Book of Romans, 8:23 - We Wait for the Redemption of Our Body, Pt. 6 (05/03/2020)

I want to welcome all of our Tradeway friends that are on today, a great number, and thank you so much for being here. It's an honor. And our Park Meadows Church Group, thank you for being on. You are the foundation for the work all across the country, and I know you love all the folks that come around from Tradeway, too.

It's a privilege. We consider it an honor. Preaching the Word of God is a privilege that's impossible to describe, and also a fearful thing, because you don't want to vary from the truth at all, and so we've prayed that we will not.

So thank you, Ben, and thank you, Ben Mitchell, and also Brother Bill and Glenda. That was beautiful today, as it always is, and she always plays right before I get up to preach, and it's just anointed.

It's anointed, her gift. God gave her the gift, and she's so humble and so sweet, but she's powerful when she gets behind that piano. So thank you so much, and Brother Paul, I know you're there, too. Thank you.

We love you guys. We miss seeing you, and get together soon. All right, guys, I'm going to do a screen share here and see if we can get our Bible study going this morning. Just give me one second. We'll have that up and running.

All right.

Can you see it all right? Yeah, it's looking good. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you, Ben.

Romans 8 and the Rapture and Second Coming

Okay, so here's where we are. We're in the middle of Roman chapter 8, and we discovered, as we came through here, something I had not seen in my whole life or had not paid attention to, and that is that right in the middle of Roman chapter 8, which is perhaps one of the most powerful chapters in the whole Bible, all of a sudden here it's talking about the rapture and the second coming.

So we sort of diverged off of our verse-by-verse and went into a discussion of this topic, and that's what I like to do. I like to go verse-by-verse through Scripture, but as you see the great Bible themes pop up, as you go through every chapter and you see these great Bible themes pop up, I like to go out and find them everywhere in the Bible and pull them in, and because there's no better interpretation of Scripture than Scripture.

So that's what we do. So we've been talking about the second coming, the rapture, perhaps when the rapture happens, and I know there's some disagreement on that, and it can be very emotional, but I've tried to let that go.

It's not my doctrine. It's not your doctrine. We don't need to be emotional about it, but we do need to be biblical about it, and I'm afraid to say that some of the great books that have been written on this topic, written some numbers of years ago, most of the ones used still in seminaries today and popular books as well, are just a little bit off on what the Scripture actually says in my viewpoint.

Truth is, I never had much interest in this topic as a young preacher. I love the great themes of salvation, and that's a huge scope of things—justification, imputation, glorification, redemption, and on and on and on, and that's what I loved, and then the character of God, all about the character of God, the names of God, and the person and works of Jesus Christ.

Those are the things I focused on, and I knew what my mentors taught about the end times, and I just used that. I didn't take time to study it for many years, and then a friend of mine who was a good enough friend to challenge me one day said, little brother, I want to ask you—I don't want to debate you about this, but I want to ask you to do two things.

First, ask yourself the question, how many last trumps can there be, because that's when the rapture happens, and secondly, would you consider letting Matthew chapter 24 and Jesus Christ's chronology of the end times, would you let that be more important than the books you've read?

And I said, sure, yeah, I will. He walks away, right? So that messed me up for a year or two. So all of a sudden, the Lord gave me an interest in this topic because this man had challenged me, and I knew what he meant because I had had uncomfortable feelings when I would teach through some of these portions where I knew it didn't fit, and I would skip certain portions because I knew it didn't fit what I'd been taught, and I sensed it was wrong, but I just didn't have much interest.

So then the Lord took me on this trek through the scriptures, and he gave me something that is so wonderful when you get it, and it's called freedom. He took away the desire to win an argument on this issue.

I still like to win some arguments, but on this issue, he took that away. He took away the desire to have a preconception and just to let the Word of God speak to me as I studied, and it freed me, and so what I've discovered is totally different than what I grew up believing as a young man, totally different than what my wonderful mentor, Dr. Erwin Freeman, believed, but I believe if he hadn't gone to heaven early, he would have changed his mind, and my wonderful mentor, Otis Fisher, did change his mind, and he had taught it the other way 50 years, and as I took him through what I had seen at coffee, he said, you know, Brother David, you're right.

