What Members Should Expect In Regard to the Word

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I'm going to ask you to turn in your Bible this morning to a very familiar verse.
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We're going to have to turn that down.
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That is way too hot.
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By the way, just for everyone's knowledge, we did have a group come last Sunday afternoon and spent probably about four or five hours here working in the church, moving the sound equipment to our sound room, which is a project that's a long time coming, but it's cleaned this area up quite nicely.
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We've got our piano over here now, so every once in a while we may even see Nathan tickle the ivories for us, so that'll be nice.
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But yes, please come down, because we're either going to have to turn it down or turn it off.
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Okay? Testing, testing, testing.
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Because I'm going to get loud and it's going to get louder.
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Okay, that's good.
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That's good.
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I don't even need it, but it's for your benefit.
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All right, thank you.
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That's good.
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All right.
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Last week, I began a series entitled A Healthy Church, wherein I wanted to focus on the question of what makes up a healthy church, and what can we do as a church to grow in our own spiritual health? And we began with the question last week, why is church membership important? And we noted that not only is it biblical to be a member in a local church, but that it is also practical in the life of a believer.
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Through it, we honor Christ by being visibly active in His body, and we experience mutual upbuilding as we work together in encouraging each other in the Word.
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As the Bible says, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens the other.
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That's part and parcel of why we gather in the church.
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We gather to build one another up.
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But this leads, then, to two questions.
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If church membership is biblical, then what should a member expect from the church? And also, what should the church expect from its members? So in the weeks to come, we're going to be answering those two questions.
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We're going to spend three weeks on what should a member expect from the church, and then we're going to...
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Mother's Day will arrive, so we'll take a break, and then we'll come back for three Sundays on what should the church expect from the members, each other.
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What should we expect from one another? So today we're going to ask the question, what should a member expect from the church in regard to the Word of God? So let's stand together.
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We're going to read 2 Timothy 3, 16, a very familiar verse, one you've heard me speak on multiple times, but yet still all the more important.
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All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
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Our Father and our God, as we look to this text today and we look into Your Word and we examine various texts as we consider the question of what should a member expect from the church in regard to the Word, we pray, O Lord, that You would first and foremost just open our hearts to the truth, that You would keep me from error, that You would speak through me that Your Holy Spirit would be the teacher, and ultimately that we would learn from Your Word the truth, and that we would live the truth, Father, that we would not hold the truth in some intellectual exercise, but Lord, that we would let it live out in our lives.
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In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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Sometimes it is important that people be willing to speak and say the obvious things, because sometimes we don't say what's obvious and it goes overlooked.
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Well, it may seem like an obvious thing, but I'm going to say it anyhow.
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But the way that a church views the Scripture, the way a church views the Bible, has a major impact on the health of that church.
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Again, that may sound like an obvious thing to say, but the problem is there is no unilateral view of Scripture in the world.
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There is no standard confession of faith which an organization must adhere to to call itself a church.
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That's not the case at all.
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Some churches do not believe the Bible is true, for the most part, but rather that it is simply filled with inspirational myths which can be used to encourage people towards certain acts of virtuous behavior.
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These groups make the text a myth, and they say that Jesus never really fed 5,000 people, but rather that he encouraged people to share their food with one another, and that's the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.
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Jesus never really walked on water.
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That was just something that Peter told a story so that it would encourage the people that heard him.
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This is the way they looked at the text of the Bible, that instead of it being a series of truths that people read and believe, rather they say that the Bible is a book of myths.
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Encouraging myths, inspirational myths, uplifting, edifying myths, but myths all the same.
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And there are many churches, well, places that call themselves churches.
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I'm not going to say that they're churches, but there are many places in the world that call themselves churches that hold to that teaching.
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In fact, John Dominic Crossan is one of the foremost leading experts on biblical history, yet he is also an agnostic teacher.
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He believes that Jesus was buried in a shallow grave, that his bones were dug up and eaten by dogs.
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He has a very strange, strange philosophy about Jesus, but yet he is invited to be the keynote speaker at many denominations and many churches, including the Christian Church Disciples of Christ.
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I've had him and hosted him as the teacher.
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I've heard him debate with Dr.
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James White.
