My Five-Year Plan (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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our father in heaven we come before you this morning just thankful for the opportunity we have to be here to look at your word to discuss things that are important to look even at the operation of your church the importance of your word in the church father all the things that you have granted us that we might be unified that we might be built into one body that we might grow into one body in unity father i pray that you would bless our time that you would bless each one here in christ's name amen well i forgot to bring it in i left it in my office please no show of hands i don't know how many lack max lucado fans we have in here but uh tbn is offering in case you're wondering i i will you know make available to you later the offer uh for any gift they're giving away max lucado's book this month his brand new book and i just uh i asked mike this week i said how would you feel if the tbn newsletter came out and your book was the one they were giving away i'd be a little horrified and if you don't know about tbn we'll talk about it later uh you can ask me about it uh trinity broadcasting network where you don't have to be a protestant to be on you don't have to believe in the trinity and really you don't have to believe in god uh to have your own show so um anyway so this morning i'm completely changing things from what i originally planned and i thought i would answer a question i frequently get asked this question i've been mulling this over for i don't know probably about the 10 years i've been here almost 10 years now who who could have thunk it and it's taken me 10 years to come up with the answer to this question which is what is your five -year plan i'm slow you know what my plan was when i got here i had no plan none um at the seminary they don't teach planning they don't say hey guys write a paper on your five -year plan give us a plan sketch out your future goals what do people mean when they say do you have a five -year plan what is your five -year plan what do you think they mean by that financial and professional right the other answer i like to give of course is well in five years i see myself living in the mountains at high altitude it'll hit you later uh let's see or maybe i won't five -year plan is i mean what is that it's a business term you know what's my five -year plan well in five years i plan on quadrupling sales hiring 400 you know and having six branch offices what kind of what kind of plan would that be for a church a five -year plan is not a plan so when i put down my five -year plan it's a little bit different from that a five -year plan or any kind of plan suggests that we have a preset agenda if i would have spoken to the elders here at bethlehem bible church and i would have said you know what i have a plan i just don't want to reveal it to you that could have been a little scary but today a lot of people go into the church business with a plan i watched a video this week of uh oprah winfrey interviewing joel osteen let's just say it wasn't exactly the spanish inquisition but uh i i was amazed in fact i would recommend kind of watching the video and the reason i would recommend it is when you see um joel osteen's church on a sunday morning and what it's like i was more than mortified because they go well it's really like a rock concert and i go yeah it really was people chanting and cheering and standing and and this is before joel osteen got up there but people around the church or in the church are constantly you know here's a term that uh has come up over the last few years reinventing church why why would you want to reinvent church and what's that it's not good enough bruce i mean in a nutshell that's it make it more palatable to the world palatable is an interesting word what does that mean easier to eat easier to swallow and i it's interesting to me because you know a lot of times what i have for dinner something more palatable cereal or oatmeal as i get older it's easier it's more palatable but that's a pretty good picture right instead of hard to swallow hard to chew on meaty weighty things just give us the gruel treat us like old man steve here are a couple terms that have come up in the last few years how about the seeker sensitive movements we want to be sensitive to seekers make church more palatable to seekers what is a seeker it's a mythical creature i would say similar to unicorns except we all know that unicorns exist it's more likely that you'll find a unicorn than a seeker why because what does the bible say about seekers there are none no one seeks after god that's where i was three not one person seeks after god you know and if let me just expound on that just a little bit we will see sometimes somebody and it seems like they're seeking after the truth why is that god is drawing them okay so from our perspective and maybe even when we were being drawn it seemed like we were seeking after the truth well why was that it wasn't our own you know kind of thursday morning decision you know what this sunday i'm gonna go seek after god it was god saying you know what you need to find out about me tom the benefits of god and not god himself i would agree with that you know a lot of times what does that mean the benefits of god charlie okay so sometimes they're just looking for solutions to problems right it's like uh don't want the problem isn't sufficient for me to call 9 -1 -1 you know there's no fire in my house and nobody's shooting at me but i need help so what do i call the church i don't call ghostbusters thank you flow tom yeah sometimes it's it's temporal benefits sometimes it's just a an increased sense maybe of spirituality