Heresy Matters

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Remain standing.
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Please take out your Bibles and turn with me to the 20th chapter of the book of Acts.
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For those of you who are not regularly with us, we have been studying through the book of Acts for a few years now.
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We try to have a verse-by-verse expository preaching ministry on Sunday mornings.
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There are times when we take breaks, of course, but we do try to go through books of the New Testament.
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And so we are in the book of Acts now, and we're going to be reading verses 28 to the end of the chapter.
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And we stand for the reading of God's word in honor and reverence of what it is.
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It is, of course, the inspired and infallible and inerrant word of the living God.
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Verse 28 says, Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which He obtained with His own blood.
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I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you.
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Not sparing the flock and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.
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Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night and day to admonish everyone with tears.
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And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
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I coveted no one's silver or gold or apparel.
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You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me.
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In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.
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And when He had said these things, He knelt down and prayed and with them all.
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And there was much weeping on the part of all.
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They embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken that they would not see his face again and they accompanied him to the ship.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray that now as I seek to give an exposition of it, that you would keep me from error.
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For I am a fallible man, incapable of preaching error, certainly not worthy of the call to ministry.
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And I pray that you would, for the sake of your people and for the sake of my own conscience, keep me from error as I preach.
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I pray also, Lord, that those in the sound of my voice would hear the gospel this morning and through it be convicted for the believers, Lord, conviction to a closer walk with Christ and to the unbelievers to recognize their need for a Savior.
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And Father, in all these things we pray in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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You may be seated.
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Several years ago, we began to sort of have an unofficial motto as the church here at Sovereign Grace.
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I printed it up on a few t-shirts and had used it on some of our website and literature.
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But the unofficial motto was, Theology Matters.
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Some of you have seen that, some of you have heard me say that.
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And it really is something that, and I preached on it several times, it really is something that I think is the lost value in the modern church.
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When we think about the word theology, oftentimes that strikes in us some sort of an idea of high scholasticism or things that are over the heads of the average individual.
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But as Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul has so eloquently pointed out, everyone is a theologian.
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It doesn't mean everyone is a good theologian.
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But everyone has their own ideas and their own opinions and their own thoughts about who God is and what God is and what God has done.
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Even the atheist has a theology.
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He believes there is no God.
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And so, we all are theologians.
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The question is, are we good theologians? And we all have an idea about God, but the question is, do we have the right idea about God? And I would like to propose this morning a change, a slight change to our motto.
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At least, if nothing more, than just for the morning.
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And it really should be the title of the sermon, but as some of you know, my title has to come in earlier than sometimes the finished work.
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I have to give this title to Pat for the bulletin early in the week.
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But the title of the message today should be Heresy Matters.
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And I think that that is something that we should begin to consider.
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Because while as much as theology matters, and it does, one of the things that we have given up in the modern church is the willingness to identify anything as heresy.
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To the point that we have become so inoculated to heresy that any and everything has become acceptable, not only from the pulpit, but from entertainment.
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Movies and television shows that are supposed to be Christian in nature propose ideas about God and about the scripture that are wholly untrue, completely fabricated, absolutely not in line with what the scripture teaches, and yet they are popularized by Christians, quote-unquote Christians.
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They are advertised on Christian news sites.
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They are advertised in Christian bookstores and magazines.
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And yet they are proposing things and teaching things about God that are just not in line with scripture.
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Now we have long known that there are entire denominations that have gone far afield on their theology and have dived into heresy headlong.
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But it is amazing to see how even in quote-unquote evangelical circles, quote-unquote conservatism, that false teaching has been allowed to leech in and make inroads in to the point that many people cannot even see the difference, cannot even recognize the variation between that which is false and that which is true.
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And I am trying to be careful not to just come up here, as it were, with a stick and just start whacking things like, hey, don't go see the shack.
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Don't go see the shack.
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But it's false theology.
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It's bad theology.
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It teaches universalism.
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It teaches a God who doesn't punish sin.
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It teaches a false view of the Trinity.
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It's bad theology.
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It's heresy wrapped up in narrative.
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And yet it's lauded and it's going to make millions of dollars.
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Just this past week, a very noted teacher, if I said his name you would all know it, and he came out in regard to the need for the change of the church in regard to issues of sexuality.
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And this is not going to be a sermon on the subject of homosexuality or transgenderism or any of that things, but just the idea that this person came out and he says, well, the church needs to evolve.
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You know what the word evolve is? It's the innocuous word for change.
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It's the modern expression.
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That's all the word evolve means.
