Tom Ascol - The Sufficency of Scripture

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Last night, Dr. Rinnehan gave us an excellent treatment on the authority of Scripture, and he did it by taking us through what
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Scripture says about itself, what the Bible claims that it actually is, which, if we're going to be biblical people, we need to be willing to claim with the
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Bible. And so the Bible's doctrine of itself leads us to conclude that it is indeed
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God -breathed, it is indeed the very Word of God, the Word of God written.
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And then Dr. White showed us how that remains an ever -important doctrine for us.
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We can't ever lose sight of the reality that we live in a world that doesn't accept, doesn't want to hear, in many respects, that God has spoken, and that He has spoken in a way that we can understand, a way that we have a responsibility actually to heed and to respond to.
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We mustn't allow anyone ever to undermine our commitment to the final authority of God's Word.
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The nature of the Bible as the Word of God written is a subject on which we must never allow ourselves to become confused.
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In the 1970s, North American evangelicalism came dangerously close to theological apostasy in my estimation.
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Many of the leaders among evangelicals of that time had begun to drift away from the historic Orthodox commitments regarding these very things that we looked at last night on the authority of Scripture.
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Professors in prominent colleges and seminaries began to say things in a rather bold way about the mistakes in the
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Bible, and how the Bible was inaccurate at points and places of history, and maybe places that they considered not to be so significant to the doctrine of Scripture, and tried to convince many that it was okay to acknowledge the fallibility of the
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Bible without having any fear that that would undermine vital
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Christianity. It looked like evangelical churches were going to follow the steps of mainline denominations in the early part of the 1970s and be set adrift, drifting in the sea of modern liberalism.
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But in His mercy, God raised up some evangelical leaders who recognized those trends and that tide and stood against it.
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They began to challenge these kinds of statements. They began to defend the authority of Scripture in the face of these types of criticism.
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In 1977, the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy was formed. This council had several meetings.
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They issued three statements, the most famous of which is the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.
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Over the decade of the 80s and into the 90s, evangelicals engaged in what has come to be called the battle for the
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Bible. In my own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention of Churches, beginning in 1979, this battle raged very heatedly and it continued on probably until the late 1990s or so, when even some skirmishes have continued on in this century.
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During that time, conservative church leaders who affirmed the inerrancy of Scripture stood against moderate church leaders who had gone the way of those that I described earlier.
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In God's goodness and grace, both within the Southern Baptist Convention in particular and the broader evangelical world in a larger way, there became a renewed commitment to the absolute authority of God's Word.
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That was the confession. That was the statement that many were beginning to make, is no, this
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Word is indeed what it claims to be. It is the inerrant, infallible Word of God.
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Because of that, because of this shift back to that affirmation, many began to say in the late 20th century and continue to say today that the battle for the
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Bible is over. But the battle for the Bible will never be over because we must always be on our guard concerning what the
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Scripture claims for itself and how the Scripture calls us to live in the light of what it actually teaches.
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Granted, it's now widely accepted that to be an evangelical means to believe in the full, unwavering authority of God's Word.
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And that doctrine of the authority of Scripture must always remain a key concern for us.
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However, I'm convinced that it's no longer the most critical issue in this subject that confronts us.
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Today, the most important issue that confronts evangelicals is the sufficiency of Scripture.
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Is Scripture enough? It was about 18 years ago when I first heard the late
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James Boyce make this point. As he was trying to assess where we are as an
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American evangelical culture and where he anticipated we might be going, he argued that the real case, the real issue that must be confronted is the sufficiency of Scripture.
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In 1999, he put those thoughts in print in his book, What Makes a Church Evangelical, and this is what he says.
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The issue that I would pinpoint today is the sufficiency of God's Word, meaning, do we really believe that in this book
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God has given us what we need to do all necessary spiritual work, or do we think that we have to supplement the
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Bible with other man -made techniques and devices? Consider the following areas of a church's work, and this is his list.
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Evangelism. Do we need sociological techniques to do evangelism? Must we attract people to our churches by showmanship and entertainment?
