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If you have your Bibles, turn to 1 Timothy chapter 5. I don't want to preach a sermon tonight, but I want to just frame what we're doing tonight. How many people have been to an ordination examination before?
Okay, good. How many have not? Many. All right, great. I'm so glad you came out tonight. What a thrill this is to be a part of it. 1 Timothy chapter 5 is a pastoral epistle, and it tells us, as elders, what to do in a church.
And let me just read verses 17 through 22, and then make a couple comments about ordination. What is it, and why are we doing this tonight? Paul said, under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, in 1 Timothy 5 verse 17, The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.
For the Scripture says, You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing, and the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.
Those who continue in sin rebuke in the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. I solemnly charge you, in the presence of God, even of Christ Jesus and of His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing nothing in a spirit of partiality.
And then verse 22 for tonight, Do not lay hands, Timothy, upon anyone too hastily, and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others. Keep yourself free from sin. Tonight we have the privilege of examining Steve Cooley.
And what we have done tonight is we have asked several men to examine him, his life, doctrine, devotion, three particular categories, theology, methodology, and doxology. That is to say, what Steve believes, how he puts that belief into practice, and then how that relates to the praise and glory of God.
As I call the panelists, if you'd just come and sit in this order of examination, tonight we first have Dr. Ted Bigelow from Calvary Church. You used to be at Calvary Church? From Grace Church, excuse me.
I still like the name Calvary. It's a good one. And Ted is here from Connecticut. We've had the privilege of serving with Ted and serving Ted. We have Pastor Dave Jeffries, one of our own. Dave, if you could come.
Dr. Joe Cardamone from Lancaster. Where is Joe today? Good. Elder Louis Brown. And then myself. I'll sit down in just a minute. Each one of these men tonight will be given 15 minutes of questions for Steve Cooley.
And Steve will stand here and he'll respond to the questions. If he knows the answer, he'll give his answer. If he doesn't know the answer, then he should say, I don't know that answer. And you can learn a lot about a man by what he doesn't say, right?
And what we want to do is we want to test him. Steve has already served here faithfully in the church for two years. And then after about a two-year time period, we like to then publicly examine that man with outside elders and pastors.
And we want to be careful to do what the Scripture tells us to do. In this particular case, not to do. In verse 22, do not lay hands on anyone too hastily. When you are charged in the gospel ministry, it is a very serious commission.
And we want to test Steve not only here at the church for the last two years, as you have received his shepherding and teaching, but also now we want to examine him in theology, methodology and doxology because it is important for us to have preachers and teachers who teach sound doctrine.
Yes? Could there be anything more important? So tonight these men will examine Steve. And then afterwards we'll excuse ourselves and we'll vote and decide whether we'd like to ordain Steve or send him back to California.
Sometimes I throw in a little comic relief. It is a very stressful time. I remember when I was ordained, it was hard to sleep. I wanted to honor the Lord. Tonight is not about, by the way, how much Steve knows and how eloquent he can be and how he can give every answer with alliteration.
It is about what God can do in the life of someone. Isn't it? Steve, born and raised a Mormon blasphemer, and he can give you his own testimony. And then God, because of his grace and mercy, a mercy and grace that were abundant, as Paul would talk about to Timothy, to save sinners and then commission them for kingdom work, for the gospel work, is an absolutely amazing thing to see someone get saved, learn and grow.
And for me, it's a special privilege. I did not save Steve. I have not sanctified Steve. But I've known Steve from when he was a very new Christian to now see him serve alongside of me and serve you at the pastor's heart.
It's really neat tonight. And so it's Mother's Day, I know. And so, in a sense, I don't feel like Steve's mother. But as a mother would be proud of their children, I so, too, am proud of Steve for what he has done and his ministry to serve the Lord.
So, without anything else said, tonight is for the panelists alone to ask questions. You can ask Steve a question later. But please don't raise your hand. At 15 minutes, I'll go ahead and stop each of the men.
There will be some time for cross-examination, if they'd like that. And we'll just keep moving at a clip, 15, 15, 15, 15. And then we'll excuse ourselves after I have a few wrap questions. And then we'll come back and have a special time of prayer for Steve.
And then we'll have some desserts afterwards. And as we sit as a congregation, one of the things that we prayed for, even as an elder board with the other men on the ordination panel, that you congregational members would worship God tonight and see what he has done in the life of a man.
That you would say to yourself, if Steve Cooley can know the Bible like that, I'd like to know the Bible better. And so, with that, Steve, would you please come up? And, Ted, you may begin.
I'm not really ready to go back to California.
Excuse me, Ted, before we begin, let's, Steve, have a short testimony and call to the ministry, please. About six or seven minutes max.