right they want to they want to feel spiritual maybe they want friends they have no friends they realize they can't find any friends in a bar there's nobody to talk to them at the library in fact there's nobody at the library is are there libraries anywhere so you know we know there are fewer and fewer bookstores so they go to church they want to meet people in fact i remember reading it was probably a year or two ago that the the place in boston to meet eligible singles was a church who which name i won't even mention but yeah that was the number one place i think it was like in the boston magazine or something like that or maybe in the boston globe i don't remember but number one place to meet singles was at this church so sometimes people are looking for that kind of thing but a seeker the whole seeker sensitive movement comes out of willow creek in what is that chicago church and what they what they were trying to do was not chase people away so when you come into church they didn't want you to think well this is a transcendent god that we're here to worship this isn't some place where you have to be holy this is a place where you can kind of come as you are don't really worry about it you'll you know you'll fit right in and we'll make things relevant for you we're going to attract you we're going to make you feel good and so guess what then you will be back next week so instead of uh you know our continuing our 18 part series on the attributes of god we're going to be having an 18 part series on the attributes of you let's just talk about you for a while and how wonderful you are willow creek or as i like to call it pillow creek because you don't have to pay attention to anything that's said during the service gave way to saddleback saddleback uh church in orange county where rick warren's the pastor and you know for those of you who don't know this i mean talk about the wrong way to start a church instead of focusing on god and what he says rick warren went out and did a canvas a survey of the people who lived in the area and said what do you want in a church and they told him and so he said we can do church like that and boom there it was and it's interesting having been there several times and not really heard one exposition of scripture at least properly done and by that i just mean telling us what the scripture says uh one of the memories i have there is as they're doing the offering and they did the offering at the end of the service but they're they're passing the offering around and as soon as they announced the offering about 20 25 of the people stood up and left i thought that's an odd thing to do you know i mean what would that be like supposing the the sermon was the last thing that they did then you know as soon as they announced he was going to get up and give the sermon then people just walk out as we'll see i think probably today or maybe not today giving is part of a worship service that's what we're supposed to do that's one of the things we're supposed to do to get up and leave during the worship service well maybe you had someplace you had to be or whatever okay but for that many people to suddenly go oh yeah i had a dentist appointment okay some other features of this kind of church something that bothers me you know you might say well how have you been a saddleback so many times because we used to go on saturday saturday saturday afternoon church isn't that grand i mean the great thing about you know say a saturday afternoon at five o 'clock service is just think about it this way think of all the benefits of that can you think of a few gary sleep in on sunday nice none of that inconvenient having to get up at 5 30 in the morning like i do what else bruce yeah you're free to worship at the altar of the nfl not for the lord that's what it stands for i just came out with that i kind of like it what are the other benefits of saturday you know late afternoon church miss cooley right on you got saturday night free you can sleep in sunday morning it's party central it's just it's just uh it's a sad state of affairs though if you know convenience and it is very convenient if convenience is the you know top of your list in looking for a church but that's what they do and so you know what are some other reasons that you would kind of want to dumb i'll put it that way dumb things down on sunday or saturday afternoon evening why would you want to dumb them down you know make them make them so you don't scare people away you want them to come back next week what are some other benefits to it benefits from a business perspective peggy yeah you you pack them in on sunday and so you get more and more people in and you know just by sheer numbers you're gonna have more giving and you're not driving them away but you know some of the other things then here here's the argument they make is by bringing them in on sunday and getting them used to you know coming in then during the week they'll have some classes and they'll actually teach people the bible during the week and eventually people will sign up for that because they just get used to the idea of this is where we go to get our spiritual information so it's kind of like you know sunday is just the lure and then you reel them in it's one way of going the emergent church comes along and really just kind of takes things sort of a step further it's this kind of thing where you know you really don't want to have any leaders and the emergent church by the way is dying a well -deserved death um really not the the talk of much of the town anymore so to speak because a lot of those leaders of that movement are just kind of fading off they're not really leading much anymore but the emergent church was this this idea that we're going