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It's a scientific term which means to change.
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People say, do you believe in evolution? Well, I believe that man does adapt to environments, things like that.
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So in that sense, I believe there's change in evolution, but macro versus micro and all that, that's a totally different conversation, different argument.
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But what he is referring to, this particular teacher, who honestly, this person is a Unitarian anyway.
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He doesn't believe in the Trinity.
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He's a modalist.
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Modalistic monarchy and Unitarian does not believe in the Trinity.
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He's not a Christian theologian anyhow, but this person comes out now and he says, okay, the church needs to change its position on the multiletter argument.
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You know what the multiletter argument is, right? LGBTQ, all that, and the church needs to change its position.
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Well, what is the church's position from a biblical stance? That the Bible created God, God created man and woman to have a relationship with one another, and that relationship is sanctified in the bond of marriage, and anything that happens outside of the bond of marriage is unholy and ungodly and should be divorced from Christianity, meaning that the Christian should not be behaving in that way, the person who claims Christianity.
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Does that mean that a Christian cannot at times have to deal with unholy lusts? No, Christians can deal with unholy lusts, but to engage in them, to practice them, to make them the practice of life is not a Christian thing, and it's something that Christians are supposed to stand against, but not anymore apparently.
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And what we have done is in our attempts to assuage and connect to the culture, we have begun to abandon any positional authority that the Scripture gives.
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The Scripture gives positional authority on certain things.
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Can we say that murder is wrong? Yes.
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Why can we say that murder is wrong? Well, because it hurts people.
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Is hurting people wrong? Yes.
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Well, hurting people is wrong.
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Why? Because they have dignity.
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From where? This is where, and I will contend with this, and if you maybe came today and you're an atheist and you've never heard this, or maybe you have questions about God, I will contend that there is no such thing as genuine moral foundation in an atheistic universe.
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Atheists borrow from the theistic viewpoint, because when you start asking them about things like evil, just like a few weeks ago, a gentleman sat down with me talking about the belief in God, and I said, do you believe in good and bad? Well, yes.
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I said, do you believe in evil? Do you think they're good, they're right and wrong? Absolutely.
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Well, upon what basis? If there is no transcendental law, upon what basis can you say that something is virtuous or not virtuous? Well, it's because of the way it makes me feel.
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If you are nothing but a bag of stardust, who is the byproduct of millions of years of Darwinian evolution, and that's all you are, is a grown-up germ, upon what do you base your idea for your own dignity? So I can tell you that you were created by God.
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I can tell you that God created you in His image, and by creating you in His image and for the purpose of glorifying Him, you have dignity, because you're a human being created in the image of God.
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But if you believe that you are nothing more than a more highly evolved ape, then your dignity is really not that much more than an ape.
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And you see, we've been telling kids for 20 years that all they are is grown-up apes, and now we're mad that they're acting like it.
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There is no dignity in being pond scum that just happens to be able to think more intelligently than other pond scum.
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But I digress.
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What I'm saying is all of these things, all of these questions, all of these issues, make their way into the church.
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And now we have churches that are exploding with false teaching.
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And where does the first bit of false teaching come? A denial of what the Bible says.
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It begins with a denial of who created us.
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It begins with a denial of why He created us.
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And it goes on from chapter to chapter to chapter.
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Well, I don't like the God of the Old Testament, because He had so many rules and standards, and He was willing to exercise wrath, so I'm going to throw out the Old Testament.
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I like the God of the New Testament, except for when He talks about hell and damnation and punishment, so I'm going to throw those out.
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And so we end up with about maybe 15 or 20 verses that we really like.
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And that becomes the Bible of the modern church.
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Anything that talks about God's love is acceptable.
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Anything that doesn't talk about God's love is to be jettisoned, and we just throw it away.
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Do you know who was the first person to do that? In the 1st century, actually rather the 2nd century, the 100s, I often get those confused.
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The 100s is the 2nd century.
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The 1st century was the time between Christ's birth and the end of the 1st century, and that's the 1st century.
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You can't call them the zeros.
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It's the teens and the 20s and the 30s and all that.
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But the 2nd century, after the death of the last apostle, John, there began to rise up within the church leaders.
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And one of the leaders that rose up in the early church was a man named Marcion.
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M-A-R-C-I-O-N, if you want to look him up.
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Marcion, years ago I had a message entitled, The Marcions Are Coming.
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Like the Martians are coming, the Marcions are coming.
