House Rules for God's Church (1 Timothy 3:15) | Adult Sunday School

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♪ Good morning, everyone.

Good to see each one. Let's find our places. And we're going to begin our study this morning.

Welcome to Kootenai Community Church Adult Sunday School. Good to see you all. This morning, we're going to begin a study through Paul's letter to Timothy, his first letter, 1

Timothy. And there is an outline page that is around here someplace.

So if you don't have one, maybe raise your hand. I have a volunteer over here to pass things out.

There are some on the seats here in different places. But grab a hold of that. We'll be going through that this morning and starting a study through 1

Timothy. What I'm calling House Rules for God's Church, as you'll see.

And so before we do and before we just get into some introductory issues this morning in this little letter, let's commit our time to our

Lord and ask His blessing on our time and on our study. Father, thank you for this opportunity that we have.

We know it is by your grace that you have gathered us together here. And we know that your word is truth.

And we know that we are dependent on you to be our teacher through your spirit. And so we just ask your blessing on our time in your word this morning.

And open our hearts and minds to learn and to grow, to apply what we learn.

And we just thank you for this opportunity in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Well, this morning, as I said, we're just going to begin a study through 1

Timothy. And with some introduction this morning. A little bit of background at first.

And then we're going to talk about the purpose of the letter. Pretty obvious. I always enjoy it when a writer tells you right in the letter itself what his purpose is.

That makes it easy. You don't have to consult all the commentaries and theologians and things and waste a lot of time finding out what they think.

You just go right to the source. And he does tell us that. And then we're going to spend a little time talking about the first two verses, which is the greeting of Paul to Timothy.

Well, Paul probably wrote this around the year 63 or 64

A .D., around 30 years after the ascension of our Lord. And so that just sort of places it in the first century a little bit for us.

Paul would have been in his mid to late 60s when he wrote this letter to the younger preacher,

Timothy. Paul had been imprisoned in Rome, which is recorded in the last chapter of Acts.

And then after his release, he revisited some of the churches that he had ministered in, which included the church at Ephesus, which is going to be the focus of Timothy's ministry.

He then traveled to Macedonia and left Timothy behind at Ephesus to deal with some of the issues in that church, including dealing with false teachers, heresies, and things like that.

He then wrote this letter from Macedonia back to Timothy to encourage him in a very difficult ministry situation.

It's not known exactly when the church at Ephesus began, but we do know that according to Luke's account in Acts chapter 18,

Paul was there with Priscilla and Aquila as he was traveling back to Antioch during his second missionary journey.

After spending time in Antioch, Paul returned to Ephesus to minister for more than two years.

And in Luke's account in Acts 19, Luke helps us understand something of Paul's ministry there.

In Acts 19 .1 it says, And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.

Later on in the chapter it says, And he entered the synagogue and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.

But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus.

This continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the

Lord, both Jews and Greeks. Ephesus was the capital of the most important and the most important city in the

Roman province of Asia. It was a critical hub of commerce and so on and also religious activity.

Temple of Artemis was there. That was a great issue for those people. And Paul had ministered effectively in Ephesus.

And later when he was returning to Jerusalem for Pentecost from Macedonia, he didn't have time to visit

Ephesus personally so he called to the elders of the church to meet him at Miletus near the coast.

This brief meeting, it was very personal, it was very emotional and it was also an opportunity for Paul to warn them with these words.

This is Acts 20. I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again.

Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

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.

I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock.

And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

And when he had said these things he knelt down and prayed with them all and there was much weeping on the part of all.

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. Paul had made a tremendous investment in the church at Ephesus and probably multiple smaller house churches.

We say the church at Ephesus but that's probably the situation there. It was an investment of time, an investment of teaching, an investment in developing the spiritual leadership that was there and as you can tell from his comments here a very personal investment in the lives of these men.

And later on when he writes this letter to this young pastor Timothy to tell him to remain at Ephesus as Paul went on to Greece to minister he's very concerned and he should have been.

Paul's words to the elders of Ephesus that day were not simply a warning they were prophetic.

Vicious wolves did come into the church with their false teaching. Some of the congregation had defected from the faith and were in state in the church teaching twisted things as Paul said.

And we know that decades later toward the end of the first century the aging Apostle John on the

Isle of Patmos received that great message we call the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

And in that is a warning to various churches from Jesus Christ Himself.