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Sanctification. Do we need psychology and psychiatry for Christian growth?
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Are support groups essential? Discerning God's will.
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Do we need extra biblical signs or miracles for guidance? Does God speak to us in our heart in a way that is just as important and real as the
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Scriptures? And finally, impacting society. Is the
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Bible's teaching adequate for achieving social progress and reform?
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I think Dr. Boyce was prophetic in his insight and anticipation of where evangelicalism was going.
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Today, among evangelicals, the question, the question is no longer, is the
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Bible true? The question for us is, is the Bible enough?
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Do we need something more than what God has revealed to us in Scripture?
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And in many respects, the issue that surrounds that question is a more difficult issue for us to confront than the authority of Scripture.
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The reason being that an attack upon the authority of Scripture is like a frontal assault.
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It comes at us clearly making arguments and accusations that if they are true, the implications are readily evident.
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But it's not so evident to let go of the sufficiency of Scripture to see the various implications that will inevitably follow.
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This is a far more subtle attack upon the church. It's harder to detect. And consequently, what we are seeing is many good
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Christian leaders who affirm the full authority of God's Word are letting go of the sufficiency of God's Word.
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The ancient city of Troy was able to withstand the attacks of the Greek warriors for nine years. Nine years running, those
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Greek soldiers that had sailed there assaulted the walls, assaulted the gates, and couldn't breach them.
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And finally in the tenth year, the Greek warriors, as you know, came up with a ploy, a plan.
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And they constructed this huge wooden horse. And they burned their camps and left the horse as if it were an offering for their goddess
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Athena. And then they took off in their ships, looking as if they were going back home in defeat, when in reality, the ships just went out of sight waiting for a signal.
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And then they put some of their best soldiers in the belly of that hollow horse. And when the
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Trojans saw the ships sailing, they declared victory. They hauled that horse inside their gates.
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They celebrated and partied all night long, and at the right time, those Greek soldiers came out of the horse, killed the guards, opened the gates, signaled the ships, and the
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Greeks came back in and slaughtered the Trojans. What the Greeks couldn't do with a frontal assault, the
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Trojans let them do by bringing this horse into the very walls of their city.
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The very same thing, I'm afraid, is happening in evangelical churches today. What the devil could not do through his direct attacks on the authority of Scripture, he is being allowed to do through the subtlety of his stealth in undermining the sufficiency of Scripture.
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And as I said, there are many who would never deny the inerrancy or the infallibility of the
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Word of God, who nevertheless, by their teaching, by their practice, are denying the sufficiency of Scripture.
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And in that regard, are sending us back toward defeat in the battle for the
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Bible. So we desperately need to take a closer look at this whole issue of sufficiency.
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What do we mean by the sufficiency of Scripture? Well, we mean that the
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Bible is all we need to guide us in what we are to believe and how we are to live before God.
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God has given us everything we need to teach us what we are to believe and how we are to live before Him.
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All we need for life, all we need for faith, all we need for godliness.
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Now does this mean that the Bible gives us everything we need for every aspect of our lives? Not at all.
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I took my wife to the emergency room this morning about 4 .30 or 5 o 'clock, and when the doctor started examining her,
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I'm glad he didn't pull out his King James Bible and said, well let me see if I can figure out what's wrong with you. He relied upon things outside of what
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God had revealed in the Scriptures. And God has given us many things like that. So to say that the
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Bible is sufficient is not to suggest that God has given us everything that we need for every aspect of life.
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You want your auto mechanic to read something other than the Bible. You want him to know his field of expertise so that he can diagnose and properly repair your car.
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The 1689 Confession in the very first chapter gives us a wonderful summary of this doctrine when it says this in paragraph 6.
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The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, for man's salvation, for faith and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the
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Holy Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelation of the
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Spirit or the traditions of men. Now this is exactly what the Bible claims for itself.
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So open your Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter 3. 2
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Timothy chapter 3. I want to begin reading in verse 1 and then
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I'm going to read through the verses that Jim read for us last night down through verse 5 of chapter 4.