We had it wrong, he said, but I'm too old, and I can't see, so I just won't teach it anymore, but you've got it right. It's not the way it happened, and it was amazing. You know, how many people pushing their 80s who've been teaching the Bible their whole life will change their view on anything, but he had a mind like a 21-year-old, though.

He was so wonderful. So let's go get going here where we were. I thought I would finish up last week, but we didn't quite finish, and I'm excited to get on into the next verses here in Romans chapter 8, which it's already done and ready for you.

I just know I won't quite get to it today either, so Lord willing, next Sunday, we'll pick up with the verses following this one, but this is the verse that just gives you an idea that it starts to talk about the rapture.

It says, and not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of the body. That's the key.

The adoption and redemption of the body is the key that this time about the rapture, because the rest of us has already been adopted and redeemed, the real us, the inner man, the new man, the new woman, right?

So that's a clue. So that's talking about the rapture, and it's kind of interesting, and it goes on and talks about how the entire universe groans and so forth. So we've been talking about that. It's all waiting for Jesus to come back because he's already fixed it.

When he died on the cross and he rose again, he made it be where when he comes back, he can put the universe back in order, and the cosmos. God so loved the world. God so loved the cosmos. It means the orderly creation of God that he gave his only begotten Son.

So Jesus died for all of it, to put it back in order, and we've been talking about that in recent days. All right, so just to review a little bit, last time we went into Revelation 19, 6. It says, let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready.

That's in the active voice, which means that's talking about experiential righteousness, like working at being a better person. The whole church is going to work at being godly and holy. This is not a passage on positional righteousness.

This is experiential. Be ye holy, for I am holy, and it says she makes herself ready. So the question we ask is, what could possibly cost the modern church to make herself ready? Because she's not ready.

It's perhaps the weakest—if you've studied church history, this church is perhaps the weakest church that ever existed, especially in America. I can't speak for in Africa and India and places, maybe even in Iran, where the church is persecuted.

It's probably very strong, but I don't get to keep up with those very much, but I know the church in America and in the West is maybe the weakest the church has ever been. So what's going to cause her to make herself be ready when Jesus comes back?

The Bible says she will, though, so something, and that was the great question that we asked last time. Here's a hint. Hebrews 5, 8, look what the Lord Jesus went through. Though he were a son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.

So even Jesus Christ our Lord, the God-man on the mannish side of his life on this earth, he had to suffer some things to learn obedience. Isn't that amazing? And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him.

And so there's a hint. If Jesus went through suffering, through living as a man, and living in this environment that we live in, in a cursed world, you can't live here without going through suffering, and then we know how his life in ministry ended.

And if he went through that, why would we think the church wouldn't need to go through that to make herself ready? So that's the great question that we ask. In 2 Timothy 3, it talks about the end times, and it says that all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution, and then the seducers, false preachers, and teachers will grow worse and worse as we get into the end times, deceiving and being deceived.

But we are exhorted to continue in the things that we've learned. Now I find these types of exhortations all through Paul's writings as if he is preparing Christians for something, some kind of tribulation, some kind of hard times that are coming up, and we know every century's had it.

Each century, the Christians of that century felt like that the rapture would come in their era, and we feel that in our era. Of course, there have been some signs that have happened now that had not happened back then, that had to happen, and so when we see them start to build a new temple, at that point, we're so close, like we're probably seven years from the coming of the Lord at that point, or less.

So, you know, we've got some things still to see, but we've seen a lot of things that never happened before. One great example says, in the last days, Jesus said, children will disobey their parents. Well, that doesn't sound like a sign, does it?

But it is a sign, because if you talk to your grandparents and your great-grandparents like I did, and you ask them, well, what happened when you disobeyed? Man, the kinds of spankings they got with switches from bushes outside or with, you know, a razor strap, things like that, they learned to obey.

Nowadays, we've got kids running around that have to have drugs to obey. That's never happened in the history of the world. That didn't happen in my grandmother's day. She thought she'd see the rapture, but she's in heaven already, and she didn't see the rapture, but that hadn't happened yet, so that was a sign that needed to be fulfilled.

Well, now it has happened, and there are many others. We discussed that some in previous messages, right? So, it's cool how it talks about how we have the Word of God there at the bottom of that passage, so that the man of God or woman of God might be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

Furnished for what? And as you begin to look at the context of Paul's writing, especially to Timothy, the young preacher, and to the church and how the church ought to be, you can vividly see, if your mind is open to it, that he felt that all of these things might come to pass in their lifetime, and he was preparing them to go through the tribulation that must happen before Jesus comes back, not telling them, hey, you won't be here.