One of those churches was the church at Ephesus, this very congregation. In Revelation chapter 2 as he addresses the church at Ephesus our

Lord commends them for some positive things but then issues this very solemn warning.

I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen repent and do the works you did at first.

If not I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent.

It's Revelation 2, 1 -7. So Ephesus was a critical ministry and Paul writes this letter to Timothy.

It's a letter of encouragement, it's a letter of instruction but it's also a letter of warning.

So that's just a very basic background. What about the purpose of the letter? This is point 2 in your outline,

Roman numeral 2, the purpose. And again I always like it when the writer just tells you what the purpose is.

And Paul does this in 1 Timothy 3 verses 14 and 15. It's right there.

He says, I hope to come to you soon but I am writing these things to you so that.

When you see that so that, that cues you that there's a purpose statement coming. If I delay you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God which is the church of the living

God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. We're going to go through that passage in a little more detail when we get there but for our purposes this morning and the title of the study here

I'm simply just calling it House Rules for God's Church because this is what this is about. These three letters, 1

Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus are commonly called the pastoral letters or pastoral epistles. That's kind of true but really the first one is really the main one that's pastoral.

2 Timothy as you know is really primarily a very personal letter that Paul writes when he knows he's about to be executed for his faith.

But his purpose in writing this letter is so that Timothy will have a set of house rules, house rules for God's church.

It's a real tragedy of our time, one of them, that so many of the contemporary books and references you can go find that tell people how to do church or how to plant churches and how to minister within the churches.

So many of them basically disregard the pastoral letters, the very letters that are written to the church to tell the church how to do church.

That's a strange irony of our day but just one of them within the broader church itself.

Well Timothy was Paul's protege, his apprentice, his ministerial disciple so to speak.

Timothy being considerably younger and less experienced than Paul was being left in Ephesus in a very, very tough ministry assignment.

Two of the three pastoral epistles written to Timothy of course, the third to Titus who Paul was going to leave on the island of Crete to do very much the same thing.

In his letter to Titus he tells him that I want you to set things straight in the churches on the island of Crete.

And so both of these younger men had a very, very difficult ministry assignment to do.

If we were to compile a list of Paul's instructions for Timothy from 1 Timothy and 2

Timothy and you can find these lists in commentaries or you can just go through and make your own. We would see that by Paul's admonitions and by his warnings and by his instructions to Timothy and to Titus, spiritual warfare is never fought on only one front, ever.

Just about the time you think you have one spiritual issue dealt with over here, another one pops up over here.

And when that one is through over here, another one pops up over here. I've heard it described as playing whack -a -mole, you know.

And I think, but whack -a -mole, what does it have, nine deals I think or so?

But this is more like playing whack -a -mole with maybe a hundred, right? Because every time a fad or a false teaching sort of sweeps through the church and then after a while it gets dealt with, you think, okay, we took care of that one.

There's another one over here, another one over there. Spiritual warfare is never fought on only one front.

The enemy is too smart to just approach the church and to attack the church on just one front.

But if you just survey what Paul told Timothy, in his first letter alone, it's as if Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, here's what

I want you to do in Ephesus. Confront and correct false teachers, calling them to repentance, a sincere faith and a good conscience.

Fight hard for the truth, guarding your own spiritual life. Pray for the lost, no matter who they are, and lead the men of the church to do the same in unity and holiness.

Exhort the women of the church to fulfill their God -ordained role of submission to their husbands, working in their homes to raise up godly children, setting an example in their homes of faith, love, and holiness.

Carefully and prayerfully select spiritual leaders for the church based on their godliness, giftedness, and good reputations.

Actively and aggressively discern and expose spiritual error and those who attempt to teach it within the flock of God.

Always be feeding yourself on the sound words of Scripture, staying far away from myths, false doctrines, and the philosophies of men.

Work hard in your ministry, always keeping your hopes set on the life to come with Christ. Continuously discipline yourself for the purpose of spiritual growth in godliness.

Boldly and lovingly command and teach God's Word to His people. Model the fruit of the

Spirit so that all can follow you. Concerning the Word of God, faithfully read it, explain it, and apply it publicly to the people.

Keep growing in Christ -likeness in your own personal life. Confront the sins of your people, but with gentleness and grace.

Lead your people to give special care for the widows in the congregation. Carefully select leaders in the church who demonstrate spiritual maturity and faithfulness.

Take care of yourself physically so you are strong to serve Christ. Teach your people to be faithful and hard workers in the church and in their outside employment.