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And he is off the reservation when it comes to what the Bible says, but yet he is considered to be a Christian by some.
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And he is a church speaker in many churches.
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So as I said before, how a church views the scripture will have a major impact on how that church, on the health, rather, of that church.
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Other churches may not say that the Bible is necessarily untrue or filled with myths, but in those churches, there is no consistent method of interpretation.
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It's simply interpreted according to the whims and will of the reader.
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And beloved, that's just as bad.
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It doesn't matter if your church says that the Bible is true if there's no consistency in how you interpret the Bible.
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I'll hit you where, I'll hit you at home.
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How many of you understand that there are many people who say that they believe the Constitution is a good document, but they're willing to interpret it willy-nilly and however they want.
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They don't interpret it in accord with grammar and history, and that makes you upset.
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You say, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I don't like it when people misinterpret the Constitution.
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Well, the Bible is much more important than the Constitution.
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The Bible is the word of God.
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And there are people who do this with the Bible.
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They throw dice to see what they think it means.
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They have no conception of trying to find the real historical, grammatical meaning behind the text.
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Rather, they say things in church like, oh, you believe what you want, I believe what I want, we'll all just get along, kumbaya.
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Bible studies are not really attempts at getting to the heart of what the text actually means.
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Instead, it's where people come together and share their feelings about the text.
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Well, I feel that it means such and so.
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Well, when did we stop thinking and start feeling? Really, I don't like it because I feel.
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No, you don't.
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You think.
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It's not about how you feel.
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It doesn't matter how you feel.
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The words in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.
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The only glory, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, which we studied with the kids this morning in Sunday school.
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That it doesn't matter how you feel about that.
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It matters what it means.
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It doesn't matter if you can interpret it a hundred different ways.
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It matters how it was written, the grammar and the history in which how it was written.
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That's how the text must be understood.
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The problem is we don't want to be driven by the facts anymore.
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We want to be driven by our feelings, which is why many of the ideas which are now, which are being considered laws nowadays in our land.
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It's because we don't want to be driven by the facts.
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We want to be driven by the feelings.
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Well, what you're saying hurts my feelings.
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It doesn't make me feel good.
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Thus, you shouldn't be able to say it.
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So you have some churches that don't believe the Bible is true.
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They believe it's myths.
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And you may not think there are very many out there.
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Beloved, you are in the very vast minority because you're in a church that actually believes that there was a literal garden, a literal Adam and Eve, that there was a literal piece of fruit.
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They were literally the first two people that ever lived and the only two that were created by God.
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And every one of us is a son and daughter of Adam.
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And that because of that and his sin, he brought sin into the world.
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And by that, sin spread to all men.
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And we now have the taint of that sin in us.
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And the only way, the only remedy of having been, being dead in our sins is Christ to give us new life.
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You are in a very odd church.
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We believe in an ark.
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We believe in a flood.
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We believe in a creation that was done by God.
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And we believe in a lot of stuff that would get you laughed out of whole denominations.
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But it speaks to the health of the church and to a denomination and whatever, a movement.
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How they understand the scripture.
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So again, you have some churches don't believe the Bible is true.
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Others would say they don't understand it, that they said there's no consistent method of interpretation.
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But yet, when you look to the scripture, it seems fairly obvious that neither of those positions could be true.
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Because if you look about what it says, if you look at what it says about itself, neither of those could be true.
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Again, one says it's all untrue.
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It's myths or at least it's mostly myths.
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Another says you don't you can't interpret it.
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You just everybody gets their own say, everybody gets to interpret their own way.
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And it's up to individual interpretation.
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But this text that we just read kind of kills both of those with one shot.
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Because it says first, all scripture is breathed out by God.
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We'll just stop right there.
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If all scripture is breathed out by God.
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And I've gone over this with you guys.
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Again, this is one of my favorite verses of scripture.
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I've taught on it many, many times.
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I sat in my house with an individual who did not believe the Bible to be completely accurate.
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And I said, well, was the Apostle Paul lying? Or was he just dead wrong? When he said all scripture is breathed out by God.
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The Greek is theodoustos.
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And it's interesting because the Apostle Paul had an affinity for making up words.
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This is not a standard Greek word.