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But hear the word of God from 2 Timothy chapter 3 beginning in verse 1. You know this is
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Paul's last letter that we have recorded in the New Testament. He is giving his final instructions to his young protege who is pastoring the church at Ephesus.
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And he writes this. But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come.
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For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self -control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.
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And from such people turn away. For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
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Now as Janice and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth, men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith.
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But they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all as theirs also was.
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But you, but you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance, persecutions, afflictions, which happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra, what persecutions
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I endured, and out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
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But evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
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All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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I charge you, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom, preach the word.
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Be ready in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching.
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For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth and be turned aside to fables.
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But you be watchful in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."
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May God bless this word to us. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you for this word.
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We thank you that you've given it to us. You've not left us in the world without a witness to yourself. We pray that you would teach us from the word and help us to believe the truth about it and help us to have confidence in it, not to have a failure of nerve when it comes to thinking and ordering our lives in a way that will bring glory to you.
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Help us now as we attempt to see the things that you would say to us from the scriptures this day.
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In Jesus' name, amen. I want to ask three questions of this text in order to get this issue more formally before us.
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Just three real simple, easily answered questions. First of all, what is the situation that Timothy is facing?
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He's a pastor in Ephesus, church that Paul himself planted, church that Paul dearly loves, a church that Paul had spoken to the elders already and said to them, there's going to be trouble come up.
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Among your own number, there are going to be those that come and will try to scatter the sheep and you elders must be on guard.
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And so now Timothy is there and he is the one who primarily has responsibility of leading those elders and the whole church.
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And so Paul writes to him and he warns him of what's going to happen. And he says, beginning in verse 1 of chapter 3, that in the last days, perilous times will come.
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Now, Paul, by this phrase, last days, doesn't mean the last seven years of history before Jesus comes back or the last three and a half years.
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He's talking about these last days that we live in now, the last days that Timothy was living in, in that time.
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Because if he were not speaking that way, what he says in verse 5 would make no sense. He says, these days are going to come and Timothy, when they come and these people manifest themselves in these way, you turn away from them.
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Now, that would be absolutely nonsensical if Paul is thinking about something that's not going to occur until just before the
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Lord Jesus returns. So he warns him that there are going to be problems in society in some heightened seasons of peril, perilous times that history is going to flow and they're going to be sometimes in some situations when things are exceptionally perilous for the man of God, for the church of God.
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I think perhaps we're living in one of those seasons now in North America. But certainly, Paul anticipated that it would be happening in Timothy's lifetime there in Ephesus.
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Society is going to come apart at the seams, is what he says to Timothy. Stress will be evident on every hand to those who are trying to follow the
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Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, just look at this list. Verse 2, what kind of people will be prominent?
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What kind of people will be manifested during these perilous seasons? Lovers of themselves, covetous, lovers of money, boaster, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy.
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You see the list? I mean, it does sound like he's reading off today's newspaper in our own cities and towns in America, but he's telling
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Timothy, these things are going to happen. This is the way culture is going to go. This is the way the society in which you are living, in which you are pastoring, in which this church has been planted, this is what's going to happen.
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Mark it down, perilous times are going to come. It'll be a season marked by lawlessness.
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People don't love, they sin with their tongues, they have no self -control, they're brutal, despisers of good.
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This is a description of out -and -out lawlessness. There are going to be intense moral problems in society, that's his point.
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But that's not the only point he makes. Timothy's going to face seasons when there are going to be intense problems in the church as well.
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In verse 5, Paul says there are going to be hypocrites in the church, people who have a form of godliness, but deny its power.
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These are people that come across as very religious, and yet by the way they live, they deny the very thing that they profess, form of godliness, no power of godliness.
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Verse 7, such people will be unteachable. What an indictment. Always learning, never coming to the knowledge of the truth, always going to the next seminar, always following the next
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Bible study, always engaged in the next opportunity to have some kind of religious gathering, always going about it, yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth.
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Never coming to be gripped by the truth so that their lives are truth -driven lives.
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More than that, in verse 3, there's a time when there will be intolerance of sound doctrine.