Honor faithful pastors who rule well and especially who work hard at preaching and teaching the Word. Apply the

Word of God in the church without partiality. Live your life content with what God provides and flee the love of money.

Instead, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.

Fight for the faith against its enemies. Keep all of God's commandments.

Charge the rich in your congregation to be generous and to be rich in good works. Guard the

Word of God that has been entrusted to you as a sacred trust. All of that to this young preacher in Paul's first letter.

After Paul was imprisoned for the final time in Rome and as he awaited execution, he knew it was the end of his earthly life, he penned his last words to the church and he sent that letter to Timothy.

We call it 2 Timothy. Very personal. Very personal letter to the same young preacher. He continues to exhort and encourage

Timothy by telling him to fan into flame the gift of God which is in him so he can be useful to the

Lord. Don't ever be timid, fearful, or ashamed of the testimony of Christ, but suffer in the strength and power of God.

Follow Paul's own pattern of preaching and teaching sound words and guard the truth that has been placed in your care.

And take that truth and teach it to faithful men who will also pass it down to faithful men so the next generation will hear the gospel.

Suffer as a good soldier of Christ. Keep a single focus on the Lord of the church,

Jesus Christ, and don't be distracted by the things of the world. Lead the flock of God with authority.

Work hard to accurately interpret, teach, and apply the scriptures. Here's one we can apply.

Avoid useless people who talk about useless things. And this is 2 ,000 years before the internet.

We'll get there. We'll talk about that. Flee youthful lusts. Pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace.

Don't get caught up in foolish and ignorant controversies that just breed quarrels. And I have in quotes here because this was first done five years ago in an election year.

Especially in an election year. Don't be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patient, correcting your opponents with gentleness.

Be ready to face the dangerous times that will come with a deep understanding of God's word.

Know that the scripture is God -breathed and profitable to equip you for all tasks.

Preach the word. And preach it when it's popular to do it, and especially preach it when it's not popular.

And use it to reprove, rebuke, and exhort people. Endure hardship and do the work of an evangelist.

All of that for a young, timid pastor to be equipped to minister in a land far, far away 2 ,000 years ago.

But all of that applicable for us right here, right now in North Idaho in 2021.

So as we study through this first letter to Timothy, we must keep in mind Paul's purpose, which is the

Lord's purpose and the reason he wrote this letter. So that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

God. So we're calling this series House Rules for God's Church. So there we have the background and there we have the purpose.

Now let's look together at point three on your outline, the greeting, the greeting of Paul. Paul opens up this letter to Timothy, very typical of how he writes a letter and how people would write in that day.

First to identify themselves at the very beginning of the letter, as opposed to signing it at the end. He says, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by command of God, our

Savior, and of Christ Jesus, our hope. To Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and Christ Jesus, our Lord. Paul, of course, an apostle of Jesus Christ.

At this stage of his ministry, Paul was a veteran missionary. As mentioned, the occasion of this letter was that Paul was away from Ephesus.

He's in Macedonia and he writes back to Timothy, who is at Ephesus, to encourage him, to challenge him, to make sure he understands what his marching orders are for his ministry there.

And Paul would regularly begin his letters by identifying himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

He does this in Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, and so on. In many of these letters, he was dealing with false teachers who had come into these congregations with their false doctrines.

He had been accused of being a false teacher himself. And he also needed the full weight of this apostolic authority to deal with these issues.

And what he's about to tell Timothy has the full weight and authority of Jesus Christ himself.

Paul was not a self -appointed apostle. Paul was a true apostle with full apostolic authority.

And he met all of the qualifications. He had personally witnessed the risen Christ. Christ revealed himself to him.

He had spent a lot of time being trained by Jesus himself before he even began his ministry.

He was personally commissioned to his apostolic office and his work by Christ himself. That calling was verified by the marks of a true apostle, as Paul says.

Miraculous signs that were truly signs pointing to him for who he truly was.

Signs which validated the man and his message, which was what they were for. So Paul was a true apostle with true apostolic authority.

Unlike those today who claim to be apostles, which there aren't any because none of them are qualified according to the biblical qualifications, commonly in groups such as the

NAR, New Apostolic Reformation, these are all fake, they're all phony, they're all charlatans, they're all con artists, and they are all liars.

They are fake apostles. And it doesn't matter if they all get together in a conference and go up on a stage and have some kind of ceremony and lay hands on each other and declare themselves to be apostles.