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This is a combination of two words that the Apostle Paul put together to make a word.
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Theos means God.
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And pneumos means breath.
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It's also the word where we get the word spirit.
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That's why we talk about the study of the Holy Spirit is pneumatology.
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Study of the Spirit.
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So, taking those two words together.
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Theodoustos means God breathed.
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And you know, there's nothing else in all of the universe that is said to be God breathed than the scripture.
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There's nothing else in all the universe that is said this comes from the very mouth of God.
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That he spoke this and this is the truth.
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That's the key.
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Because those who are saying that it's myth.
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Those who are saying I can't believe it.
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Well, this is the first verse they have to deny.
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They cannot believe that it's God breathed.
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And yet, at the same time, it's untrue.
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So, at the very beginning, they have denied the scripture and what it says about itself.
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But also, it goes on to say not only is it breathed out by God.
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But that it's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
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Beloved, if we couldn't interpret it properly.
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If it were impossible for us to interpret it properly.
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It would not be profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, or for training in righteousness.
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If you couldn't understand it, then you couldn't reprove with it.
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If you couldn't understand it, you couldn't correct with it.
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If you didn't understand it, you couldn't train with it.
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If you didn't understand it, you couldn't teach with it.
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The problem, typically, is not that we have trouble understanding what the Bible says.
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The problem is we have trouble fitting what the Bible says into what we want.
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So, we end up changing what the Bible says or reinterpreting it in accord with our own sinful desires.
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That's the problem.
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As the man once said, I don't remember who it was, but a pastor once said, My problem with the scripture is not the parts that I don't understand.
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It's the parts that I do understand, but don't want to do.
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Amen? I don't usually ask for that, but I'll throw it in there.
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So, the very first and foremost thing that a believer should expect from the church, or that they should ask about the church, that they should know about the church, the very first thing is how does that church regard the Word of God? Everything else will follow how that is.
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If the Word of God is high up in a church, the church will still not be perfect, but they will have the right standard.
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If the Word of God is very low in the church, it doesn't matter what's up here anymore, because that which should be at the top has been relegated.
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So, again, where the Bible is in the church determines the health of the church.
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There are three things which a healthy biblical church should have in regard to the Word.
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Three things that I want to share with you this morning.
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If you're taking notes, I'll go ahead and give it to you now, that way you can write it out, and you won't later on...
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If I forget to do this, people come to me later and say, I missed number three, or whatever.
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So, we'll go ahead and give it to you now.
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Number one, expositional preaching.
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We'll go over these in a minute.
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Expositional preaching is number one.
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Number two, biblical theology.
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And number three, a biblical understanding of the gospel.
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So, expositional preaching, biblical theology, and a biblical understanding of the gospel.
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So, let's begin with number one.
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Expositional preaching.
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Many of you have heard that phrase, yet some of you still...
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I think there are some of us who still don't understand what it means.
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And some of you think that it means something that it doesn't mean.
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So, let me clear up what expositional preaching is.
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Some people think that expositional preaching is verse-by-verse preaching through a book of the Bible.
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And while that is a method of expositional preaching, that is not the definition of expositional preaching.
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That's one way of doing expository preaching or expositional preaching.
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But that's not the only way to do it.
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That's just a very typical way, and it's a good way of doing it.
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The way I have followed for years is simply going through books of the Bible because you don't miss anything and you're forced to cover things that sometimes are hard to cover.
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You're forced to have to dive into sections that you might leave out.
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If you were just kind of cherry-picking what you wanted, you might leave out certain portions.
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So, it's a very positive thing.
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But yet, at the same time, you look at some of the best expositional preachers in history, and that wasn't their methodology.
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Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, did not preach through whole books of the Bible.
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Typically, he would preach through sections of scripture.
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And rather than, you know, all of the book of Matthew, all of the book of Mark, or starting at the beginning of Hebrews as we did and go three years later and you're still in it.
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He had a little different preaching methodology.
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Here is expositional preaching.
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And some of you already heard this, some of you know this.
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If you're in my preaching class, you know this.
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Number one, you read the text.
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Number two, you explain the text.
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And number three, you apply the text.
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That is expository preaching.
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Simply stated, it is centered on the text of the Bible.