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You know what is haunting in this passage? You know what I find to be the most frightening word in verse 3 of chapter 4?
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It's the pronoun, they, they. The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires.
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Because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers.
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They will turn their ears from the truth. Who is the they? It's not the society.
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It's not the world. It's the church. It's people in the church.
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It's the people that Timothy will look at week after week after week as he tries to teach them. It's the people that he's going to try to minister to.
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It's the people that he's established friendships and relationships with. And Paul says, mark it down, Timothy.
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In perilous times, people in the church are going to turn away from sound doctrine.
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They will not tolerate sound doctrine. They'll run after every fable, every story that tickles their ears, captures their fancy and their imagination, all at the expense of sound doctrine.
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Verse 4 of chapter 4, he says that they will be turned aside to fables.
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Away from truth, aside, they'll stand on, try to stand on fables.
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These people are as stable as water. No foundation.
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No ability to persevere in the things that are right and true because they're not grounded in what's right and true.
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What's the situation that Paul anticipates Timothy facing? A time of heightened immorality in society, a time of heightened confusion and lack of spirituality and godliness in the church.
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Second question, what does Paul instruct Timothy to do in this situation? Anticipating this, tell him it's going to come.
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What does he tell him to do? Well, it's very instructive to see what he doesn't tell him to do. He doesn't say, now,
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Timothy, when things get really bad, you're going to need new methods.
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You're going to have to come up and do things differently. The same old way of doing church isn't going to work anymore when things get really rough, when people start getting really immoral and they start not caring about the church and they start being blatantly lawless.
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Whenever the church starts becoming increasingly immoral and like the world so that there's less and less difference between the world and the church,
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Timothy, this is not your father's church. You need something new.
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Listen up. Now, I find it very instructive that none of that is in the text, that Paul doesn't have a hint of suggesting that when things get really bad, then you just got to set all that aside because, man, we got to make things work now.
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We got real problems on our hands. It's real simple what he tells Timothy to do. Two things, really.
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He says to him, first of all, verses 14 through 17 of chapter 3, continue in the word.
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In contrast to all that's going on in the world, all that's going on in the church, he says, remember, you've carefully followed my doctrine, verse 10 and verse 14, but as for you, continue in the things which you've learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you've learned them.
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That from childhood, you've known the holy scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
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What does the man of God need in seasons when the world seems to be coming apart at the seams, when the church seems to be engulfed by the world?
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What does the man of God need to continue in the word? Stay in the word.
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Cling to the word. Don't forget the word. Don't forget the ways that God has taught you from his word, the truth you've already learned.
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Cling to it. Believe this. Don't let go of the word. That's what he's telling him to do personally.
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Then he goes on in chapter 4, and he says, publicly, preach the word.
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Don't give up preaching. And the point was made last night with this severe charge in verse 1 that prefaces what he actually says.
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This severe warning that prefaces the actual charge, knowing that the day will come when you will stand before God and the
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Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead, preach the word.
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Keep preaching Scripture. Keep taking what God has revealed and explaining it and applying it and calling people to hear the very word of God.
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And he's to do that even when they will not endure it.
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Well, sometimes we pastors, we're tempted to have a failure of nerve.
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People don't like sometimes to hear what's in the word. And the temptation in those times is to back away and say, well, maybe
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I don't need to say what's in the word. Maybe I can be selective in just teaching these things in the word and not these other more offensive truths that are in the word.
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And none of that is in Paul's mind. He tells Timothy, cling to the word personally.
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Personally, preach the word publicly. When everything seems to be falling apart, that is his charge.
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Third question. We've seen the situation Timothy faces, seen the simple instructions that Paul gives to Timothy in the situation.
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Why does Paul give this counsel? Why does he tell him to do this? He tells him to do this because he knows that the
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Scriptures reveal Jesus Christ to us. In verse 15, the
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Scriptures make us wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
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What is it that we need in perilous times? We need a Savior. We need
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Christ Jesus. We need to overcome this false way of viewing the gospel that looks at it as only a threshold kind of experience.