There are no more apostles. They think they can do that to con the church and it is an absolute travesty and they need to be called out for who they are and what they are.

Paul bolsters his authority by saying, and he just tells us how he got to be an apostle, by command of God our

Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. Paul did not even delegate himself.

He didn't wake up one day and say, you know what, I think I'm going to be an apostle. He was an apostle by command of God.

Yes, Peter? Having prophecies?

I would. If they're false, yes, they are.

To declare yourself a current day apostle. Now remember the usage of the word has a little broader semantic range than just the technical use.

An apostle can be one who is sent with a message. And if someone is just sent with the message, as we all are, then in that sense there is an apostolic ministry.

So you have to sort of look at it and distinguish between the two. But these are people who are claiming to be apostles.

They're not. By biblical definition. Okay? And so Paul was made by command of God our

Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. Two of the members of the

Trinity he mentions, and of course the agent of that was the Holy Spirit. So Paul not only has the command of God our

Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, the Holy Spirit is there ministering that to him.

So he has a triune calling and a triune ministry because we have a triune God. So later in the letter

Paul will tell Timothy to command the church. And so the authority that Paul has as an apostle is then transferred to Timothy.

Timothy is not an apostle, but he has apostolic authority based on Paul's commands to him.

Timothy would read this letter himself because it's written to him. And so he would have his marching orders.

But this letter would also be read to the rest of the church. This was Paul's intention. If you look at the very end of 1

Timothy, Paul ends this letter with a little phrase,

Grace be with you. Now the English, we have one form for both plural and singular, right?

You, unless you're from Texas, then you've got a really functional word called y 'all. But grace be with you, that is plural.

So clearly this was intended to be communicated and read to the churches, to the congregations, even though it is a personal letter to Timothy.

Even 2 Timothy at the end of that letter, The Lord be with your spirit, grace be with you.

And that's plural, intended to go out to all of the congregations that he's ministering in.

And even at the end of Titus, it says grace be with you all. Now you can't miss that one because it actually has the word all there.

Grace be with you all. So even though these are personal letters written to these young apostolic, you can use the old word, call them a legate or a delegate, because they're not really sent there to pastor full time, they're sent there to be an apostolic representative.

But these letters are designed to be read to the congregations that they are ministering in.

Timothy came from a mixed marriage, mixed parentage. His mother Eunice was

Jewish and a believer, but his father was a pagan Greek. So if he was going to try to minister apart from Paul, he's going to have to have some kind of certification, right?

And so can you imagine if you're a young pastor, you're not Paul, you're not an apostle, but he has sent you into these churches to try to straighten things out, part of which is going to be dealing with false teachers.

False teachers don't like to let go very easily of their ministries, even when they're confronted.

I don't know if you've noticed that. They're tenacious, and even if they're removed from a ministry, oftentimes they'll just go next door and set up another ministry.

They just can't get away from trying to influence God's people. They would have definitely challenged

Timothy. He would have been able then with this letter to walk in and say, hi, I'm here to straighten out your church, and they would have definitely reacted against that, and he would have said, and I have a letter here from the

Apostle Paul, directed to me and telling me what exactly I'm supposed to do here. That would be sort of his bona fides in these congregations.

It would have had apostolic authority for him to do what Paul told him to do there.

And I can just imagine Timothy going in and saying, hi, guys, I'm here to straighten out your church, and when he met resistance, he said,

I have this letter here. You probably don't have one of these, do you? But I have one, and that's what

I would do. He wouldn't do that, of course, because he was more gracious. But wouldn't it be nice to have a letter from the

Apostle Paul that told you exactly what he wanted you to do, and it had apostolic authority?

Wouldn't that be wonderful? Here it is, folks, right here, right?

You have apostolic authority when you share the gospel with people.

You have the exact same authority that Paul communicated to Timothy, and we have it right here.

And so we need to use it just like Timothy would. Well, God is the source of Paul's apostolic authority, and he is also the source of our salvation.

Interesting, God, our Savior. That's an interesting phrase there. And of Jesus Christ, our hope.

This designation goes way back in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 32, Psalm 24, 25, 27, and 42, and elsewhere.

And the one I really like is Jonah. Jonah, the much maligned by critics and historians, often kind of caricatured and made a little bit of a cartoon for the children's ministry.