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The Marcions believed, as Marcion taught, that the God of the Old Testament was a demigod, that the God of Israel was a hateful, mean, spiteful, vindictive, jealous, wrath-filled demigod, and he was not worthy of worship.
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The true God finds himself in the person of Jesus Christ, and he is who is to be worshipped.
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So what Marcion did was Marcion took the scriptures and he took out the Old Testament writings, because they were about that demigod who was a false god.
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And he took within the New Testament, and he removed all references to that demigod, which you know how much of the New Testament is a reference to the Old Testament? Like well more than half.
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Almost the whole Gospel of Matthew, gone.
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Almost all the Gospel of Luke, gone.
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Because it's so much reference to the God of the Old Testament.
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So he was left with Galatians and a few other sections of other scriptures, and that's what we call the Marcion Bible.
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Do you realize it was because of Marcion that the true church had to come? Before Marcion, the question of what was and what was not God's word was not a huge issue within the church, because people had understood that the writings of the apostles, that the old covenant scriptures, they were pretty well understood what was and what wasn't the Bible.
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When Marcion comes along, there becomes a more important need to take a stand, and okay this is the word of God, this is what we believe God has given to us.
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And honestly Marcion did the church a service in that sense, because he made the true church have to take a stand on what was and what was not the word of God.
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But consider Marcion's argument.
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Is it not much different than the argument of today? Where the only thing that we should trust about God is that He is a God of love, and He is.
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But the only thing that we should accept about God and from the scriptures are those things which satisfy our desire for love and to be loved.
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And so now when we come to the scripture with that hermeneutic, with that type of interpretative grid, and we go into the scripture and we come to a passage that says something so difficult as blessed is he who takes your little ones and dashes their head against the stone.
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Yeah, that's in the Psalms.
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You say I've never heard that before, it's in the Bible, what does it mean? Well go look it up, spend some time reading it and study what it means.
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You say, and you don't realize that these are some of the verses that when your child goes to college, the first time they meet someone who maybe hasn't been brought up as a Christian or maybe has been brought up to be opposed to the scripture, they're going to pull out that verse and say didn't you know that your God believes in bashing babies' heads against the stone? And they've never seen it, don't know what it means? You see, my point this morning, and the point that I'm going to get to the text I promise, is that when we come to the word of God, when we come to the scripture, and we're teaching the scripture, we need to understand what this is that we're doing, we need to understand what the word of God is and we need to address it as such.
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And we need to be cognizant of the fact that there are so many people who are not willing, number one, to study.
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Number two, to seek to understand what it's saying and to apply it.
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But there are a lot of people that are just willing to throw whole sections of it away.
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And this is dangerous.
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And so now we come to Paul and what's happening here, and that's sort of, again, that was introduction to what Paul is going to say here.
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And for those who haven't been here, let me just give you a heads up as to where we are.
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The Apostle Paul is on his third missionary journey.
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The Apostle Paul has gone from Antioch, which is where he began, that's his sending church.
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He's already left Antioch twice.
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This is the third time he's left.
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He's gone up through Asia Minor.
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He's gone down to Ephesus, which is a port city.
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It was where the Temple of Diana or the Temple of Artemis was.
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He went and he preached there for three years.
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After there, he went up through Macedonia, through the churches he'd already visited once.
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He took a collection for the church in Jerusalem because they were in dire need.
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And after collecting for Jerusalem, on his way back to Jerusalem, he stops back through a city called Miletus, which is about 60 miles outside of Ephesus.
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And he calls for the leaders of the church of Ephesus, come and let me speak to you one more time because this is the last time you're ever going to see me.
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Paul knew that when he went back to Jerusalem, he was going to be arrested.
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He was going to be taken to Rome and he was going to be put on trial.
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Now he didn't know exactly how it was all going to work out, but God had revealed to him that he was going to suffer.
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God had revealed to him that he was going to die for the gospel.
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And he knew this was the last time the Ephesian elders were going to see his face.
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And this isn't like today where he could just give them a phone call or Skype and have a conversation with them.
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This was it.
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And so the last few weeks, we've looked at verses 17 to 27 where Paul talks about his ministry.
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Today, we're going to look at verses 28 to 38 and how much of that we get through, I don't know.
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But I want to focus primarily on the first few verses, verses 28 down to about 31.
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He's speaking to the elders.
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Remember the elders.
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The elders are the ordained men of the church.
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These are the men whose responsibility it is to lead the church as pastors of the church.
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For those of you who are new to our church, we don't have a single pastor in this church.
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We have three men who are ordained as elders.