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That we need the gospel to get in and then we need something else to keep us going. What we need is the gospel of Jesus Christ to usher us into a right relationship with God and we need the gospel of Jesus Christ to keep us in that relationship.
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We need the gospel of Christ day by day to feed us and to nurture us in that relationship. We never advance beyond the gospel of Christ.
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Paul knew that. And he evidently knew the tendency to forget that.
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And so knowing that the Scriptures, rightly understood, rightly handled, always lead us to Christ, he says to Timothy, when things get hot, when you get distracted and you see this problem and that problem, you feel this pressure and that pressure and you're tempted to be turned in all different ways, cling to the
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Word, preach the Word. Why? Because it's in the Word that we meet Christ.
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It's in the Word that God has revealed Himself savingly to us in the
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Lord Jesus. Christ is the whole armor of God that Paul writes about in Ephesians 6.
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This armor that we must be able to put on so that we can stand in the evil day.
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The only way that we know Jesus Christ is through the
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Scriptures. In Luke 24 -27, when those two dejected disciples were walking on the road to Emmaus, and Jesus comes and starts walking with them and engages them in conversation, the
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Scripture says, and beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He expounded to them in all the
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Scriptures the things concerning Himself. A right handling of the
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Bible takes you to Christ. And any handling of the
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Bible that does not take you to Christ is not a right handling of the Bible. Because the whole Bible is about Jesus.
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So wherever you dip down in the Scripture, wherever you're trying to understand what God has revealed at any point in His written
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Word, you have not finished with it until you see how it leads you to Jesus Christ.
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All the Scripture is about Christ. Christ tends to be forgotten too often in our evangelical churches.
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We can get so caught up in other things, even good things, like Calvinism, like expository preaching, like theology, that we can have our thinking turned away from that which expository preaching,
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Calvinism, and good theology ought to be leading us to Jesus Christ. And so Paul knows this, and he says to Timothy, continue in the
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Scripture, and preach the Scripture, because in doing so, Paul was very much aware that you cannot do those things without engaging your heart personally and your people publicly with Jesus Christ.
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Paul also understood the sufficiency of the Scripture to meet the demands of the day.
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In verses 15 and 16 of chapter 3, he lists five things that the Word of God can do.
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He says, the Word can make you wise to salvation. People need to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, to save him.
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They need to come to know God. How? Through Christ. Where do we learn that? The Word.
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They are able to make you wise to salvation. He says, the Scripture is able to teach you.
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It is profitable for doctrine. That's what doctrine is. It's instruction. They are able to rebuke and to correct us.
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The Scriptures are able to train us in righteousness. Paul had a comprehensive view of what the
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Scripture is able to accomplish. And so he tells Timothy, continue, preach this sufficient
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Word. He also had complete confidence in the Word to do its intended work by the ministry of the
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Spirit. In verse 17, he actually engages in a little play on words here.
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He says that the Scripture is sufficient to do all these things. In verse 16, that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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That he might be completely equipped to be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
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That he might be outfitted the way that sailors would outfit their ship before it left port so that it could endure the high seas.
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Or the way a soldier would be outfitted before he marched off to battle so that he might be able to engage the enemy successfully.
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Paul is saying to Timothy, Timothy, in the Word, in the Scriptures, God has given us everything that we need in order to fulfill everything
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He's called us to be. Now in one sense, someone could sit back and say, you know, that sounds really naive.
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I mean, after all, we are complex beings. We have complex relationships.
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We get into complex problems. And people need real help. People need to be shown the error of their way and helped out of those errors.
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People need to be converted to Jesus Christ. They need to be introduced to God savingly.
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People need to be taught how to live life in a way that will display
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God's kindness and goodness and mercy and righteousness. People need to discover a purpose for living.
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Heard a lot about that. So isn't it naive to suggest that in the
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Scriptures we have everything? Not at all. Paul, knowing all this and much more than we can fully comprehend, says this is why you must cling to and preach the
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Scriptures. Because the Scriptures will show people the way to God through Jesus Christ.
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The Scriptures will help people to sort out all of their complex issues in their personalities and in their relationships.