Now, if I were Satan, and I wanted to create a lie, and I love blood, the blood of Christians and Jews in particular, the greatest lie I might come up with is, well, you don't need to prepare because you won't even be here.

You'll be raptured seven years prior to anything bad happening. You don't need to be ready. That would be a great lie, and I think that's exactly what he did, and he duped people through the seminaries, through some huge-named preachers like Schofield, the Schofield Study Bible, which I love.

I can't even say the word, but I love the Schofield Study Bible, but what he said about the end times, to me, it's totally not in the Bible. So, Dwight Pentecost, who wrote Things to Come, probably a great man, but the stuff he said about the end times, not in the Bible.

And so, I do like the books for the point that they'll bring all the verses to bear, where we can go easily find all the verses to study, but the interpretation of those verses is very—it just doesn't fit together with Scripture.

So, I've come to find that on my own, and I'm challenging you. I'm not trying to teach you something. I'm not trying to convince you of something. I'm trying to get you to study. That's my job, okay? If I can put a thought in there like my friend did me when he asked me those two questions, then that is my job.

So, we have a Bible. It furnishes us to preach, even when it gets to the point where people won't listen. And he said seducers are going to get worse and worse, and for us to continue in verse 14 in the things which we've been taught and what we've heard.

And so, we talk about this. So, this whole passage, rather than teaching that the church will be gone already during the tribulation period, is teaching that the church needs to be prepared to suffer in the last times.

When will these evil men and seducers grow worse and worse? I mean, what's the context of this whole passage? Clearly, it's in the end times. We're exhorted during these times to continue in the things that we've learned, and we have a Bible, and we are thoroughly furnished to do good works even in hard times.

And that's what the passage is talking about. Sounds like we're being prepared for something here on this earth to me. All right. So, that's where we've been. Now, here's where we're headed. We'll be going in, Lord willing, next Sunday.

We'll start with Romans 8, 24 through 28, and we're going to be talking about ten lessons on prayer. And really, we're focusing on the one lesson that's taught in that passage, and it's the tenth one.

You've got the power of group praying, and these are things taught in the Scripture. The power of faith praying. The power of praying as an envoy. The power of praying in the way. That's a cool study.

The power of fasting and praying. The power of persistence in praying, or importunity is the theological word for that. The word Jesus used for it. The power of specific praying. The power of selfless praying, and that's taught in the Lord's Prayer.

The prayers of King David. Praying God's promises and more. And the power of prayer while in the presence of God, and that's what's taught in this passage in Romans 8, 24 through 28. There's no deeper teaching in the whole Bible on any subject.

On any subject than this. And, Lord willing, we'll get to it next time. That's where we're headed. You're going to see some of the things we talk about today prepares us for it and leads right into it, obviously, because God put that in the context of the end times and the rapture and the second coming in Romans chapter 8.

He talked about the second coming and the rapture before he talked about this great secret on prayer, so it leads right into it. So we're going to be talking about that, but not yet. So right now, we're going to continue this idea we brought up last time and time before on how will the church make herself ready?

Is the church present on the earth during the seven-year tribulation period and even during the last three and a half years of that seven years is a great question. Would this bring her to consecration if she did have to go through that type of trouble?

Another great question. And this ties in directly with our study on prayer that we're going to get into, Lord willing, next Sunday. So let's continue where we were in some of these amazing passages where we're being prepared for something.

Timothy and the Church Prepared for End-Time Suffering

2 Timothy 4 .1, of course, this is written to a young preacher but also to the church, telling the young preacher how the church ought to be and some things the church needs to be ready for and so forth.

He says, I charge thee, therefore, before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick, that's the living and the dead, at his appearing and his kingdom. So I ask you, what is the context of what this passage is talking about?

It's talking about the appearing of Jesus Christ and the millennial kingdom that will follow. That's what this is talking about. So it's actually talking about the end times. Preach the word. Be instant.

Now, when do you think Paul is training Timothy to be preaching and to be instant ready? That means be ready in season and out. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine because you're going to have many false prophets.