Jonah in the whale. And yet Jonah in that letter says this, salvation belongs to the

Lord. That's a statement of absolute sovereignty of God in salvation, and it's throughout

Scripture. And clear into the New Testament, Luke 147, in her great song of praise when she was rejoicing that she was pregnant with Messiah, Mary sang, my spirit rejoices in God my

Savior. Tells you a little something about her spirituality. She understood she needed a

Savior, which we won't deal with here, but there's an awful lot of Catholic doctrine that this affects, right?

But she was praising God, and she knew the source of salvation, that it was from God. And that salvation is realized through the person and work of Jesus Christ who is our hope,

Paul says. So if your hope for salvation is in Jesus Christ, not the

Christ of the cults, not the Jesus of people's imaginations, but the Jesus revealed in Scripture, you have real hope.

If not, you have no hope whatsoever for salvation. So in the very first verse,

Paul establishes his apostolic authority. It's passed down to Timothy. He then proceeds to certify

Timothy. It was going to be real important for him to have this, the certification of Timothy in verse 2.

And in your outline, the part of the greeting there under Roman numeral 3, this is

B, the certification of Timothy. Timothy would have been by himself going to all of these churches.

He needed to have that validation from the Apostle Paul. So he says to Timothy, my true child in the faith, grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Timothy might not have been led to Christ by Paul personally.

There's some disagreement. It's not a real critical thing. I think he probably did lead him to Christ. This is why he was able to use this terminology, my true child in the faith.

We knew that Timothy was exposed to Scripture, the Old Testament as a child. Paul tells us this in 2

Timothy. He had the sacred Scriptures able to make you wise unto salvation. That would have been the Old Testament that he would have had growing up.

In 1 Thessalonians 3 and in Philippians 2, Paul speaks of Timothy as his co -worker.

And in 1 Corinthians 4, 16 and 17, he says to the Corinthians, Paul says,

I urge you then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved child in the

Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church.

So Ephesus is not Timothy's first ministerial rodeo. Years before,

Paul had turned him loose in Corinth. Now imagine, Corinth. How would you like to be set loose there to minister to the churches?

They had some serious problems. He sent him there to be his ambassador. And as he says, an example of my own ministry.

And he certainly needed then what he needed at Ephesus. He needed apostolic authority.

Because he was going to butt heads with some false teachers there as well. But along with the authority, he also needed what every one of us needs to accomplish anything the

Lord calls us to. He needs the triple blessing. And Paul then issues this short, concise, beautiful statement.

Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and Christ Jesus our

Lord. The common Greek greeting of the day, harein, just means greetings.

Well, Paul transformed that greeting into a word, charis, grace. And then he added the

Hebrew greeting, shalom, translated into Greek, the word for peace, eirene.

And so those two are a very common part of his greeting when he writes at church.

Grace to you and peace, he would often say. Only in 1 and 2 Timothy does he add the word mercy.

Very interesting. This is the only place it occurs. Again, just in these two letters.

This word mercy carries with it the idea of God's special care for a person in need.

Or God's help for the helpless. It occurs all through Scripture.

The Old Testament equivalent of that word is the word hesed, used many times in the Psalms to speak of God coming to help in a time of need.

Timothy needed this blessing, and so do we. He was going to have a tough time in Ephesus, often coming to the end of himself.

So Paul, being the theological guy that he was in his greetings and also in his prayers for Christians, uses this little formula.

Because he knows that salvation has its source in God and the grace of God, which comes to us through Jesus Christ, who died as our substitute on the cross so we would receive

God's mercy, and the result is peace with God. It's reminiscent, of course, of Romans 5, chapter 5, verse 1, where Paul, after he just develops the tremendous doctrine of justification by faith, he says, therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. You will never have and know the peace of God until you have peace with God.

It's an absolute prerequisite. You can try to find peace in all different kinds of things in life. You will never find true peace until you have peace with God, because peace is a fruit of the

Spirit of God, and he only gives true peace to those who have peace with him through Jesus Christ.

So Timothy would have to rest in this very difficult situation, in the grace and in the mercy and in the peace of God, to carry out his ministry in Ephesus, and so do we.

So there's an introduction to 1 Timothy, and a little bit just on the first two verses.

Do you have any questions or comments about what we've seen here? Got done a little early, so you have more time for questions.

Or comments? Disagreements? Oh, is that a disagreement,

Dave? Oh, okay. Yeah, the tone of that introduction is, who's in charge here?

Timothy needed to know, Paul is giving you commands, Timothy. This is not optional. He doesn't get to go to Ephesus and hang out and enjoy himself.