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Each of us have a different task in the church, but there is equality among us in the position of authority that we have.
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Jack is an elder, Richard is an elder, and I am an elder.
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I'm the least elder of the elders, but I feel like the oldest.
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Just because of how I feel all the time, I'm very tired.
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But Jack and Richard help me serve the church as shepherds.
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And we believe in the plurality of elders.
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We believe that the New Testament teaches that.
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And not a single minister model, but a group of men who are ordained, who are called, who fit the requirements of 1 Timothy 3, as to what an elder or an overseer is supposed to be.
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So this is the men that Paul is talking to, and he says, Pay careful attention.
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Pros-echo is the Greek there.
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Pros-echo simply means to give heed, attention, or consideration.
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Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you episkopos.
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That word episkopos, episkopos, to look over something.
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The overseer of something.
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So Paul is talking to the elders, and he said, So let me try that again.
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Pay close attention to two things.
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One, yourselves.
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And two, the flock.
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Now why did he say, pay close attention? Let me try it again.
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Why did he say, pay careful attention, pay close attention? Why did he say that? To ourselves.
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Because, beloved, before a man can minister to others, he must himself know and understand where he stands with God.
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And I must tell you, the fact that Paul tells the ministers to pay careful attention to themselves first, is a good reminder to all of us who are elders, but to any man who would even desire to be an elder, or feel like God has called him to that, that the first person you have to deal with is yourself.
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And I've got to tell you, so many of you come to me for counsel, and I'm grateful that you trust me with your life, and that you trust me with your pain.
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And I'm thankful that God has given me a ministry of counsel in your life.
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And I get to see some of your brokenness, and that's beautiful.
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There's a beauty in brokenness because it shows how much we need the Lord.
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But you need to understand, I am broken too.
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And I'm not perfect either.
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And there are times when I call some of you weeping, because I need it as well.
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And there are times when even our elders have come to me while feeling a sense of brokenness, or a sense of doubt, or a sense of lostness.
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And understanding that is important for the life of the minister.
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The Bible says, let him who stands take heed lest he fall.
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Meaning, the man who thinks that he's incapable of erring, the man who thinks he's incapable of failure, that he's incapable of making a mistake, is the first person that's going to get knocked off that pedestal of pride upon which he stands.
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And so I do think that this is such a valuable call that Paul's giving.
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Earlier in the message I was talking about false teachers and all that.
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You know, my biggest fear in life is not hell.
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My biggest fear in life is to dishonor God by preaching wrongly about Him.
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Now, the byproduct of that would be that I was a false teacher, unsaved, and going to hell.
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That would be kind of bad.
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But the truth is, does it matter to us if we preach what is true? It should.
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And so Paul is calling the elders of Ephesus, pay attention to yourselves.
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Richard Baxter, in writing on the subject of preaching, Richard Baxter was a Puritan.
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And on writing on the subject of preaching, he talked about the fact that before a man should become a pastor, he should know that he himself is a Christian.
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And you think, what in the world? Why do you even have to say that, Mike? Really? Doesn't it seem like it's the most obvious thing in the world? But you know why he said that? Because pulpits around the world are filled with men who are unconverted.
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Do you know who George Mueller is? Missionary, preacher.
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If you've never read a biography of Mueller, I'd recommend it.
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We've been reading through one with our children.
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It's been missing a few weeks, we need to get back to it.
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But we've been reading it as part of family worship.
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And one of the things most interesting about George Mueller was George Mueller went to seminary before he got saved, knowing he was not saved.
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Because at the time in history that he went to seminary, it was one of the few jobs that one could get and make a decent living, was being a clergyman.
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And so he went to get the job as a clergyman, knowing that he was a rabble rouser, that he was a philanderer, that he was all these things.
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Going out, living a life of licentiousness and lustfulness, didn't care.
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He would go to class in the morning and go to the bar in the evening.
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Until God got a hold of his heart, changed his life through a very simple Bible study.
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At that time in history, he couldn't go to a normal Bible study.
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They had to read the sermons that were pre-approved.
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They couldn't just have a standard Bible study where they talk about the Scripture.
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They had to read pre-approved sermons.
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And he went to a Bible study where a guy read a pre-approved sermon in the Bible study.
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And through that, he began to change his heart.
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And God saved his soul.
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But the point of all this is simply to say, look at where George Miller...
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If God hadn't abused him, he still would have went in the ministry.
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He still would have been in the pulpit.
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And he would have probably been a very articulate man.
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And yet, very lost.
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You know, the Bible gives requirements for eldership.
