That Preacher. See if you can figure out who this is. I'm going to read quotes from a prominent preacher's sermons on the

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Song of Solomon. Many churches today, like I said, believe that our koinonia, our fellowship with the

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Triune God, should look like this. We're still answering the question, what does a true fellowship or true koinonia, relationship with God, look like?

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And many think that this is what it looks like. Suppose an infant taken away from its mother and you should seek to foster it, in it, a love to the parent by constantly picturing before it the idea of a mother and attempting to give it the thought of a mother's relation to the child.

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Indeed, my friends, I think you would have a difficult task to fix in that child the true and real love which it ought to bear towards her who bore it.

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But give that child a mother, a real mother, a flesh and blood mother, in other words. Let it hang upon that mother's real breast.

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Let it derive its nourishment from her very heart. Let it see that mother, feel that mother, put its arms about that mother's real neck and you have no hard task to make it love its mother.

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So it is with the Christian. So it is with the Christian. We want

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Christ, not an abstract doctrinal pictured Christ, but a real Christ.

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Until you can feel that he is a real man and a real person, really present with you and that you may speak to him, talk to him and tell him your wants, you will not readily attain to a love like that of the text of the

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Song of Solomon so that you can call him thou whom my soul loveth. I want you to feel, Christian, that your love to Christ is not a mere pious affection but that you, as you love your wife, as you love your child, flesh and blood, as you love your parent, so you love

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Christ. That though your love to him is of a finer cast and a higher mold, yet it is just as real as the more earthly passion.

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Okay? This is so hard to sit through. I'm sorry. But I hope you see the importance of the lesson that we're trying to get from here.

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Right? We obviously cannot even relate to Christ as a physical, earthly relationship.

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He's not physically here with us. He's up in heaven seated at the right hand of God. And he's not coming back until the second coming.

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So we cannot relate to Christ the way we relate to a real flesh and blood person. It's a spiritual relationship.

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Amen? This is earthly minded. It's pietistic and it's hyper experiential.

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And it's imbalanced and it's dangerous. He continues. The early church did not preach much doctrine.

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Yes, they did. They preached Christ. Okay, that's your point.

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They didn't preach doctrine. They preached Christ. Right? They had little to say of truths about Christ.

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It was Christ himself. His hands, his feet, his side, his eyes, his head, his crown of thorns, the sponge, the vinegar, the nails.

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Oh, for the Christ of Mary Magdalene rather than the Christ of the critical theologian. He's calling me out again.

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Give me the wounded body of divinity rather than the soundest system of theology.

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Why would you not want the soundest system of theology? I don't even understand that.

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It's completely imbalanced and unbiblical. Any guess as to who this is? Paul Washer?

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That's kind of close. It's actually Spurgeon again. This is Charles Spurgeon. This is his sermons on the

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Song of Solomon. And to be honest, this is some of the worst teaching I think

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I've ever heard from him. It is horrendous. This blatantly contradicts what 1

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John has been teaching us regarding this kind of thinking. You cannot separate Christ from his doctrine.

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They are one and the same. The logos of life, the word of life is the gospel and it is himself as a person.

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They are one and the same. You cannot separate them. He is the way, the truth, and the life.

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His words are spirit and life. This is nonsense. We have to reject it.

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We're going to have to accept a label of critical theologian if we have to. It's nonsense.

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So we have a spiritual relationship with Christ mediated through his word, through his words.

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We need his words, his doctrine. He is his word and the public and private means of grace, not a physical relationship.

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This is unbiblical typology, unbiblical hermeneutics, unbiblical eschatology because we cannot even fellowship with Jesus as a real person until he comes back and the resurrection.

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Even people up in heaven right now don't have this relationship that he's yearning for.

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They don't even have bodies in heaven. They don't even have that in heaven. They're just disembodied spirits in heaven right now.

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It's ridiculous. So the early church, in fact, he said that comment about the early church did not preach doctrine.

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The early church was even more doctrinal than we are now. Boy, is the church so shallow and superficial these days.

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Everyone, in fact, discussed and had an opinion in the early church about whether the son was not, whether the son was

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God eternally during the time of Arius and Athanasius. This was in the 2 -300s

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AD and grappled, or even earlier, and grappled with the most complex doctrines of the

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Bible, Christology and the Trinity. People would literally talk about this in the marketplace and everybody had an opinion about it.

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Was Jesus God or not? Was he always God or was he a created being like Arius taught?

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We cannot have a flesh and blood relationship with Christ yet. This is obvious, as the scriptures plainly say.

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Now, so what is the answer then? A right relationship with Christ and with the

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Father is grounded in and nourished by the truth of God's Word.

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That is the answer. That is what we must base ourselves in. The Word of God and the sound doctrine of faithful men of the church.

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Let's turn to John 17, starting at verse 3. John 17, verses 3, 17 and 20 -23.