to take it kind of a step further no leadership maybe not even so much people teaching you know it'll be more relational and everybody will be on the kind of even plane and i mean it really got to be like a almost like a roman catholic meeting with nobody there to lead it because you know it's all spiritual and nothing really much done but is that the way church is supposed to be the answer is no of course i've mentioned this before but you know i remember uh being in seminary and you would have these things called discipleship labs which basically meant you know a professor or maybe one of the pastors of the church you'd be there for an hour was an hour or two hours maybe once a week for a half credit but you know it's just an opportunity for them to kind of impart wisdom to a relatively small group of guys and one of my professors i used to just i i i don't even remember why but i used to have to write notes on the inside i had this little bible and i would just write it on the inside of this little bible and i'm just going this is like the coolest stuff ever and here's one of the things he said he said you know here are the four p's that churches like to focus on four p's programs property people principles he says and here's how it works in your typical church the number one thing that they focus on is programs they've got lots of programs in fact i remember going to saddleback and looking at their program sheet on a sunday or actually sorry saturday afternoon and looking at what they had during the week and they had like 100 different programs listed you could stay busy there 40 50 hours a week pretty easily recovery this and recovery that etc etc you know 12 step programs number two thing that they focus on are proper is property especially now with the multi -site campuses where you know like let's say we went multi -site pastor mike would be here preaching and then we would transmit that broadcast over to another church where we would all pretend like we were having church and we'd just be watching mike on video screen that's become more and more in vogue because it's easier to maintain that sort of thing than it is to build a church big enough to hold all the people jen and i were just talking about it the other night you know let's say you had to get every believer in a city together how would you do that in los angeles or something like you know new york city in one church building you know it would have to be humongous of course then you say how many believers can there be in los angeles and new york probably i don't know maybe it'll only take 20 i don't know you know actually living in the city but anyway property tends to be a big focus and then the other two that he would talk about are principles in other words biblical principles truths that are contained in scripture doctrine and then the other one is people and he said guess which two jesus spoke about the most well it doesn't take long to figure that one out how much time did jesus spend talking about programs let me lay out an awana you know guy like now i'm not knocking awana i'm just saying as an example something we would know around here how much time did he spend talking about that how much time did he spend talking about property the kind of church building you should have none people principles those are the things that matter now in the church we have uh let's look let's read first timothy 3 15 first timothy 3 15 i don't know if we'll need more context so maybe i should look at it here first timothy 3 paul writes starting in verse 14 i hope to come to you soon but i am writing these things to you so that verse 15 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 so he's writing these things because he wants timothy to understand how to operate a church how he ought to be focused on things and so we have in scripture we have basically our foundational parameters the the the fences as it were with which to run a church we know that also in scripture paul committed the churches at thessalonica and second thessalonians 2 15 and corinth for observing the traditions which he had given them what kind of traditions had paul given those churches church tradition which is on par with scripture what did it mean in those contexts in fact we can look at it if you want second thessalonians 2 let's look at that second thessalonians 2 let's read 13 to 15 and who has that please go ahead charlie so what do you mean by traditions okay good either pre -inscripturated teaching or the scripture and in fact that uh that word traditions has the meaning from the dictionary the greek dictionary of the content of instruction that has been handed down so this is apostolic teaching really it's scripture it's a synonym for god's word what does that mean what did what was he trying to tell them and what was he trying to tell timothy basically this that churches are not to be run on whims fashions or trends but on the basis of sound principles as set down through the inspiration of the holy spirit so the church today if it is to be faithful must be about teaching scripture about doing what the apostle said about following that model and not about the latest breeze from the church growth movement you know how to make church relevant again if the church has an owner's manual and how many of us like to read the owner's manuals on anything the only time i refer to my car owner's manual you know now what's nice about cars now is when they need service they tell you service needed you know it is a1 or b2 or whatever you know hits no i'm sorry um thank you it tells you know you get the a1 service and you go oh what does that mean you know engine overhaul and you look it up it just says oil change entire rotation or whatever but that's the only time