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You might say, well, don't all preachers preach from the Bible? No, no, and no.
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They don't.
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Many might read a verse or two, but there's no exposition.
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There's no attentive explanation of words or how words fit together and make sentences, how those sentences make ideas.
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There's no application given.
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In fact, sometimes the Bible is just a springboard for a pastor to run to his favorite subject or run to his pet peeve and to beat on that for 30 minutes of lecture.
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Rather than actually explain from the text, the idea and the application.
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Consider what the Apostle Paul says about the responsibilities to a preacher when he's speaking to Timothy, his apprentice.
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2 Timothy 2, verse 15.
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He says, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who needs not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
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That's 2 Timothy 2, verse 15.
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I remember that one in King James because at my seminary, it's engraved on a plaque.
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Study to shew thyself approved, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
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That word study was emphasized and it was on the plaque.
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But the idea of this text is that the person who is handling the word of God, the pastor, the one who is who is who is proclaiming the word of God to people ought to do his best to present himself to God as one who is approved, a worker that needs not to be ashamed because he can rightly handle this.
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I know many pastors who are good counselors.
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I know some who are fantastic businessmen.
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I know some pastors who can tell a really good story.
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But if you can't handle this, then you're in the wrong job, because that's the calling to rightly handle the word, that the word is the center of your preaching, that the word is the center of your ministry, that the text itself begets your sermons rather than, hey, I wrote a really great sermon.
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Now I just got to find a Bible verse to go with it.
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Can we talk about that in our preaching class? Guys do that.
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They go, man, I got a really great story.
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Now I just got to find a verse to go with it.
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Second Timothy four, one through five.
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We read it this morning for our call to worship.
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I want to read it to you again.
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He says, the Apostle Paul speaking in Timothy, he said, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing in his kingdom.
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This is the charge.
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Preach the word.
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And he goes on to say, be ready in season and out of season.
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Reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
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As for you, always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist.
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Fulfill your ministry.
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You see, that's the Apostle Paul's admonition to young Timothy.
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His young, the one he's mentoring, his protege, he's telling him, his child in the faith.
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He's saying, your primary charge in pastoral ministry is to preach the word.
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John Piper wrote a book.
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I think the title of it was Brothers, We Are Not Professionals.
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It was an admonition to preachers to remember our call.
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I'm not a professional.
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I'm a pastor.
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My job is to preach the word.
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Everything else I do is secondary.
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Whether it's counseling, whether it's doing weddings, whether it's performing funerals, whether it's visiting someone in the hospital, whether it's whatever.
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It's all secondary to preaching the word.
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That's my charge.
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That's what is essential for the pastor.
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That's what the Apostle Paul.
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And you've got to do that because here's the reason why.
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Because if you don't preach the word, know this.
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The people will seek out for themselves.
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People who will tell them what they want to hear.
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They will seek out for themselves men who will tickle their ears with their words.
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But those words will not be filled with life, but they will be filled with death.
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A healthy church is one whose teaching must come from the Bible.
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If it doesn't, it isn't healthy.
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I don't care how big it is.
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Because that's the thing too, beloved.
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And that's a problem I think a lot of people have.
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They'll look at it.
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Well, that church is huge.
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It must be very spiritually healthy.
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That is a inappropriate.
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Deduction to say that just because the church is large, that it is necessarily spiritually healthy.
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The reality is that false teachers are much better at drawing the masses than hard nosed Bible teachers.
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Well, you would call me or whatever.
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It's a lot easier to draw massive crowds when you tell people what they want to hear.
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The Apostle Paul tells us right in this text, the time is coming when they will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers.
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And we see that.
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So the first thing that a church should expect or that a member should expect in church.
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When a person becomes a member of the church, the first thing that should be expected is that the preaching is expositional.
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That it comes from the Bible.
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There are two words that we talk about a lot in preaching.
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Exegesis and eisegesis.
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Sometimes eisegesis, depending on how you pronounce it.
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But exegesis means what? To draw out of the text.
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To go in, read and draw out.
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Eisegesis or eisegesis means to put into something.
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To read into something.
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My job is to draw out the text, to expose the text, to exegete the text.
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That's the job of the pastor.