He's being commissioned. He's going there. Paul is exercising his apostolic authority, first and foremost, over Timothy, through the lordship of Jesus Christ, who is the

Lord of the Church, and then he delegates that authority to Timothy in order to accomplish his ministry.

So yeah, the lordship of Christ. He's the Lord of the Church, and he ministers, he mediates that lordship through his word by his spirit.

This is why churches that don't have a teaching -preaching ministry, they don't have the word of God, they don't have the lordship of Christ in that church.

That's how he ministers, he mediates his lordship through the preaching and teaching of his word in the church.

I thought you were going to disagree. Oh, you're going to disagree. Yeah, Acts?

Did somebody say Acts 9? He mentions it in Galatians. Other references?

Yeah. Personally commissioned, personally witnessed the risen

Christ. And, of course, today people would say, Oh, yes, Jesus came to me and I spoke with him, or he showed up.

So that might be their way of saying, Oh, he actually commissioned me. My simple answer, if somebody says,

Jesus came and talked to me, I just simply say, No, he didn't. They're going to say, Yes, he did.

I'm going to say, No, he didn't. Yes, he did. No, he didn't. And finally, they're going to get to a place where they're going to say, because they know you cannot evaluate a personal, private encounter, and they're just going to say,

Well, you just proved that he didn't come to me. And I'm going to say, No, no, the burden of proof is on you. I don't have to disprove something that didn't happen.

The burden of proof is on you to prove that Jesus came and spoke with you, or he appeared to you, or whatever it might be, apart from Scripture.

And, hey, I want to be a fair guy here. What did his voice sound like? Did he have a high voice?

Or was it more low? Maybe he had a deep voice like James Earl Jones, or maybe a really deep voice like Barry White, maybe.

And they can't tell you that. Did he speak in Hebrew, Aramaic, or maybe Greek? And if the

Greek, was it ancient Attic Greek? Or was it more into the Koine period? Well, they will say to you,

Well, it wasn't really a language. It was just, I had an impression. Okay, what's an impression? So you're just, that kind of thing, when it gets accepted in those circles, it becomes sort of a circular verification kind of thing, because it also becomes, unfortunately, sort of a spiritual status symbol.

And, you know, do you want to be the only person in your church that Jesus hasn't spoken to you personally? That type of thing.

This is what you get into. When you abandon Scripture for other things, and there's lots of other things out there that you can listen to.

Lots of voices. Lots of voices out there. Remember in the garden, they just had one voice to listen to.

It was the voice of God. And when Satan slithered into the garden, all of a sudden there was another voice, right? We have thousands of voices, and they're not, they come to you through all of the different ways that we have them.

So we have a tough task right now. I mean, it really is. Timothy had a tough time in Ephesus, and a lot of challenges, but I think right now we probably have as great a challenge at least.

We also have more of the resources available to us than in any history of the church.

One New Testament scholar would describe it as an embarrassment of riches, and we do. So we should take advantage of what we have and use it for the edification of the church and for God's glory, right?

Any other thoughts you might have? Yeah, that's true.

I think he probably did. He slithered in, yeah. And the thing is, you know, I also, here's the theory,

I can't prove it from the text. I think he had a smile on his snaky little lips. And probably a

British accent. No, no, he didn't have a British accent, no. A stained glass voice, how's that?

Did God say, right? He asked the first question ever asked. Just asking.

Just an innocent question, right? And then what did he do? He simply added one word, and he perverted the word of God.

So, but, yeah. Sure, yeah.

I think, number one, we have to be very patient with those folks. I think there's a difference between, you know, actually the statement,

Jesus told me. Now, if they take you right to scripture and say, and he tells me right here,

I wouldn't want to arm wrestle with him about that, of course. I wouldn't say, well, then you should say it this way. I think we need to be careful how we say it.

Jim, weigh in on this. Where's Jim? He's, you know. Because God doesn't whisper, right?

What would you say, Jim? Well, I mean, how would you help that person maybe see the distinction, or how would we maybe see the distinction between,

I think the problem comes, and help me out, how do you evaluate it?

How do you test it? We're told to test all things. Hold fast to that which is good, and that is singular, because he's talking about the word of God.

Abstain from every form of evil. So, the problem comes with,

I think, how does that person evaluate it? Personally, I don't pay a lot of attention to my feelings about things.

I don't disregard them, but I'm very careful not to, you know, assign something to them that really shouldn't be there.