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The Scriptures will expose sin and error so that they can be forsaken and turned against to come back to the right way.
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The Scriptures can teach people how to live life, the life that God has called us to live.
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Knowing that, Paul says, continue in and preach the
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Word. The life and health of biblical Christianity depends upon this kind of commitment, this kind of vision of the
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Word that the Apostle Paul had. This commitment that the Bible and the
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Bible alone is what God has given us for this life and godliness in the life to come.
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Now there are five major areas that I want to try to draw out implications and applications toward in light of what we see in this text.
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The Bible is sufficient for what we are to believe. Time and again throughout
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Old and New Testament, Scripture warns us against false teachers, false prophets, false teaching.
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We are warned that there will be those who will arise who will be winsome, sometimes perhaps even be capable of performing wonderful signs and miracles that dazzle people, and yet who will lead people astray in what they actually teach.
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The Bible takes teaching very seriously. Some false teachers do so, they carry out their errors by trying to add to biblical teaching.
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Perhaps the greatest institutional example of this in Christianity would be the
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Roman Catholic Church. In the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church, it is asserted that the
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Roman Catholic Church does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the
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Holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.
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Saying that tradition has equal in the way that it's actually played out, actually greater authority than the
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Word of God. Adding to the Scripture, Jesus called the religious leaders of his day hypocrites because in Matthew 15 verse 9, they taught as the doctrines of God the commandments of men.
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But Paul says that the man of God is thoroughly equipped for every good work and for what he's to teach in his doctrine if he has the
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Word of God. Other people become false teachers and propagate false teaching by detracting from the
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Word. By wanting to affirm some things and not others, they have a cafeteria -style approach.
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I'll take this, not this. I'll have some of this, not that. If I teach about hell, if I teach about justice, if I teach about wrath, people won't come.
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We've heard that on national TV not too long ago. And so they detract from the
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Word of God. They become de facto editors of the Scripture. And to do so is to undermine what
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God Himself has given us in the Scriptures that are sufficient for our doctrine.
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It's just as sinful to take away from as it is to add to the
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Word when we come to try to deal with what God has said about all of these subjects pertaining to life and godliness.
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Our doctrine, our creed, should come from the Scripture and the
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Scripture alone. Scripture is also sufficient for worship. In our age of fast -paced
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TV and the entertainment culture, worship that focuses on God and centers on His Word is judged too often as outmoded or outdated.
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Worship services increasingly are geared toward entertaining the congregation rather than pleasing the
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Lord. Singing degenerates to performance. Preaching becomes little more than therapy in a public context.
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Even drama and dance is introduced to liven things up. Where such practices obtain, the
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Bible is no longer being regarded as the sufficient gift of God to regulate our worship.
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Now, does the Bible speak to worship? Does God have an opinion on how
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His people worship? I'm not suggesting that God would say that our worship styles must all look identical from one culture to another, but has
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God spoken about worship? Does He care? Yes, He cares and yes,
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He's spoken and there are many places in the Scripture that both illustrate it and where we have it set forth by precept and by example.
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And consequently, if we are going to be people who worship God in a manner that is consistent with what
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He Himself is pleased with, we are going to have to be people who measure our worship, who order our worship by the
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Word. Our worship must be God -focused, God -centered, Word -based, in spirit and in truth.
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Singing the Word, praying the Word, preaching the Word, observing the ordinances and reading the
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Word. Worship is included in one of those good works that Paul has in mind when he says to Timothy that in having the
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Scriptures, the man of God is thoroughly equipped to perform. What about ethics?
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Most ethical errors, if not all ethical errors, I haven't thought long enough about this to say all, but I'm almost there.
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Most ethical errors fit into one of two categories. Either legalism or antinomianism.
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Legalism, the trying to live under restrictive standards of conduct which the Bible knows nothing about.
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This attempt to manufacture sins. The turning away from that which is right and good and setting up standards that God never has revealed as Paul says in 1
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Timothy 4 .3 that there will come times when people will forbid others to marry.