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And if that's not what's being done, then it's not a healthy church.
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Number two.
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Not only should expositional preaching be part of what a member should expect.
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Number two.
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Biblical theology.
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Now, this is an outgrowth of the first.
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For without expositional preaching, where the Bible takes center stage, biblical theology will not come.
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However, it's more than just expositional preaching.
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In regard to the church leadership, the church eldership, the Bible says this in Titus 1.9.
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Speaking of the elder, it said, He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine, and also rebuke those who contradict it.
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I think I make people uncomfortable sometimes, because I spend a lot of time in apologetics.
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I spend a lot of time responding to arguments and questions that people have about the faith.
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I think sometimes they think maybe I'm an argumentative person by nature, and that may be true.
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But, the reality is, if you read through the Bible, you will see on many occasions, this being one, where we are commanded, especially in the eldership, we are commanded to contradict those who are speaking falsehood.
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We are commanded to call out those who are not speaking the truth.
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To contradict them and to correct them with sound doctrine.
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You see, not only must preaching come from the Bible, but also our theology, our doctrine must come from the Bible.
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That is something that the church should expect from the preaching and from the leadership.
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You should be confident that you are being fed in accordance with sound doctrine.
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That we are not creating religious teaching out of whole cloth, but that we are teaching what the Bible says.
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That your theology is sound theology.
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That your doctrine is sound doctrine.
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You know what is sad? That is often the last thing people even consider when they are looking for a church.
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And it should be the first.
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What does it matter if a church has a stellar outreach program? What does it matter if they have a jam up youth ministry? What does it matter if they have a hopping worship band? If they do not teach in accordance with sound doctrine? What does it matter if the word of God is not center stage? The question must be asked, is the doctrines of the church in accordance with the Bible? I have told this story before, but some of you have not heard it, so I will tell it again.
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I was at a church with a young man and he was talking to me.
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I had just become the pastor here.
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And he and I are talking and he said to me, He said, I am looking forward, I am thinking of going into ministry.
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I feel called to ministry, I am thinking of going to seminary.
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And we were talking about seminaries and schools and all that.
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And I was telling him about some seminaries that he could choose.
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And I said, look, here is a good one.
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I said, and if you go here, you will be trained in sound doctrine.
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And he said, oh, I hate doctrine.
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I said, you hate doctrine? I said, son.
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I called him son.
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I said, listen.
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I know I was not that much older than him, but I was old enough to call him son.
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I said, son, listen.
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The only thing that separates the false teachers from the righteous ones is sound doctrine.
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Don't tell me you hate doctrine.
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People say doctrine divides.
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Yeah, it does.
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It is supposed to.
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It cannot divide.
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Biblical theology, church members, you must demand that out of your church.
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If you expect it to be a healthy church.
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That is what the elder's job is.
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The elder's job is to see to it that everything that is done in this church is done in according with Scripture.
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That is their task.
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Their number one duty.
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And the church should expect that.
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Finally, number three.
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Biblical understanding of the gospel.
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We have seen expositional preaching, word-centered preaching, number one.
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Biblical theology, number two.
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Number three, a biblical understanding of the gospel.
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Now, very quickly, what is the gospel? When we say the gospel, that word is used a lot.
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Well, some of us might take the 1 Corinthians 15 definition.
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1 Corinthians 15 actually gives us a definition of the gospel.
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The apostle Paul says, Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved.
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If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.
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For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.
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That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.
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That he was buried.
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That he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
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And therein lies the simple answer of the question, what is the gospel? That Jesus Christ died in accordance with the Scriptures.
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That he was buried.
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Why is his burial even important? Well, it demonstrates the fact that he was actually dead.
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He didn't just pass out or swoon.
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That he was actually in the ground.
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He was dead.
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He was buried.
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He was a corpse.
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And yet, three days later, he raised from the dead.
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Why do we call that the gospel? Well, that is the very good news.
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Because had he died and stayed dead, he would no longer...
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We could not call him Messiah.
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We could not call him Christ if his death on the cross was the end.
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And that's the correct answer.
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Somebody says, well, what is the gospel? The gospel is...
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The simplest answer is it's the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
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That's the good news.