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This is extremely important here. John 17. This is

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Christ's high priestly prayer before he was delivered up to be crucified.

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Verse 3. Verse 3, 17, 20 -23. And this is eternal life.

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Jesus is praying here to God the Father. This is eternal life. That they know you, the only true

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God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Sanctify them in the truth.

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Your word is truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you,

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Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

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The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one,

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I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and love them, even as you love me.

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Christ is very plainly saying, you want eternal life? You must know

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God. You must know God. You must understand and believe the gospel that Christ, the

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God -man, God himself became God, lived a perfect sinless life, died on the cross on our behalf, paid the punishment of God's wrath on our behalf, satisfying his wrath, propitiating our sins on that cross, so that we could be forgiven and his perfect righteousness could be credited to us by faith alone, by understanding and agreeing with that message of the truth of the gospel, the very message that John is proclaiming to us in his letter.

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So to conclude, here we have a spiritual relationship with Christ mediated through his word because Christ himself is his word.

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Now, I'm not saying, obviously we pray to Jesus, we talk to Jesus, we talk to him as if he's a real person.

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The point here is that he's not a flesh and blood person, so we cannot relate to him in those ways.

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That is inappropriate, it is unbiblical and it is a false piety to do so. We have to relate to him through the word, through our minds.

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Use your mind for crying out loud. These people, use your mind.

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That is what God says. Love God with all your mind, your heart, which is your mind, your soul, your strength.

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Another maxim. I want to lay down here another very important maxim. Our relationship with God is based almost entirely on our understanding of him.

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I'm just stating a fact. This is just a plain fact. Our relationship with God is based on our understanding of God.

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And it works this way with everybody. Just as unbelievers relate to their idols based on false understandings or darkness, that's what

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John calls darkness, ignorance and unbelief, that's darkness. Such as a

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Catholic who is fervently praying for Mother Mary, passionate, and she's praying to Mother Mary and she has a physical representation of Mary because she actually has an idol.

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See, the kind of nonsense that Spurgeon is preaching about relating to them like a flesh and blood person, that will lead to idolatry.

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That will lead to the worship of idols and wanting to see something real, something physical that you can touch and feel and pray to.

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It's dangerous. And that's not what God says. God says that we must relate to him based on the right understanding of his word, the truth, because it is the truth that sets us free and it is the truth that sanctifies us.

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Amen? This is precisely what Jesus corrected the Jews about, which

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I've quoted before. The passage in John 5, verses 45 to 47. Do not think that I will accuse you to the

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Father. There is one who accuses you already, Moses, on whom you have set your hope.

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For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

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Christ's own words, his own doctrine, his own teaching, is Christ himself.

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Christ says, you believe me, you believe my words. If you believe my words, you believe me.

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They are the same. Christ is one and the same with his teaching. He is the source of the word.

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He is the source of his words, of his doctrine. And his words are spirit and life. Okay? So, I hope we realize the importance of this and why it's important to understand these things.

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We have to make sure we have a biblical balance of how to relate to these things. Now, let's finish off here with 1

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John 1, verse 4. 1 John 1, verse 4.

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Here, John says, We are writing these things to you so that our joy may be complete.

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We are writing these things to you so that our joy may be complete. You know what? I've got,

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I still have a lot of good stuff here. I do not want to, I do not want to sell it short.

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So, let me stop here. Let me, let me go ahead and stop here for today.

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Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to burden you all too much here.

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So, I'll go ahead and end here. Let's go ahead and close out with a word of prayer. Our precious

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Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord, for your blessing of your word. Father God, please help us to grow in the knowledge and grace of our

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Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, Lord. Help us, Lord, to have, to equip us with this discernment and a right understanding of the truth of your word.

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Help us, Lord, like you say so in your own words, that the Scriptures are profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and instruction and righteousness,

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Lord. Help us to learn these things, to grow in these things, and to be more faithful, more knowledgeable, more mature believers who can chew solid meat and discern the good from the bad, the good from the evil.

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Father God, help us, Lord, and help us to also learn from the mistakes of those who have come before us.

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That is how you have instructed us to do so, showing us a better way and helping us to see the faults, the imbalances from other faithful men, not arrogantly, not out of a superficial form of pride or self -aggrandizement, but as a means of better understanding what your word says and what it does not say.

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Help us to be careful, Lord, and also to reject these errors, these errors that are dangerous and that are not conducive to true spirituality and a true relationship, a true koinonia with you and with your people.

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Father God, help us to foster a true koinonia, a true fellowship with each other, with our neighbor, with our fellow man, and with you, with you, of course, first and foremost, as you say, to seek your kingdom, first and foremost, and your righteousness so that all these other things can be added to us from you,

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Lord. We thank you, Father God, and we ask once again that you would heal those who are sick.

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Help us, Lord, to be there for them, to pray for one another, to bear one another's burdens in true fellowship that's grounded in the truth of your word.

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We thank you, Father God, and we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcasts, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.