WWUTT 616 A Pastor Must Teach the Word of Christ?

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So, last week we considered how an overseer of the church must be temperate and must be able to teach.

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Today, we're going to look at an example of somebody who is not qualified on either account when we understand the text.

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Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

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Visit our website at www .utt .com Now, here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

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Thank you, Becky. Continuing our study of qualifications for overseers, we are in 1

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Timothy 3, verses 1 -7, where the Apostle Paul writes to his servant

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Timothy, the saying is trustworthy. If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

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Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

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He must manage his own household well with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

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He must not be a recent convert or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

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Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

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So last week we talked about the pastor or an elder being sober -minded.

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He must be temperate. He's not given over to crazy ideas, but he holds firm to the trustworthy word as taught.

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He is sound in his doctrine. He's an expository preacher, meaning that he exposes the text, helps the people of God understand what the word of God says, what the

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Holy Spirit of God means for it to say, not what the pastor wants it to say or what or even what the people of God want it to say.

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Lest the pastor be guilty of scratching itchy ears. OK, this is a man who is not falling into myths and speculations.

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He's not getting into quarrels over words. He's not going beyond what is written, but he's filled up in his heart with the word of Christ.

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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as Paul said in Colossians chapter three. And this is best exemplified in the church coming from the pastor or the elder as a man who has the word of God dwelling richly in his spirit.

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If this is not a man who loves the true words of our Lord Jesus Christ, then he's not going to be able to teach.

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So a pastor that is sober -minded will also be able to teach, which is the ending parts of verse two.

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That was what we concluded talking about on Wednesday. And I want to come back again to that today.

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Some of you have probably seen a clip that was circulating last week from Stephen Furtick.

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It was something that was kind of whittled down to about a minute long, and it was shared on social media,

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Twitter and Facebook. I want to come to that sermon that he preached. I believe it was last

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Sunday. So this was a little over a week ago and use this sermon to show an example of a man who is not sober -minded and is disqualified as a teacher, to borrow the word that Dr.

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John MacArthur used to describe Stephen Furtick. So Furtick was preaching from Genesis chapter 28.

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This is where Jacob has his dream of a stairway that is leading to heaven and angels descending and ascending this ladder.

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The way that it's translated could either come out ladder or stairway. Some have said that it was probably something resembling a ziggurat that Jacob may have seen.

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And then he anointed the rock that he was sleeping on, which was his pillow. That's kind of the favorite or the famous part of the story that Jacob used a rock as a pillow.

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And then he erected that rock and anointed it with oil and named that place Bethel, which means house of God.

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And there was a very significant there was a lot of significance for that particular location is it would come up over and over again over the course of the

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Old Testament. I'll mention that a little bit more as we come to it in context. Before I get to the main part of this sermon that I want to highlight as Furtick deviating from the text,

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I want to play this portion first. So this is a few minutes before we get to the section that I want to kind of use as my example.

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Determined, determined. The purpose of God is determined. A theological term would be predestined.

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Yeah. Yeah. All things work together for the good of those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.

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For those he foreknew, he also predestined that we might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

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And those he called, he also justified. And those he justified, he also glorified. And those he glorified, he glorified to the end that his purpose might prevail in the earth.

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To break it down into real simple language, all I'm trying to say is God is still working.

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God was working in the things you did wrong. The things you did right. The activity of God cannot be stopped by human decision or mistakes.

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In fact, some of your greatest mistakes will be the seed of your greatest miracles.

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It's called purpose and it always prevails. And God is so determined that he meets with Jacob in a certain place when the sun is set because he made up his mind,

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I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Now I don't want to get too nitpicky with that.

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I play that for just one reason. To emphasize that the point of the sermon is that God determines the purpose.

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He determined the purpose before time began. But here in just a moment, Furtick is going to teach something completely different.

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He's going to tell the congregation that they determine the purpose. So first he says

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God determines the purpose. And then a few minutes later, and in fact, you'll hear him transition this in practically the same sentence.

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He's going to go from saying God determines the purpose to you determine the purpose. And Furtick is all over the place.

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Todd Friel loves to describe Beth Moore as manic. That's his favorite word to describe

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Beth Moore. Furtick is way worse. Jacob is so funny to me. God is here and I didn't know it.

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How can you miss God? How can God be in the actual place?

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And you didn't see it, but he could only see it when he was asleep.

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And then he woke up to see what God was doing all along. That purpose is determined before it is discovered.

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He wakes up, OK, because remember, we got a rock and Jacob makes it a pillow.

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So he is repurposing the rock to make it a pillow. And there it is.

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There's his transition. So he's gone from talking about how God purposes something to now

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Jacob is the one who purposes it. And he's going to then turn that into how you purpose something for good.

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Not that God purposes something for good. He quoted from Romans eight a little bit ago, saying God is the one that does it according to the purpose of his will.

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But now he's shifting into, oh, you purpose it for your will. It's not exactly a

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Tempur -Pedic, but it will work. Sometimes you can't be picky. Sometimes you got to take whatever you got.