As Mike said, I was raised in a Mormon home. I think my first awareness of sin was probably about age 12 when I was selected to go to the temple, the Mormon temple, and be baptized for the dead. And we were supposed to be sinless.
And I just remember really kind of struggling with that. But I said whatever I needed to say to go. I think it was several years later, I was probably about 17. And, again, that kind of awareness of sin, it just kind of pervaded my life.
And I remember talking to one of my friends and just saying, you know, Mark, I don't know, I don't think I'm ever going to become God. Because that's what they teach. I said I can't see myself ever stopping sinning.
I just, no matter what I do, I can't seem to stop. And he just looked at me and he said, well, don't worry about it, you'll be all right. You know, we'll get there. And I think it was maybe about 10 years after that, I was now a deputy sheriff.
Sheriff Janet and I were married. And I was struggling with marriage. I was struggling with life. And I had begun seeing a psychiatrist with the sheriff's department. And he had recommended a lot of things.
But, you know, when you see a psychologist, is what he was, when you see one of those, they just kind of reinforce what you're thinking. And it eventually led me to leave my wife, leave my kids, to move out on my own.
And I wound up one night in a 12-step meeting. And the people, the subject that night was turning your life over to higher power. And people were describing their higher power. And one person said, my higher power is God.
And I thought, okay. One person said, my higher power is Jesus. My higher power is this group. I thought, that's pretty lame. And then one person said, my higher power is a part of my brain that I've set aside to be my higher power.
Well, you're not allowed to make any comments. You're not allowed to laugh. So I was just like this, just blurring my lip, not saying anything. But I just thought, I left that meeting that night thinking, I know there's a God.
And the only reason I knew there was a God is because in my mind as a police officer, I'd seen a lot of things. And I just wanted to believe that somewhere out there, there was justice for the people who did bad things.
Not like me. But the people who did really bad things, there needed to be a God to straighten those things out. I had a friend at work who was a professing Christian, seemed to believe what he said. And so I went to him and I asked him, I said, you know, you guys say that you have a, or you've said before that you have a Bible study.
I'd like to go to that Bible study. And he looked at me, because of my easygoing, serious nature, he said, what's the punchline? And I said, no. And I explained the whole thing to him. And I just said, I know that there's a God.
I just want to know who he is, and I don't know. I know he's not the God of Mormonism, and I just want to know who he is. So he backtracked. I got invited to the Bible study. But it was really the quintessential pooling of ignorance.
Nobody knew what was going on. And we had everything from Calvinist to Charismatics, and it was just a big mash. But it was a few years later I was studying Isaiah. And I came across the prophecy in Isaiah 9 where it is said of Jesus that he will be called Mighty God, Wonderful Counselor.
And I just thought about the concept of counselor, because that's what I was familiar with, were counselors, going to see them. And I thought, now here's a counselor who knows everything about me and loves me anyway.
And that thought was just overwhelming to me. I still wasn't saved because I couldn't grasp the Trinity. It took me a while to come to that. But as I began to go to, I did a little church shopping, but as I came to Grace Community Church and I sat in there and I listened and I learned and I began to grow, and I can't tell you the date that I was saved, I just know that God saved me.
He reconciled Janet and I. Janet, neither one of us were Christians. We both got saved during this period. We reconciled. In fact, it was during this period that I met Ted. Ted was kind of a bystander in one of the sessions I had at Grace Community Church, counseling sessions there.
But God brought us back together. And we started attending Mike's Bible study. And I just remember thinking, man, that guy knows a lot about the Bible. Where does he pick up all this stuff? How does he do that?
And he asked me, a bunch of us were going on a couples retreat, he asked me and the other guys who were going to see if this sounds familiar, he wanted all the guys to teach something that weekend. And I had never done any teaching.
And he said, just five minutes on love, just go through the concordance, pull out all the verses, and it was horrible. And I never had any desire. I was petrified of standing up in front of people. The idea of standing in front of people and talking about something was terrifying to me.
And through a series of circumstances at my job, I wound up every day standing in front of groups of people and talking to them. And after a while, you start to figure out it's not so bad if you actually know what you're talking about.
So that practice, I did that for two years, every day getting up in front of a group of people who initially hated me. They were inmates. And I was a deputy. They hated me. And when they heard what I had to say, they were like, oh, he's on our side.
Because I was trying to convince them that they needed to get on house arrest program and go home. Anyway, it was one Sunday morning. I was giving my testimony in our fellowship group. And the guy who got up and led music in the morning said, Steve needs to be in seminary.
He should be in full-time ministry. And I thought, boy, that sounds pretty neat, but I don't know if I could do that. Anyway, fast forward. I mean, I was just growing. I wanted to read. I read theology.