i refer to the owner's manual is when i get that kind of code and i'm like okay what does that mean if it's like c4 i go okay you know and you have to find out what that is but we don't like to we don't like to do that and i think it's our inclination to not like it and i think for many in the larger church it's the inclination of them not to look at the owner's manual which is the bible the church should not feel free to do as she pleases why because she's been bought with a price she should submit to her lord what does ephesians 5 say you know we talked about husbands and wives in there and that christ loved the church so much that he gave himself up for but what is the picture what's the church supposed to do to christ supposed to submit supposed to do what he said and if the church will do that then they will avoid as it's described in ephesians 4 being children tossed here and there by waves carried about by every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and by craftiness in deceitful scheming that's the nas version but i thought it was interesting because the trickery of men what does that tell us that men are going to come along and try to trick deceive lead astray the church what do we see in the church today people trying to trick deceive and lead astray the church trying to take them into basically the wilderness let's wander around in the barren wilderness for a while instead of feasting on the word of god even the end of it they're craftiness and deceitful scheming looking to lead people away from the sure word of god now if we're going to talk about it this is true individually when jesus says in matthew 7 you know when he when he gives that the wrap -up the sermon on the mount and he says what that blessed is everyone who hears my word and does not do what i say no does what i say and i think the church if we're thinking about this corporately now we should want to do what the lord says we want to be compared to the wise man who built his house upon the rock upon the sure word of god why because the rain descent of the floods came and the wind blew and burst against that house yet it did not fall for it had been founded upon the rock now it's been said many times that the church exists to serve god's purposes were there no specific directives for the church if the church had nothing to do then the church universal if we had nothing to do then why not just save us and take us straight to heaven but there are things that we need to accomplish on this earth right things that cannot be done in heaven such as baptism for the dead oh well that's not right wrong church sorry what are some of the things that we have to do here on earth evangelize correct anything else disciple be sanctified yep all those things are true what's that okay good works we have to do some other things too we'll talk about those but good very good um want to get down to to this in order for a local church to carry out the purposes of god should be organized to fulfill the biblical commands first of all how about this one we don't often think about this local church should be its membership should be comprised of believers why is that why do we have to have an exclusive club why can't we just let everybody in and be all inclusive okay the bride of christ bought by his blood yep yeah membership while we believe it's a biblical concept the the the term member you know if if we just willy -nilly hand that out then what are we doing we're giving people false kind of hope false assurance why can't i belong to the church well if you're not a believer you can't belong to the church because you're not supposed to belong to the church i mean what would that mean if we had unbelievers in the church and we're trying to evangelize people you know we shouldn't have to evangelize our own membership is is my point i mean that you know believe i know you're a member of the church but you need to believe on the lord jesus christ well wait a minute that's backwards you know let's rewind that should be the other way around well yeah it's it's definitely an instrument for maintaining unity i mean how can we all have be of the same mind if we don't agree on who christ is what he did what the scriptures say which an unbeliever cannot excuse me cannot have the same mindset as but also an instrument of purity and we'll get to that in a minute but how do you how would you then discipline some people out for being in sin when ultimately the unbeliever should be disciplined out of the church for being an unbeliever that would be kind of foolish a church also must have elders if it can titus 1 5 would tell us that there should be elders in every church there should be at least at least one elder hopefully more but if you don't have that then how do you obey hebrews 13 17 having the members of the church submit to their leaders but i did the ideal form of government ought to be a plurality of elders meaning that there are a group of elders and that they work together to run the church finally a church must strive for holiness and exercise church discipline as outlined by our lord in matthew 18 verses 15 to 17 but the bible out outlines three roles that the church is to fill and now now we finally get to the lesson this morning uh three three roles for the church number one exalting god through appropriate worship of him exalting god through appropriate worship of him number two is going to be evangelizing the unbelieving community and number three edifying or building up the individual members of the congregation that is why the church exists those three functions exalting god through appropriate worship evangelizing the unbelieving community and three edifying or building up the individual members of the local congregation.