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But is that all? Well, in a sense, yes.
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Because everything we believe is rooted in that truth.
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Without the resurrection, there would be no good news.
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There would be no gospel.
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However, encompassed in that truth are other truths which are definitional of the gospel.
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Truths like justification.
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That truth is a valuable and essential truth.
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What is justification? That God has declared us righteous before Him.
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Imputation.
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That God has taken our sins and imputed them to Christ.
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And they've taken His righteousness and imputed it to us.
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Substitutionary atonement.
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That the wrath of God, that I deserve to have poured out on me, was instead poured out on Christ.
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That He was my, what we call, penal substitutionary atonement.
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That He took the penalty by way of substitute and made me at one with God.
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That He took that.
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Forgiveness is an essential part of the gospel.
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That we don't look forward to a day in which we'll be forgiven.
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But that we live in a state wherein we are already forgiven.
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Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Present tense.
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We now have that peace.
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That is all part and parcel of the gospel.
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This is why I've said many times, Rome does not have the gospel.
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Because Rome looks forward to a day where they may have peace after some form of having to go through purgatory and all kinds of other things.
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And having to go through a priest and through a pope and through the Virgin Mary.
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There is no gospel in that because there is no peace with God there.
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They can call it the gospel all they want.
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The Mormons use the term gospel.
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The Jehovah Witnesses use the term gospel.
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There are many people that use the term gospel.
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But it is not the same gospel that the Bible speaks of.
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The gospel of Jesus Christ.
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The gospel which brings a true peace with God.
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You see, understanding the gospel begins with an understanding of man's sinful condition.
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I've often said the only way to understand the good news is to understand the bad news.
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So few are willing to recognize their sin.
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So few are willing to recognize that their sin is worthy of hell and punishment.
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And much less are willing to be confronted by it.
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This is why the gospel is lost in so many churches.
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Because the concept of sin has become a foreign one.
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One pastor very candidly said, well, I don't like to talk about sin because I don't like to focus on the negative.
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Beloved, without a biblical understanding of the gospel, we're not a church.
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We're not even not a healthy church.
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We're not a church at all.
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A biblical understanding of the gospel is essential to being a healthy church.
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So we have seen this morning there are three things which a healthy biblical church should have in regard to the word.
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It should have expositional preaching.
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Preaching that's centered on the word of God.
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Bringing out the truth of the word of God and applying it.
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A healthy church should have expositional preaching.
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It should have biblical theology.
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A theology which is grounded on the scripture.
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And a biblical understanding of the gospel.
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That's essential.
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And it's what a member should expect from the church.
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Recently I heard a conversation between, I heard about a conversation between two men.
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They were discussing various issues that one of them was having dealing with his church.
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They were having some problems in their church.
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And the conversation came back to me.
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The church had brought in a new pastor.
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And the new pastor was committed to expositional preaching.
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He was committed to a biblical view of doctrine.
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He was committed to a biblical view of the gospel.
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This new pastor, I know him personally.
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He spends many hours in preparation for his sermons.
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He is very dedicated to the preaching of the gospel.
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And the two men who were having this conversation about him.
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One of them was very upset with the new pastor.
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He didn't like the new pastor very much.
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And this is what he said.
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And I will never forget it.
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He said, I don't like his preaching.
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I want my preaching to give me that warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
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And when he preaches, I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling.
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Now we chuckle at that.
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But the reality is he was just saying the truth.
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He doesn't care if what the preacher is saying is true or not.
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He doesn't care if what the preacher says is biblical or not.
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What he cares is that he's got itching ears.
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And he wants them scratched.
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Beloved, church members should expect from the church.
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Biblical preaching.
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Biblical theology.
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And a biblical understanding of the gospel.
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Because that's what we should hunger for.
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If we are children of God.
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Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to have read and heard from your word this morning.
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We do pray, Lord, that our spiritual health as a congregation would strengthen.
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Would be encouraged.
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Would grow.
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That we would be as iron sharpens iron.
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And one sharpening each other.
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And Father, we do pray that you would continue to minister to us throughout the week.
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In regard to your word.
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Keep us in your word regularly.
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And bring us back to continue worshiping together.
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In Jesus name we pray.
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Amen.