So, that make sense? I may not know everyday experience of all

Christians, and it worked out really well, but I can't call that for other things.

God's providence, and yet we have to acknowledge that God does work and compel us.

One of the ways that God directs our steps. Yeah, I think one of the little tells, and a lot of it has to do with the time and place in church history.

I mean, we're in a place in church history where there's an awful lot of that going on, and so then we need to respond to the time that we're in, and oftentimes, those times require you to very clearly, pointedly draw the church back to the word of God, and maybe at another point in time, there would not be that issue, but in the church today, the big, broad, whatever you want to call the broader

Christendom, this is a huge issue, and what it does, if you stop and think about it, here's a little test.

Does it move you into scripture, or does it move you away from scripture? That's a test. That's a tell.

If it tends to move you away from the word of God and independence on something that's very subjective, that would be something you would want to warn people against,

I think. Okay, anything else? Are you talking about revelation from God equivalent to as he moved the prophets to speak?

There you go. The word itself is used in a range of ways in scripture, and one of them is for direct revelation from God through a person who we would call them a prophet.

They're called prophets in scripture, but also there's a broader use of it where it's simply the communicating of God's word and to be able to teach or preach the word of God.

So if you're talking about new revelation apart from scripture, absolutely not.

Scripture is a closed canon, as we say. Jude said that it's the once -for -all delivered to the saints word, and it's no longer being added to by God.

So we have a closed canon, but then what we have is the canon that we have, the word that we have, we are to proclaim it.

So that is our form of prophetic ministry, but it really doesn't qualify as scripture defines prophets.

Go back and look at the Old Testament, Leviticus 13, 18, and so on, and see what the penalties are for false prophets back then.

If you were to apply them now, there would be some real bloodshed in many churches because the standard has not changed for prophecy.

And by the way, the penalty for false prophets has not changed either. We don't personally stone people to death, but folks, the wages of sin is still death.

God is the agent of judgment in this, and false prophets, everywhere you have in the

Bible, you have something referenced to false teaching or false prophets. You also have a statement of their judgment or their end, it sometimes says.

Just look in the context, and you'll find it. Okay? Well, I think you can.

The problem comes in how do we evaluate it, and how do I tell if that prompting is something other, is really

God, or is it something emotional in me? Maybe whatever it might be.

The problem is you don't have an objective test of it. With Scripture, you have an objective word of God, right?

You have that, it's not left up to subjective revelation to figure out what that is.

Test all things. Hold fast to that which is good. Abstain from every form of evil.

And again, I think the warning that we see in Scripture are especially applicable to our time.

I mean, we tend to see ourselves as a little more of a sophisticated people, you know? But remember, what

Scripture says about the end times, there will be lying wonders. I mean, there will be, I believe, true visual, that look like a true miracle, but they will be lying signs and wonders.

And so, we just have to be very careful. And I think the safest place is to make sure that we are grounded in Scripture and that our source is the word of God.

Jim. Because they think in the moment, they can say in hindsight and say,

God worked this out for his good. Because that's not up for us to do.

Because I can't make a call on a subjective feeling. I can only make a call on what

I objectively know to be true from Scripture and how I see in hindsight God working that out. Because there's no light.

So if I say God is doing this, then I could end up in that moment. Even things that we think are good that we might want to be doing in the moment, the motivations of our own hearts and what the prompting state is at.

So we can give him credit for speaking those things and doing those things. But we need to be careful with whatever we are claiming

God is doing. Yeah, God gets blamed. And as you well know, in those circles where people have extra -biblical revelation, you know who else is going to get blamed?

You. Because, well, you didn't get your miracle because you don't have enough faith. You didn't do this.

You didn't do that. It's such a tragedy. People are just blamed for things that shouldn't have happened in the first place or that couldn't have happened.

And if they would have stuck with Scripture, they would have been able to just eliminate it as a possibility altogether. Anything else?

Great, good discussion. Next week, house rule number one, no false doctrine.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for our time and your word this morning and thank you for the clarity that we have as we search your word by your spirit.

We just thank you for that and we thank you that we are able to gather here together. We know it is all of it by your grace that you accomplish these things.

And now, Father, as we prepare our hearts to worship you, we just ask your grace and mercy and peace for those who would lead us this morning, who would lead us in worship and who would preach your word.

We just pray that you would bring that word to each one of our hearts and help us to be eager to hear and quick to obey what we learn today.

And we know that we have you to praise for all of these things through Jesus Christ.