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That a man who is an elder should be a noble man, seeking that position that he should be above reproach, that he should be the husband of one wife.
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They should not be a drunkard, not be a fiend.
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And all these things are found in the Scripture.
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And we know what 1 Timothy 3 and Titus says about that.
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But a man can hide and wickedly hide behind a veneer.
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And so, Paul's word to the elders, First, know yourself to be true.
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Know yourself to know the Lord.
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But then he goes on.
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And there's no way I'm going to get through all these verses today.
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There's no way.
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I never do.
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Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock.
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So first of all, we are told to pay attention to ourselves as pastors.
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But then we're told to pay attention to someone else.
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The flock of God.
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Beloved, God has established His church.
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And He has established a certain order.
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I talked to a man just last night who I love.
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And I love this guy to death.
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He and I are good friends.
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He doesn't go to this church, but he and I were talking.
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He goes to another church.
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And he was talking about some of his disenfranchisement with the modern church.
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Just how he's unhappy with how the modern church is.
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And he told me, he said, well, what I think, he says, I think what's going to happen is people are just going to stop going to church and start worshiping at home with their families.
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And I said, well, you may be right about what might happen.
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That does not make it right.
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There is no biblical warrant for people who are Christians being divorced from the local assembly of the church.
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The Bible teaches us that we are to be in fellowship with one another for several reasons.
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One, primarily, is that God has given you a gift to be used in service to Him and to His body.
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And He has given gifts to others to be used in service to you.
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So when you are divorced from the local assembly, you are robbing the assembly of your gift and you are being robbed of the gifts that the assembly has for you.
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There is an important connection of community that the Scripture teaches us about the church.
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But on top of that, there is also something else that you do not have when you worship at home alone.
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You do not have anyone to call you to repentance.
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You say, well, what about my wife? What about me? What about my children? The Bible says one of the purposes of the church is that we corporately gather for the purpose of spurring each other to good works.
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Do you know how we spur each other to good works? By encouraging the good and calling out the bad.
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By pointing out the good and encouraging the good, but by also recognizing in one another's life the need for repentance and being willing to call those things out.
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I want to tell you something, and this is true, and I have shared this in other contexts before.
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There are people in this church who have called me to repentance on certain things, and I have been thankful for that.
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Whether I had strayed slightly on issues, whether I had taught wrongly on an issue, or maybe I just misunderstood something, or maybe there was something in my life that wasn't in line with what God had for me.
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When someone was willing to come to me on that, in sincere love and encouragement, and pointing to the Scripture, I have been willing to hear and heed that, because that is what I must do.
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And beloved, that is what we as a church are supposed to do.
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Now, we are not supposed to be nitpickers, and I'm not going to get on to you for things that aren't sinful.
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I'm not going to get on to you anyway.
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I would call you to repentance for that.
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What I mean is, we don't go around, you know, pointing out what shoes you decided to wear this morning, or any of the nonsense.
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People ask all the time, does it matter what you wear? Well, I wear a tie.
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You know why I wear a tie? If I tell you, you're going to laugh.
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You know why I wear a tie? Because my wife likes it.
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That's really the only reason.
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Because years ago, I went to polo shirts, and my wife didn't like it.
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She said, I like it when you wear a tie.
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I only do it once a week.
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So I do it, because she likes it.
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I don't think you have to wear a tie to come to church.
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If that's the way that you present yourself before the Lord, and that satisfies you, and satisfies you before Him, who am I? I'm not your God.
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And you don't have to stand before me on the Day of Judgment.
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However, if you're in this church, and you're living in sin, if you're living in a way that's unbecoming of a Christian, I'm going to come to you, and I'm going to call you to repentance, and point you to the Scripture, and say, I'm not judging you, but the Word of God is saying that what you're doing is wrong.
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And I would want you to do that for me.
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And this is what Paul is saying.
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He's saying, pay careful attention to yourself, but also pay careful attention to the flock.
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Watch the flock.
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Because there are going to be things that come in and try to make you stray.
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There's going to be false teachers, and that's what he's about to talk about.
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There are going to be false teachers who come in to try to lead you away.
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They're going to try to tempt you to false...
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We had a person years ago that got...
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And I could see it happening.
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They were beginning to be influenced by a cult group.
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And I could see it, and I was praying for them, and I was going to them, and I was saying, please, please, please don't give in to this false teaching.
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Unfortunately, it didn't happen.
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They went away.