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You know what I'm saying? It's not my favorite song, but I'm going to worship to it anyway, because I don't need my favorite song to worship

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God. It'll work. It'll work. It's not a lot of money, but I'm going to make it work.

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OK, my husband is an exact… OK, anyway, we're going to skip that part. And he says, this will work.

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This will work. And when he lays down, I'm going to do this for you. I'm going to demonstrate this for you. Not many preachers would go to this extent to bring the point across.

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But if I got to lay down on this monitor to show you what

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Jacob did and the situation he was in, I will lay down on this monitor. Oh, please.

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Moving on. That's not even comfortable. Not even kind of comfortable, but it'll work.

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It'll work. It'll work. And he sees something while he sleeps, and he wakes up, and he goes, well, that was awesome.

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That was amazing. This is the house of God.

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Well, first the Bible says he was afraid, because fear is the flip side of faith.

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Fear is what you feel that enables you to open yourself to faith.

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Fear is the sensation that leads you to something greater than yourself that causes you to have faith that God is greater.

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I don't even know what he means by that. Why can't he just say the fear of the

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Lord is the beginning of knowledge? Proverbs 1, 7, because that's the kind of fear that Jacob experienced, the fear of God, whom he did not fear up to that point.

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But that's, you know, this again, Furtick's not trying to teach here. He's trying to tickle the ears.

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So because he is not temperate, because he lacks temperance, and because he's not able to teach, he's disqualifying himself as a pastor, an elder of the church.

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So first he was afraid, and then he was excited. And he said, this is awesome.

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This is awesome. Wow. This is lit.

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He would have said it. That's what Moses said at the burning bush.

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All right, I'll admit that was funny. It was clever. This is the house of God.

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Remember now, he took some oil, rubbed it on the rock, and said, this is the house of God, pointing at the rock.

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God doesn't live in a rock. That is not what

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Jacob was saying. And if Furtick would stop trying to be cute, and he would get off the stage, instead of laying there with the monitor as a pillow, using himself as an example, showboating, and he would actually go over to the pulpit where his

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Bible is open and read this text to the congregation, this is what he would see.

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When Jacob awoke from his dream, Genesis 28, 17, he was afraid.

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And he said, how awesome is this place? This is none other than the house of God.

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And this is the gate of heaven, not the rock, the place that he was in.

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So early in the morning, Jacob took the stone that he had put under his head, and he set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it.

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And he called the name of that place Bethel. But the name of the city was Luz at the first.

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It wouldn't become the city of Bethel until Ephraim would conquer it in the book of Joshua, when the

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Israelites would come back into the promised land, and they would take the land that God was giving to them.

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Then they would make that place formerly Luz into Bethel, the very place where Jacob had laid and had that dream and saw a stairway to heaven, a place where heaven met earth.

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And then Bethel comes up over and over again throughout the Old Testament. It's a place where the ark of God would eventually rest.

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It was a place where the people of Israel went to hear the judgments of God. In Judges 20, verse 18, the people of Israel arose and went up to Bethel and inquired of God, who shall go up first for us to fight against the people of Benjamin?

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And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first. So the people go to Bethel to hear from God, and God talks to them there because that is the place where heaven met earth.

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Samuel actually set up shop there eventually, and he issued his judgments for Israel at that place at Bethel.

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And it would also become the site of Israel's apostasy. They would begin worshiping golden calves there at the very place that God had purposed to meet his people.

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Bethel means house of God. That's what that name means. Hosea would refer to it as Beth -Avon, which means house of idols.

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So he's being tongue -in -cheek there. It's gone from being the house of God to the house of idols because the people were no longer worshiping

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God there. They were worshiping their idols. If Furtick knew his

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Bible, he would get this, but he doesn't. And so instead, he is purposing this story himself to be what he wants it to mean in order to tickle the ears of his congregation.

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He starts out rather manipulative in the sense that he tries to tell the people that God has purposed this, but then twists the whole thing around to say, you purpose it, you make it what you want to make it, just as Jacob made the rock what he wanted to make it.

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The rock was nothing. The rock was a monument. Jacob stood the rock up, anointed it with oil, consecrated that place so that it would be remembered, this is the place where heaven meets earth.

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And this is even foreshadowing. It's pointing to Christ who is going to be the gateway to heaven.

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But Furtick never even gets there. Never comes back to the gospel. Never comes back to the fact that our fellowship was broken with God.

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Israel broke their fellowship with God. He had this fellowship with Israel, and instead they erected idols and they worshiped their idols just as we do the same thing.

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But Christ has come and has sacrificed himself for our sins so that all who believe in Christ now have access to God through him.

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But Furtick never makes that connection. Instead, he just makes this story about you.

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Except that one verse that says that if we don't praise him, the rocks will cry out. See, God can show up anywhere.

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That's the point. The point is he took some oil. Oil is symbolic of the Holy Spirit. It's symbolic of the joy of the

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Lord. But it's also when something special was being consecrated, like a king or a priest, they would pour oil on it.

