Romans 15:16 - How Cleansing the Inner Temple Cleanses the Outer Court, Pt. 2 (01/08/2023)

Good morning. That was a beautiful choice of songs for today,

I thought. Some of my favorites and you sang quite well today. Good to be with all of you.

I have a note I want to read to you here from the Hernandez family that was here with us not too long ago.

The missionaries, remember? They're going on the field in Mexico. Very nice thing they sent and picture their two daughters on the back and so it's good work.

But they won me over and let me see. I was going to get

Emily to do something for me. You can tell her for me. I wanted to get online.

We need to order go to a church supply and order some little envelopes that let us designate gifts.

I want to pass them around and get you to think about this. One thing

I don't like, and I've seen it done in a couple of churches I was in growing up, or one church

I was in actually. I don't believe there's ever a time you're supposed to give more than you can and then expect

God to give you more because you gave more than you can. That's not something a church should be telling you to do.

Now I know the story in the Bible about the widow and Jesus, but if you read context it's not saying that pastors ought to use that passage to try to get you to give more than you have and not take care of your families because you gave that money to the church and then

God will give you. You expect God to give that back. That could be presumptuous. You don't know what the

Lord may or may not give you back, so that's not good practice. But what I would like you to do is pray about if it's a dollar or two dollars a month or five or ten or fifty or whatever that you could give extra above what you're giving because we need that to run the church and school and everything but extra and then whatever it adds up to we could send to this family every month.

Wouldn't that be cool? But I mean we'll vote and see if you want to do that. It's just I would be for it, but I mean we will definitely have a vote on it.

In fact we could vote on whether we want to do it now and then when we pass those around and get them in it'll give us an idea how much we could actually send them for now and we can always increase it in the future or if they don't serve the

Lord stop it you know and things like that. So could we could we let's see who who can jot down let's do some minutes right quick.

Who wants to make a motion that we call this business meeting to order? Thank you sir.

Who second? There's the second. Dave Huber and so all in favor of deciding what we can give the

Hernandez family in the next coming days but then whatever we decide we can give sending that to them monthly.

Would you say aye? Aye. All opposed say nay. Okay I believe that carried.

So that's great because we used to have quite a number of missionaries and through the years we started out independent

Baptist which was very legalistic through the years. We're not like that anymore and so many of those missionaries were of that belief and still are so we just dropped them off through the years and we don't have any other than our school.

To me our school is our biggest mission work but I think this is a good opportunity. The Lord sent us one family that I believe we could support and it would be great and so I'm glad that you guys feel the same.

So we'll we'll get those envelopes. Matt I was going to ask

Emily to go online and order us some envelopes that let us designate the gifts above and beyond the normal budget.

Well she doesn't have to do it now but I mean it's something now Charlotte and I will not be with you the next two

Sundays. We're going on a vacation together and Dave Huber will be bringing the main service message and Ben will be doing the

Sunday school and then we'll be back. The Sunday I get back I will

Charlotte I'll be here but I'm not going to preach that Sunday. So we're going to have John King preach that Sunday and because he comes a lot of times and preaches when

I'm gone I want him to preach sometime when I'm here. Not that I haven't heard him preach. I have heard him preach.

I heard him preach his first sermon. He was called to preach in this church. He was saved at a tradeway meeting in Dallas.

I believe the meeting was in Dallas where he was saved one year and they started driving over joined the church then he got called to preach and now he's in the ministry.

But anyway we'll be back to hearing for that. Oh that's right.

That happened last time didn't it? Oh really? I don't remember that. Interesting.

He preached the lights out. Pretty good. So whenever we get those envelopes if you get them before next

Sunday pass them out and Ben are you listening?

So you and Dave get everybody to pass those out. Give them about three minutes to write a number on it.

You don't have to put money in it. Just write a number on it and say we could give this much per month without hurting our family over the next year.

We'll collect those and we'll decide how much the Lord can help us to give this great family.

I was so impressed with the message that he gave while here. Just amazing to me for a young man like that but that age

I should say. Also the Sunday school lesson today was just fabulous.