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And so you say, what is your five -year program? Well, here it is right here. And after the next five years are up, if I'm still here and still alive, both of which, who knows, then

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I'll have another five -year plan and it'll be exactly the same as this one. Okay, first exalting

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God, exalting or worshiping. How do you do that?

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One man said that it is by ascribing to him the supreme worth to which he alone is worthy.

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The essence of worship may thus be summed up as the giving of oneself completely to God in the actions and attitudes of life.

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Robert Sosee from the Church in God's Program. This is not only applicable to individuals but to corporate worship as well, so that the local church's corporate worship needs to be completely

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God -centered, not man -centered, not appealing to seekers.

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We want to appeal to one being. We want to please God. You know, what's the essence of a good sermon?

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It's not whether everybody in the pew listens to it and goes, boy, that was really meaty, I love that.

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But whether God hears it and says, my word was faithfully taught, well done.

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I mean, is it good to have both? Yes. But if you ask me, you know, what's the most important thing

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I think about before I preach? I just think, well, first of all,

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I pray for the Lord to return before my sermon. But secondly, I just think

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I'm, the honor that is mine in preaching

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His word, and I just say, Lord, please use my pathetic effort to build up your people.

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Because no matter how much I work, no matter how much I think, no matter how much I focus on things, it's not worthy of the text.

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It never is. The text is perfect and I am not.

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You know, people say sometimes, you know, that was a nice message, and I go, my job is not to get in the way as much as I can.

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But in Paul's doxology in Ephesians 1, 3 -14, when he's just bursting out to God and prays for His salvation that was planned before the foundations of the world.

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It's interesting that three times during that, what does he say? He says, to the praise of His glory.

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It's all about Him. And he says, listen, if that's the purpose of salvation, if that's the purpose for which we're each called into the body of Christ, then why would we get together and worry about anything other than the glory of God?

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If we're here to really, in a sense, celebrate the fact that we are saved, to have community together as believers, and then to worship the

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God who saved us, wouldn't we want His glory to be at the center of that?

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In fact, Psalm 150, verse 6 says that ultimately that's the purpose for every living creature.

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What? Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. If you go throughout the

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Psalms, that idea of praising the Lord is there again and again. That is central to what we do.

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We want to bring praise to Him. Now, what about music? Janet and I were talking about that because some people think only the

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Psalms should be performed in church. And, you know, that wouldn't bother me.

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It wouldn't bother me at all. If somebody said, we just need to go to the Psalms and we did that, I'd go, okay. As long as the music was good,

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I'd go, okay. I have no problem with that. In fact, I'd have a lot more problem with some of the songs that I hear on Christian radio.

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I don't think I told you guys this. I was listening to Christian radio on the way to the conference on Sunday morning.

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And I don't even remember the songs, but the guy said, this is the morning after Easter Sunday.

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He said, one of the lessons of Easter Sunday, this is the announcer. He says, one of the lessons of Easter Sunday is that God never stands still.

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This is the kind of tripe that is on, you know, God never stands still because He didn't stay in the tomb.

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You know what I'm like, that's a lesson from Easter Sunday. I mean, if there are a thousand, 10 ,000 lessons that can be drawn from Easter Sunday, I don't think that would make the list.

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I mean, that was, that was pretty pathetic, you know, and you hear some of those songs and they're equally pathetic.

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I joked, I've joked with Charlie before that I just think, you know, some of the songs that are supposedly

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Christian, I think if we did have been on a Sunday morning, we'd have to go, I'd like to dedicate this next song to my wife, you know, and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and, you know, this is a long distance dedication coming in for, this is a, you know, for, for Karen from Bruce, you know, and we'd listen to it and go, yeah,

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I can't tell the difference between that and a worship song. There's no difference. Those are sad.

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The music needs to be God honoring, needs to be God exalting. Everything that we do should be

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God exalting. If a corporate worship service is to be completely given over to God, if that's the focus, then there ought to be a solemnity attached to the entire service, including the music.

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We want to bring the church as it were, like Hebrews 4 .16 would say, before the throne of grace, as a corporate body, we want to do that.

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And again, just as the, the sermon is not to be secret sensitive, how about the music?

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No. I mean, if people come in and they think the music is good, great. If they don't think it's good,

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I don't know what to say. You know, people say, well, you know, the worship today, it wasn't very good. And I go, which part was it you're giving that was no good?

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Was it the way you listened to the sermon that was no good? And they go, no, the worship, the music.

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I couldn't really dance to it. You know, I'd give it a 73. American bandstand.

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Oh, sorry. Old pop culture. It's not about how things make us feel.

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It's about whether they're honoring to the Lord. Now, what are some things that need to be done in every service, every single service?

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There are six elements to that, and we'll probably get through a couple of them here this morning. First, there should be public reading of scripture.

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Let's look at first Timothy 4 .13. Some people might wonder why we even do that. Why do we have such a long, you know, reading of scripture?

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Does that really have to be done? Well, yeah, it does.

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Again, Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy, this is how you conduct yourself in the household of God.