What time in the period of the church is Paul talking about? I mean, if we're not careful, we'll think, well, he's just talking about the first century. No, he thinks the rapture is coming in his lifetime.

He's talking about the end times. He just thought it would happen while he was alive. Every generation has thought that, and it will happen. It will happen, I think, in our time, right? It will happen, and he's preparing Timothy for that time.

It's clear. The appearing of his kingdom, this is what he's talking about. He's saying, look, when those hard times come, you need to be ready. Instant means ready, means quickly ready, to quickly tell people why you believe what you believe.

To reprove, that means correct people that are teaching it wrong. Rebuke, that means correct them strongly when they're teaching it wrong. Exhort means to encourage the ones that are trying to get it right.

Be patient and use doctrine. People hate that word in modern church. Not all churches, but I mean a lot of churches. They'll even say, I've had people criticize me and say, you would be so much better off, Brother David, if you would just keep the doctrine out and just preach practical sermons.

I do the opposite. I preach doctrinal sermons and try to show the practicality of it. I just don't see it the other way. For the time will come. What time? What time are we talking about? When they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.

Do we see that in any big modern churches nowadays and small ones alike? And they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall turn unto fables. When? But watch thou in all things. Where else do we hear the Lord Jesus himself telling us to watch and be ready?

It's the same language Paul is using. It's about the end times. Watch thou in all things. Endure afflictions. Now, why would he say endure afflictions if we're not going to be here? Great question. Never made sense to me when I believed it the old way.

Do the work of an evangelist make full proof of your ministry? Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, and when will we receive that crown? He's talking about the end times, because when Jesus comes back, he's going to judge the church for the works that it did in this body, not for salvation.

We're eternally secure in that. It's for our rewards or the suffering of loss, based on what we did while we were in this body. So there's laid up for me, Paul says, a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.

Now, that particular crown, in my view, is positional righteousness, but Jesus is also going to judge us for the experimental or experiential righteousness. In other words, did we strive to be good men and women?

And did we use the power of the Holy Spirit that's within us and the Word of God and the fellowship with each other to help one another to live right? Or did we get slack in that area? Well, the end time church is slack in that area.

But we're going to get better. You watch. As we see more and more tribulation, I mean, we're already better with the coronavirus, and that's part of the end times. I'm not saying how close we are. I have no clue.

I do know when I see buds on trees that summer is near, though. So, he goes on and he talks about here the verse 8 at the bottom, but unto all them that love his appearing. So, what is the context of this whole passage?

Well, the church and the preacher, the young preacher Timothy, are being prepared for something. And he's charged by his appearing and by his kingdom is the very charge that Paul uses to get Timothy to get with it.

Young preacher, don't be lazy. You need to get with it, and I charge you to get with it and work hard and don't sleep much because his appearing and his kingdom is coming. And he charged him to do what?

To preach, to be instant, in season and out. And he says, we have a Bible that thoroughly furnishes us for such a time as this. Preach even when they won't listen. Endure afflictions. Oh, we're not going to be here.

Don't worry about the afflictions. Well, I don't think Timothy was taught that by Paul. I think Timothy was taught to be ready. You will receive a reward when he returns. So, how is that going to happen?

You know, you're not even going through any of the affliction. Why would you receive a reward for the affliction if you didn't even go through it? When do they get where they won't listen? The people have itching ears.

When is that? That's in the end times. And I think we're in the foothills of the mountains of the end times now. People are already getting that way. Context. It shows us when they won't listen. Samuel 3, 1.

This know also that in the last days. See, this is what he's talking about. This is not just normal church age stuff. This is information for the end times. Perilous times will come. Why are you warning me, Paul?

My mentor has taught me I won't be here. Why are you warning me? For men shall be unholy, despisers of those that are good. Anyone that's preaching the truth, they'll say, oh, they're terrible. They're just awful.

Heady, high-minded, prideful in other words, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. You think we might be seeing some of that? Having the form of godliness but denying the power of it from such turn away?

Wow. So Timothy's being prepared for the end times, and every generation of Christians has been prepared for the end times by faithful preachers because none of us know exactly when that day or hour is coming.

We have to be ready. So why do we need to be ready? Because we're going to be there through that trouble. See the perilous times it mentions in verse 1? We're going through those perilous times or he wouldn't be warning us to be ready.