I mean it was kind of sad though because it was on a passage. It was very seems very clear to I think everyone in our

Sunday school class and several commentators that we have read in the past some we've respected in the past totally got it wrong in their commentary and you have to ask question why it's just it's sad to see but I mean

Dave said this and it's true none of us would get everything right if we wrote a commentary. Most likely we would have some human error in there.

I wouldn't because I'd get all you guys to proof it before I printed it and you would tear it to smithereens but but anyway it's sad when you see that it messes with your mind a little bit.

It does me. I bet it does you you guys too. You just hate you don't like to see that but there are

Ben gave some reasons for it in his opinion and there's another reason I was thinking of too.

You remember this week when we were talking about a YouTube video

I saw which was oh a young a young man that was talking about yeah

Matthew 24 specifically the verse that says when the generation that sees these signs will see everything come to pass remember that verse he was talking about that verse and and I think he got it just so badly incorrect as far as his mode of interpretation of that passage but what

I what I and I asked several of my sons and sons -in -law's to listen to it and tell me what they think of it well

I'm gonna blow that now because I'm gonna tell you a little bit about what I think of it here but don't cheat you I want your own thoughts on it but the thing that I think happens with some of these guys when they're very young in their 20s they go to seminary and they get this scholarly attitude it's it's a it's a mental it's sort of a scholarly pride and they read some very smart people which

I like to do that you know but the thing is what you don't want to do is get to the point where you want to be like them so much that you just start taking everything they say with the same authority as the bible and so what can happen and what you tend to do then is you hone in on a certain if you're writing a commentary on verses through the bible or even if you're preaching verse by verse like I do through the bible you can hone in on one little section so much with such intensity that you want to figure this thing out and maybe you're seeing some new things in it you never saw before and you forget the rule that says this whatever your new idea is it has to fit with the whole of the bible it has to fit every verse in the whole bible or it's not right your interpretation is right so what they do is they read a lot of common other commentaries and books that they've read from very scholarly individuals who convince them that that it sort of means this thing they're wanting it to mean and they forget to look at some very clear passages elsewhere in the bible that prove it doesn't mean that I mean simple clear just day and night clear passages prove it cannot mean that and they forget to go do that work and I've seen it again and again it's hard to explain how phd scholars do this how did they get their phd how did they finish school with that sort of attitude but anyway it happens and and ben

I think that's part of what we saw in your lesson this morning was especially with McGee I think

I always love to listen to him on the radio when he was alive and I've got his commentaries but he did want to be viewed as a scholar and so I think that's very important to him and he's listening to me from heaven so I don't want to say too much negative because 99 .999

percent of the stuff he says is great in his commentary but he was overly influenced by other scholars to the extent that sometimes would misinterpret passages without seeing very clear things and that happens

I you know it probably happens to all of us but I remember when

I first met brother Otis he believed in the day age theory do you know what that means if you're familiar with that like that the six days of creation each day was a millennium of time and that made it sort of fit with evolution better well brother

Otis's generation didn't have the advantage my generation had because by the time we get to my generation the christian scholars had finally caught up with darwin and had been able to show that the evidence actually backs the bible better than darwinianism but when

Otis was a young man they had not gotten there yet and they were kind of overwhelmed by it and they all scrambled to try to protect the bible by changing it to make it fit darwinism which is always a mistake to change the bible to make it fit anything humanistic because you don't need to do that so Otis he had a room with a wall here and a wall here floor to the ceiling full of books scholarly books they're out most of them out of print now and he'd read all those old intellectual theologians who had tried to make it fit through things like the gap theory but one of them was the day age theory totally false but it felt good because at least it made it where this poor old bible didn't have to be proven wrong you never have to defend the bible really it will defend itself you just need to know the bible and quote it to people it will defend itself this book will be here long after anything that science pretends to think is scientific is gone because the science i studied in high school by the time i got to college it was wrong and they had changed it and now colin tells me all of that was wrong i don't know how he knows all that stuff but my son -in -law colin but there was a time when they were saying that all of the kingdom literature in the bible the second coming of christ in the millennial kingdom none of that could possibly happen it's all allegorical and the reason is because it will no longer exist it as a nation it was destroyed in 70 a .d