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This is how church should be done. And then look at first Timothy 4 .13. He says, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

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Well, I'm just focusing on the public reading of scripture right now. And he didn't mean to go out in the town square and just start reading scripture.

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He was talking about public meeting from the pulpit. There needs to be scripture done in church.

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Why is that? Why do you think that that should be done? Okay, God speaking to his children.

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Exactly. Okay, how can we obey if we don't know what to obey?

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Russ? Yes, but we're just focusing on the reading.

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It should be done by a competent leader, hopefully, who can do that.

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Yeah, I think that's good.

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You know, it sets the standard. I agree with that. Okay, has everything pertaining to life and godliness?

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I mean, just imagine, you know, some of the things that happen now in church, some things which are really irrelevant.

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I mean, we do announcements, and you notice when we do them, like one minute before the service starts, no offense to those who make them, but we don't have time for them.

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And you know what? If you're going to jettison something, if you're going to get rid of something, then what do you do? You get rid of the things that are not essential and not, you know, laid out in scripture.

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There's no commandment in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, anywhere in the Bible to have announcements.

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And besides that, what I've also learned is, who listens to announcements? Raise your hand if you listen to the announcements. I'm not believing.

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You know, I'm just, there may be a few of you, I'm sure, but, you know, how many read the bulletin?

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Tell the truth and shame the devil. Really? Okay. I don't know.

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There might be some repenting going on after this Sunday school class. Well, maybe.

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I have no comment. What are some other things that are done during church services, not here necessarily?

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How about dramas, plays? Now, the best play, the best drama, the best skit in the history of mankind is not as good as the

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Bible. The drama is in scripture itself.

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So why do we read it? We read it because it is the very word of God, because it's dramatic in and of itself, because it pierces between bone and marrow.

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It gets right to the heart of the matter. You know, we may read a passage and there might be only one person in the building who just goes, yeah, that hurt, but I needed to hear that.

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Or there might be one person in the building who says, I'm thankful for that. And that's enough.

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Yeah, it's just a standard for what's coming up next. That's absolutely true. When I was in Northern California, Pine Bluff or Pine County or whatever it was,

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Pine Cone, oh, Pine Grove, I think it was, someplace where they make soap operas or something.

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I don't know. When I was there, the pastor said, you know, what do you want me to read this morning? And I just thought, well,

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I had a couple of purposes. One was, I just thought, if there are any unbelievers here,

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I want them to get a couple of clear presentations of the gospel. One could be in the scripture reading. So I said, read

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Acts 17. And so he did that. And then I preached the gospel out of the Gospel of John.

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So I think sometimes it can just underscore different things that need to be stressed, like even the gospel.

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But it's also true, and this is something to ponder, that God is exalted.

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He is praised. He is put in his right place when his word is read.

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That's Psalm 119, 28, when his people rejoice in hearing it. That's Psalm 119 verses 103 to 104.

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God is glorified in the reading of scripture. That's why we do it during worship services.

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If our focus is on exalting God, then the things that we do ought to exalt him, and reading of scripture does that.

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There's no exalting God, there's no worship of God in a play or dramatic dancing, or any of the other things that may be done.

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There are a lot of things that are done today in churches that I just think, quite frankly, are not only stupid, but they are demeaning to God.

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I've mentioned before, I was at a church in California, was not preaching by the way, and a video clip came up from a movie.

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And I was like, really? And then, to make things even worse, to use the colloquialism, which

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I don't think is quite accurate, but the Lord's name was taken in vain during the video clip.

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And I go, really? I came to church for this? How is that honoring

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Christ? How is that honoring the Lord or his word? I don't know, but I didn't think it was.

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Anyway, we need to close, and we'll continue here next week. Father, we just thank you that we don't need clever strategies, clever plans, five -year plans, any kind of year plans.

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We just need to follow Scripture. Our goal, the reason we exist here as a church body is to exalt you, and to evangelize the lost, and to edify the saints, and in that order.

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Father, would you work through your people today, through your word, would you move us to love what is exalting, what is glorifying to you, to cherish those things that bring honor and glory to you, and to look at the things that don't, and just say, we ought not to do those things.

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Father, we pray for the rest of our day, and just that you would be glorified and honored in the things that we do and say in Christ's name.