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Setting up their own rules. I regularly tell our folks back in Cape Coral, you know, we have more than enough to do in trying to deal with real sins.
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We don't have to manufacture any more sins. Let's deal with the real ones that God has given us in the
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Scripture and don't try to add to the Scripture things that we think will make us more holy if we do or don't do.
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But on the other hand, you have lawlessness or antinomianism. Trying to live outside the standard of conduct which the
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Bible does teach. Ignoring what God has clearly identified to be sin or to be a way of righteousness in charting a course that is indifferent to both.
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What's the antidote to legalism and lawlessness? It is to see the Bible is sufficient for ethics or as Paul puts it, for training in righteousness.
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It is a willingness to be narrow where the Bible is narrow and broad where the
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Bible is broad and not being willing to exchange the two.
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So that what the Bible commands we readily accept with a presupposition, a predisposition that says this is our duty.
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What the Bible forbids we readily accept with the same kind of predisposed inclination.
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This is not something we're free to pursue and where the
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Bible neither commands nor forbids, we recognize here is an arena of liberty in which
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I am called to live as Christ's free man seeking to order my life to his greatest glory.
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And we do so in confidence not letting anyone impinge upon our consciences with man -made commandments or systems of ethics.
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A fourth area that we need to be thinking seriously about the sufficiency of Scripture in order to work out our
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Christian lives is the area of cultural engagement. What James Boyce called social progress and reform.
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Legitimate critiques have been made against modern American evangelicalism at this point saying that we have not done a very good job over the last part of the 20th century of engaging culture.
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It's interesting to me to see the source of some of these critiques. I mean there's one stream of criticism that comes from the emergent church guys and they say, you know,
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I grew up in a church that just had its holy huddle over here set aside in the evangelical ghetto and we just lived in the ghetto and we did our own thing and we let the world go to hell and we never engaged and I don't want to be that way anymore.
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And it's a legitimate critique. Then we got others in the reconstructionist camp or the theonomic camp who say, you know,
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American evangelicals have largely been wimps. They've not been willing to stand up for righteousness and say what is right and true and they need to be more engaging.
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And there's a point to their critique as well. But the antidote to these weaknesses in our cultural engagement is not the direction that seems to be promoted by an alarmingly increasing number of evangelical leaders.
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It is not to call upon local churches to become more politically active.
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There are some who seem to advocate taking our cues from the Republican National Committee's playbook rather than the scripture.
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And the danger in doing that is that the church can begin to look like nothing more than the latest political action committee that one of the parties has been able to co -opt.
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I sat next to a young man on the airplane on the way here a couple of days ago. And he's an agnostic, makes no pretense of Christianity, grew up Episcopalian.
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And his greatest concern and his greatest beef with the conservative
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Christian understanding that he lumped me into is that they just want to run the government.
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You guys just want to run the government. And that's what you're trying to do. And you just try to get enough people to vote your way in and run the government.
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That was his vision of conservative evangelical Christianity. I'm afraid that we've given too much fuel for that misunderstanding.
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Rather, what we should do as we see society becoming more and more immoral is to hear and heed
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Paul's counsel to Timothy. I love the passage that we read for just this reason.
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Paul's writing to Timothy describing a day that's my day. The world is coming apart.
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The church is becoming like the world. And Paul says, OK, here's the antidote. Continue in the Word. Preach the
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Word. And that is the church's calling. Consider the way that the first century church engaged their culture.
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I mean, what did those new Christians do? They were living in pagan societies. I mean, first century
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Palestine was so immoral in so many ways. And what did the early
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Christians do? What did the early church do? They didn't form a coalition with the Jews and with the legalistic
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Gnostics and say, let's protest Caesar and call upon him to change his public policies. What did they do?
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They went out into their culture. They preached Christ. They lived Christ. They tried to call people to follow
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Christ together with them. And we read in Acts 5 how effective they were when called before the
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Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin said, we told you to quit preaching in this guy's name and you have filled this city with your doctrine.