So let me do this. I'm going to stop the share just a minute because I want to take you through a study I did a few years ago, many years ago actually. I still had hair and it wasn't gray when I did this one, but it was an overview of chapters 1 through 14 in the Book of Revelation.

Now, don't let me scare you. We're not going to do 14 chapters this morning. But I do want to take you through something and show you something here. So let me find it. Let's see. Trying to find which.

I think it's on that one. OK, so can you see a Word doc? Sure can. Let me know. OK, do you still see the PowerPoint or just the Word doc? Just the Word doc. Perfect. That's what I want it to be. And do you see my pretty backdrop or do you see my awful desktop?

I don't see anything but the Word document. Oh, that's even better.

That's because I did what you told me. I put it on WebView or whatever it's called. OK, so it worked. All right, guys. Let's look at this a minute. Now, here's something I want you to understand. If you go through and you look at the five or six, seven or eight points that people who believe in the pre-tribulation rapture teach, if you examine each point one by one, they will crumble and fall because they're either taken out of context or they're not using proper word definitions and they're using tricks to twist it and make it fit.

And I don't say that in a mean way. I'm not against them at all. I believed it most of my life and preached it and taught it, felt a little bit of conviction when I did it, and that's the truth because the Holy Spirit was letting me know you need to study it.

And finally, I did. But the thing is I want you to see some of these points and how easy it is to knock them over. And they have no points, really. I was sitting out there. I went out with Brother Bill, as a matter of fact, and his family to Dr. MacArthur's once-a-year big event where he has guests come in and has a whole week of preaching and teaching and things like that.

It was wonderful. But I went into a side room with about 60 pastors, and the head of their seminary was teaching us that day. And when he was done teaching on some topic, I don't remember the topic, one of the pastors raised his hand.

Everybody in there is a pastor, and I'm sitting back towards the second from the back row. And this dude raised his hand, and he asked the gentleman, he said, Could you tell us, give me several scriptures in the Bible that show clearly that the rapture happens at the front end of the tribulation.

Could you do that for us, please, sir? And the gentleman kind of folded his arms, and he leaned back, and he put his feet up on his desk, and he said, Well, gentlemen, no, I actually can't show you a scripture.

He said, But when I look at the preponderance of the whole scriptures, I just feel it leans that way. That was his answer. That was his defense of this doctrine. And it just got so quiet, you could hear a pin drop in that room because that was not an answer.

But it's the only answer he had, and he actually was on the board that helped translate, I think it was the New American Standard Bible. So, I mean, this was a brilliant man, but he just didn't have scripture for this.

Doesn't surprise me. Now, they have some they'll show you, but if you'll examine them, it's out of context. It's not what the thing is talking about. So, let's look at this. Let's go. Here's one of the biggest ones.

They say that from Revelation chapter 4, from that point on through the end of the book of Revelation, you will never see the church again. So, therefore, she's raptured right there. And that would allow them to place the rapture seven years prior to the entire end of the tribulation period, and that's what they want to do.

So, they'll just say, Well, this proves it. First of all, if you've ever studied logic, you can't prove a negative. So, to say that the church is not mentioned throughout the rest, starting from chapter 4 on, is not a proof that the church isn't there at all.

You can't prove something that way. The word rapture is not mentioned either, but the rapture happens, and it happens later on after chapter 4. It doesn't happen here, and I'm going to demonstrate that to you and show you how out of context, how inappropriate, and how it's cheating to try to make this scripture say that.

It's literally cheating, and we'll make available to you the 10 rules of proper Bible interpretation. Brother Otis and I decided when we first met that we would go by those rules, and we grabbed those rules from many different denominations.

They were all pretty well universally agreed on, and we developed this 10 commandments of Bible interpretation. We said, We'll go by that together, and we will not diverge from it, and we won't cheat in order to win an argument.

And we shook hands on it, and we had maybe 15 things or 20 we disagreed, and by the time he went to heaven, we had only two, and that's because we studied in context. We kept the rules. We used the right word definitions.

We looked at the grammar and used proper grammatical rules and all the different things. We let the Bible interpret the Bible, so we didn't let it contradict anything else in scripture, and by keeping those rules, our viewpoints came almost to be identical by the time he went to heaven.