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But what kind of a leader would I have been? What kind of pastor would I have been if I would have seen this happening and said nothing? And not even attempted to call them to repentance? Wouldn't that be a foolish and dangerous and hateful thing for me to do? And I pray even still that God would save them out of that nonsense that they're in.
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Pay careful attention to yourselves and to the flock.
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Why? Why? Because he says, God obtained that flock with His blood.
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So you want to know why the job of the elder, the pastor is so important in the church? You want to know why we care how we live, and we care about how we are, and we care about how you are? Because you are a purchased possession of the living God.
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You are the bride of Christ.
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And you are valuable to Christ, and thus you should be valuable to me.
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Think about how the bride of Christ...
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And by the way, this is why I hate it when people say, well, I don't like the church.
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I say, hold on.
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You may not like what happens in church.
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You may not like what has happened to the church.
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And you may not like the way some churches behave.
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But don't you dare tell me you don't love the bride of Christ.
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Because that's His bride.
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And just as any man were to come to me and say, you know what, I love you, but I hate your wife.
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I'd say, you don't love me.
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If you hate my wife, how can a man say, I love Jesus, but I hate His bride? Now, you can hate what's happened to her.
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You can hate what's gone on inside of her.
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You can hate what's happened all around her.
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But don't hate her.
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God sent His Son to die on a cross for her.
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The Son of God bled, beaten, broken, and nailed to a tree for her.
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And you're going to say, I hate her? We are called to love God's bride.
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To love God's people.
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To care for her.
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I heard a great analogy by Brother Paul Washer.
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He was talking about how churches often today, he said, imagine a king who loved his wife.
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And he adorned her simply but gloriously for the position of being his queen.
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And he had to go away for a season.
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And he went to one of his servants.
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And he said, now servant, you are my steward.
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You are my minister.
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And while I'm gone, I want my wife in all of her glorious simplicity to remain as she is.
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And I want you to protect her.
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And I want you to watch over her while I leave.
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And I'll be gone, but I will return one day.
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And I want my wife as I left her.
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And the king leaves.
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And the steward begins to see that the king's gone a long time.
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Doesn't look like the king's going to return at all.
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And the queen doesn't get the attention that she needs for her authority.
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And she doesn't get the attention that she needs for the popular vote of the people.
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So he begins to say, we need to adorn you differently.
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You're not popular, so we need to change you.
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And he begins to dress her like a harlot.
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And he begins to parade her in the city.
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And he begins to rob her of her simplicity and her majesty, putting her out as it were a prostitute for the people.
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Beloved, is there no better analogy to what has happened in the modern church? We have prostituted the church.
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We have robbed her of her majesty to satisfy the unbelieving hordes.
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Pay careful attention to yourselves and to the flock, because God purchased that flock.
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God loves that bride.
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And he paid with his own blood for her.
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Beloved, if you are saved today, you have no idea how much God loves you.
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He loved you so much, he sent his son to die for you, and he purchased you as a possession for himself, as a bride adorned for her husband.
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It is the role and job of the elders of the church to watch over and protect.
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And it is the role of you as one another to be the bride of Christ, adorned simply and magnificently in the sanctity of the word of God.
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So my prayer today, and we didn't get very far, we'll look again beginning in verse 29 next week.
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But my prayer today is that we would understand who we are and understand our calling.
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If you're an elder in this church, I pray you would understand God's call to look at yourself first and to look over the flock of God.
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And if you're a part of this church, I hope you would understand yourself as a possession of God having been purchased with the blood of his son.
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The value that you have as a believer and the value that you have as part of the body of Christ.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would help us to understand the value, the value that you have placed on us because of your son.
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Lord, we know that in and of ourselves, we're not righteous.
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In and of ourselves, we're not even good.
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The Bible says there is none good, not even one.
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But because you purchased us, Lord, you have made us as a bride adorned for her husband.
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And I pray against false teaching.
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I pray against heresy, Lord, that would come in and would sully the bride.
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That would come in and adorn her as it were a prostitute.
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I pray, Lord, that we would seek to remain holy, seek to remain committed to trusting the word of God, seek to remain committed to sanctity in our relationships and love for one another.
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And, Lord, in all these things that you would be glorified, not us, not that we have washed ourselves because we haven't, not that we have sanctified ourselves because we cannot, not that we have in any way saved ourselves because such would be impossible, but that we would understand that we are the bride of Christ because you gave us to the Son as a gift.
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And we thank you for choosing us.
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We thank you for saving us.
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And we thank you for what you plan to do with us.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Let's stand and prepare our hearts for communion.
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Rock of Ages, laugh for me.