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It was a part of the consecration. And the rock is something common. So Jacob consecrates something that is common and says,

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This is the house of God. Pointing at a rock. This is where God lives.

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No, he doesn't. God doesn't live in a rock. But he can. He can. Notice this.

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When Jacob says, This is the gate of heaven. He didn't say that because God said it.

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God didn't say, This is the gate of heaven. Jacob said, This is the gate of heaven. So apparently,

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I have the ability to be in a common situation. You hear me?

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An uncertain situation and put some oil on it and put some

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Holy Ghost on it and put some purpose on it. And if I say it's a gate, it'll be a gate.

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And if I say it's a blessing, it'll be a blessing. And if I say

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God is in it, God is in it. And if I say it's a church, it'll be a church.

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Anyway, you can tell where that's going. He does that over and over and over again. I want to fast forward a few minutes to one more part.

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Furtick actually thinks the thing he's preaching is what God told him to preach.

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You hear this word God gave me. This is the gate.

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This is the gate. But you hear what he's saying there. Whatever I say it is, that's what it is.

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If I say it's a church, then it's a church. You don't determine what the church is. God determines what the church is.

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If I put some oil on it. If I put some Holy Ghost on, you don't put the

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Holy Spirit anywhere. He's not at your beck and call. And this is tickling the ears of his hearers.

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This is all in your hands. You can do it. You have autonomy. You don't answer to anyone else.

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God has given you the power and you make what you want to make out of it. But doesn't show where the text says that anywhere.

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And even when he does reference the text, this story out of Genesis 28, he twists it and even says things about it.

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The text doesn't say that stuff that would not ordinarily seem all that big a deal.

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I mean, what difference does it make if he says that Jacob is pointing to the rock and saying that it's the house of God or that location is the house of God?

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Well, that is important because it reveals that Furtick doesn't understand the text. He does not understand what the significance of that place is and the significance that it's going to have throughout the rest of the

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Old Testament and the foreshadowing that it has pointing to Christ, who is our meeting place with God.

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He never comes back to the gospel. Furtick was featured in a what video that I just put together and posted over the weekend.

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And one of the things that I stated in that video is that the word of God, the Bible has been written for our instruction.

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That's Romans 15 for that through endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures, we have hope.

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Christ is our hope. The hope of the promise of the resurrection of the dead that we have in Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. If you're teaching something other than the sound words of Christ, according to his gospel, then you are depriving people of the message of the hope of the gospel.

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You're depriving the people of God, of our hope in Christ. And that's exactly what

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Furtick does. This is not a feel good message. As a matter of fact, it's a hopeless message because what you say is something is not what that something is.

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And so he is equipping his hearers for failure. Our only victory is in Jesus Christ, our

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Lord and a teacher of God must be able to point people to that must help to restore the hearer to the hope of the gospel that we have.

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And if a man is not sober minded, if he's not temperate in his thinking, and if he is not able to teach, he is disqualified.

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And so Furtick is. And we're going to come back to another clip from Furtick a little bit later on this week in which that is actually said of him.

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And you probably know the clip that I'm talking about, where Dr. John MacArthur made a statement about Furtick, that he is unqualified.

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And this man has continued to affirm over and over again that he is not equipped for the pastorate.

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But lest we just look at Furtick and make some judgment or determination based on what we're reading here in First Timothy chapter three, we must realize that we we must not give ourselves over into those teachers who tickle the ears, who do not teach sound doctrine, but they just scratch itching ears.

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We must also be careful that we don't treat the text the same way that Furtick is treating the text, making it something that's about me, that points to me, that we would think empowers me to do what

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I want to do. Rather, are we looking at the text to point us to Christ and worship him for what he has done?

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We were separated from God, alienated from God. We were enemies of God in the very place where we should have been exalting

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God. We had raised up our idols. What we deserved was to be cut off from God forever.

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But God, who is merciful and loving, sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins.

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Christ, who laid his own life down, took it back up again. And so all who believe in Christ, our sins are forgiven and we have eternal life with Jesus Christ, our

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Lord. And so let us praise his great name. Let us come to the scriptures to see how great and good he is.

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Our Lord God, I thank you for what it is that you have taught us from your word. And I pray that these words would continue to dwell in our hearts, that the peace of Christ would rule in our hearts so that we might speak the hope of Christ to one another, be an encouragement to one another, admonish one another when we go away from the sound words of Christ, bringing us back to the hope of the gospel that we need to be reminded of over and over again.

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Because we as feeble creatures are so easy, so prone to forget that our great

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God and king is the one who loves us so much that he would make so great a sacrifice for us that we might be with him because you are great.

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You are holy. You are worthy of all praise. In the name of Christ, we pray.

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Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text. Pastor Gabe is the author of several short books on the essential doctrines of the

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Christian faith. Topics include the deity of Christ, original sin, resurrection, Christ's incarnation, and many more.

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Find these books in our bookstore when you visit www .utt .com. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in God's word when we understand the text.