And there were some major things that we each changed our mind on as we studied together. This was one of them. So let's use those rules here. So here's the passage that's used to prove that the church disappears seven years prior to the second coming of Jesus, which Jesus said, Look, I'm not coming in secret.

So that refutes the whole idea right there. He said, When I come, it's going to be like lightning from the east to the west, and every eye shall see me. He said, Is there any false prophet teaches that I came in secret in the desert or in an inner room?

Don't believe them, because when I come, it's like the lightning from the east to the west. Jesus taught that. But let's look at this. Here's what they try to use to prove that Jesus was wrong about that, by the way.

Revelation 4 -1. After this, I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was as it were. That's a key phrase. Let's don't forget that. As it were, a trumpet talking with me, which said, Come up hither, and I will show thee things which must be hereafter.

And immediately, I, meaning John, who the Holy Spirit used to write this book, immediately was in the Spirit, and behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne. Now, they'll say that is picturing the rapture, because here you see a trumpet blow, and John is transported into heaven.

That's a picture of the whole church being raptured. First of all, let's look at what it actually says. All right? First of all, it actually says, I heard as it were a trumpet talking to me, which said, Come up hither.

So that was not a trumpet. That was a voice that was just loud, and that's an allegory, saying it's loud like a trumpet blast. The voice was loud, and the voice said to me, Come up hither. So it was not a trumpet.

The trumpet that sounds before the rapture, the seventh, the last trumpet, is actually a trumpet. Okay? This is not. This is a trumpet as it were. In other words, an allegory. The Bible will usually tell you when it's speaking in allegories, and it says it right here, as it were, a trumpet, and the voice said, Come up hither.

And it was John who went in a vision or maybe was spiritually transported into heaven and saw these things and came back and wrote it for us. It's not the church. It's John. It's an actual event. What in this passage indicates that this picture is the whole church unless you just say that, and you put it in books that you're writing, and people start believing it, and it becomes like a truth.

The Bible doesn't indicate that at all. In fact, let's look at the context that this is found in. Right before it. We know that the chapter divisions are not in the original, correct? So right before this, here's what was said.

Right before what they try to use to prove the rapture happens and the church is gone from chapter 4 on, here's the information that came right before this. Revelation 3 .20. It says, Behold, I stand at the doorknock.

Now, let me ask you a question. Jesus says, If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and will sup with him, and he with me. Who do you think that was written to? Now, these proponents, these intellectuals who will tell you that their theory is correct will say that this information from here on in the book of Revelation is written to the Jews, not to Christians, because the Christians aren't there.

They're raptured away, and it's just the Jews. All the rest of the book is for just the Jews. The church is not there. That's what they say. Now, we'll see if we find the church there later. We're going to look.

See, it's so much better rather than taking a religious leader's word for something to go look for yourself. What if they had done that 300 years before Jesus came? Because I've got in my library back here in my house a book with photographs of the Targums that were being taught by the religious leaders of the Jews 300 years up until the time of Christ.

They were no longer teaching the scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures. They were teaching from Targums, which is like the good news for modern man. It's not really a Bible. It's someone saying, This is what I think the Bible means.

You see the difference? Very, very dangerous, and that's what they were teaching from. If you don't believe it, you wouldn't believe how they massacred Isaiah 53, which is where the Jew could go look and see Christ, the Messiah, dying for them, but they massacred it in the Targums.

So they missed their Savior because they weren't being taught properly. Boy, you just have to be when a Bible teacher stands up and says, Well, here's what this means, if you're lazy, you just go with that.

But if you want to know the truth, you go check him out. And if he's wrong, you go privately and you show where he's wrong and give him an opportunity to apologize and correct it publicly. If he's a man of God, he'll do that.

Give him the opportunity. I wouldn't correct him in public, but ask to see him in a study and show him where he's wrong if you see that he's wrong. Now, he may be able to show you where he's not wrong, and that's okay too, but he should at least listen.

So let's look. Obviously, this is a church verse. I mean, we use this to lead people to Christ all the time, and I have to say in the context, it's actually this is written to people that are already Christians.

It's not a salvation verse at all. I don't mind you using it, though. I've read people that say, Oh, that's awful. Don't use it to lead people to Christ. Why not use it? Where could you find a prettier one than to share with someone, Hey, Jesus is standing at the door of your heart knocking.