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And their world was turned upside down. This is the instruction that we have from the
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Word of God about cultural engagement. We need to preach
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Christ. Follow Christ. Joyfully, persistently worship
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Christ. And as we live and engage our neighbors and our friends and our co -workers to seek to call them to become joyful worshipers and followers and livers after Christ with us.
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That brings me to the fifth and final area to think about. The area of evangelism.
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Paul says that the Scriptures are able to make us wise to salvation, which is in Christ Jesus.
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I wonder if we still believe that. You know, a whole school of thought grew up over the last 30 to 40 years that without denying this outright, at least by implication, has put a huge question mark over it.
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The third wave of the signs and wonders movement that has argued out of evangelistic concern that we need displays of power in order for people to sit up and take notes and heed the message that we want to proclaim that will bring salvation.
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What we need are miraculous displays of signs and wonder.
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What is that but saying what we need is something more. Something more. What does the
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Scripture say? Turn over to Luke chapter 16. Beginning in verse 19, you'll recognize the story that Jesus tells about a rich man who died, went to hell.
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And poor man, Lazarus, who died, went to heaven. And in the course of the telling of this story, there's a conversation that's revealed between the suffering rich man in hell and Abraham in heaven.
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And this rich man cries out in verse 24, Father Abraham, have mercy on me and send
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Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue for I'm tormented in this flame.
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But Abraham said, Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he's comforted and you're tormented.
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Besides this, between us and you, there is a great gulf fix so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot and those from there nor can those from there pass to us.
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So in verse 27, he says, Then I beg you, therefore, Father, that you should send him to my father's house for I have five brothers that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.
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Abraham said to him, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And he said,
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No, Father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, then they will repent.
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But he said to them, to him, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.
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There are two perspectives on successful evangelism in this story. There's the perspective of hell and the perspective of heaven.
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The perspective of hell is if only a dead man could come back and go and show himself alive again to my brothers, why, they would repent.
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They would believe. If only there were a miraculous display, if only there were this great vision, this wonderful sign, this indisputable display of the miraculous, people would believe.
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That's hell's view. Heaven's view is they have the scriptures.
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If they won't believe the scriptures, they won't believe people coming from the dead to tell them that there is such a place as hell, such a place as heaven, and there's a way of salvation.
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Do you see? Heaven's perspective is that the scripture is enough for evangelism.
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If people will not believe the word of God, they will not believe signs and wonders.
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Brothers and sisters, to me, this turns that whole movement on its head. I don't know how this passage could be honestly engaged and a person walk away from it and continue to contend that what we need is something more.
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Now, we're not giving up the Bible. We need that, but man, we've got to get people's attention. We've got to get people's imaginations captured.
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We've got to do something so they'll believe. Something we need to do is to heed the word of God, believe the word of God, be foolish enough to proclaim the word of God because we know that it is the power of God unto salvation to all who will believe.
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I think that's the perspective of heaven. This is what
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Paul says in Romans 10. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God.
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Jesus says that the Scriptures testify of me. John 5 .46, he says, if you believed
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Moses, you would believe me. For he wrote about me. When Philip met up with the
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Ethiopian eunuch, the Ethiopian eunuch was reading Acts 53 and Philip preached
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Christ to him from that passage and he was saved. If people will not come to Jesus Christ through the message of this written word, they will not come to Jesus Christ no matter how kind and winsome and engaging and easygoing and laid back and successful or any other thing that we might try to be.
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We need to restore our confidence in the word of God to do the work of God in bringing about the salvation of people and preach that word.
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But what should our attitude be then toward this book? It's true.
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We must never doubt that. We must also never doubt that it's enough.
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It's enough for us to order our Christian living. It is enough for us to order our churches corporately.
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We must never allow ourselves to be duped into looking for or longing for something more.
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We should take God at his word, believe what God has said to us concerning his word and not allow the devil to subtly undermine the integrity of Scripture in our lives by confusing us and thinking, yes, we have the
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Bible. It's true. But what we really need is this. Because in having the
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Scripture, we have everything we need for doctrine, for ethics, for worship, for cultural engagement, and for evangelism.
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It is all that we need to be completely equipped for every good work. May God grant to us such confidence in his holy word.