I found it all quite interesting. And I really liked it, just learning and growing. And I actually, sometime later, I applied for the seminary. And they initially sent me a letter telling me when I needed to show up to register for classes.
Well, there were a few things that were fuzzy. So I called the school. And I said, okay. And I asked my questions. And they said, no, we're going to have to call you back. So the admissions director called me back.
And he said, you got that letter by accident. You're not actually accepted at the school. So then what happened was I told the people that had been praying for me and were so happy when I got into the seminary.
I told the chaplains at the jail. And I told my pastor at Grace Community Church and the other elder who had been working with me. And they were all disappointed. And basically they started a campaign to get me in the school.
So several months later, the admissions director called me back. And he said, you really started quite a ruckus. And I said, well, actually, I didn't do anything. You know, those guys did it. And he says, well, you get to start.
And I was super thankful. I just remember sitting there the first morning in seminary and Hebrew at 730 in the morning after staying up all night at work. But Hebrew and having the professor up there taking prayer requests.
And I thought, I have never been in a class like this where they actually take prayer requests. So from then, it was just teaching, teaching fundamentals of faith, teaching a Bible study, seeing people occasionally come to Christ.
It was just exciting to me to learn, to grow. I mean, I remember the first fundamentals of the faith class I taught, I thought it was horrible. I don't know why anybody came back. But gradually practice grace of God.
You learn more. You learn how to deal with different situations. And God has been very gracious to me. So that's kind of it. And that's true. Yes, I can. Yes, sir. Good. Good question. What scriptures would I go to?
Well, if I want to prove the deity of Christ, I go to Colossians 1. I would never try to prove the deity of God the Father. That's just something that the Trinity. Okay. I'll start by explaining the Trinity.
The Trinity is God. God in three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. All three co-equal. All three of the same substance. Having the same attributes. Each one separately God. In other words, God the Father is God.
God the Son. Jesus Christ, second person of the Trinity is God. And God the Holy Spirit is God. And yet there is only one God. Deuteronomy 6 -4 tells us the Shema of Israel says that there is only one God.
The Lord your God is one. As for places that I would go, I would go to Isaiah. I believe it's 46 -18 where it talks about, and I may have transposed something there, but Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, and it's probably 48 -16.
There it is. He says, come near to me, listen to this. From the first I have not spoken in secret. From the time it took place, I was there. And now the Lord God has sent me and his Spirit. So there we would see the Trinity.
We'd also see the Trinity at Jesus' baptism. We'd see the Trinity in creation in Genesis 1 where God creates the heavens and the earth and the Holy Spirit is there. We'd see Christ's creative power certainly in Colossians 1, as I mentioned earlier.
Well, as it says here, he sent the Son. Beginning the Son, Psalm 2 often quoted in the New Testament, God the Father, just to be clear because I don't want to wind up in an Arian type heresy, God the Father did not create God the Son.
There was never a time when Jesus Christ did not exist. To make that a positive statement, Jesus Christ has always existed and has always been God. But he begets him in the sense that he sent him forth and in the sense that in a creative act, God, I guess I would say, I want to be careful here, but Christ takes on a new nature and that is at the direction of the Father.
He takes on a human nature. So, yes, he was always the second person in the Trinity. He always had the place of Son, the Son. So he was eternally the Son, eternally the second person by both. Jesus promised to send the Comforter and he did that.
And again, Isaiah 48, 16 says that the Father sent him teaching, preaching. And I think along with those gifts, you have to be discerning. I think this might sound somewhat strange, but I think God has just given me a great compassion for people.
And I think that basically would stem from my own background, my own kind of sense of lostness. I mean, I can remember times where my whole life just seemed a wreck. So being able to relate to people in bad situations, preaching, teaching, discernment.
Well, I mean, I think I can answer that somewhat in what role they don't play. I don't believe that we have, for example, speaking tongues or the so-called charismatic gifts. I believe that we do have preaching, teaching, serving, and those sorts of gifts, the non-charismatic gifts today.
Well, the wrath of God was being poured out upon him. He was, at that point, made sin. 2 Corinthians 5 .21 would tell us that God made him who knew no sin, Christ, to be sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
And what happened was the full wrath of God was poured out upon Christ on the cross such that Christ suffered the penalty that believers deserved. Well, I believe that it would be elder rule, elder led by virtue of things, passages that would tell us to submit to our elders, that we should obey our church leaders as those who would give an account.
So those sorts of instructions, I can tell you. Well, he used the word of God because the challenge was, much like the challenge was in the Garden of Eden, the challenge was that Satan was trying to undermine the things that God had said.
So why specifically Deuteronomy? That I couldn't tell you. Well, again, that's the deity of Christ, isn't it? Okay. Absalom, Absalom. Son of David. Balaam, somebody who had a donkey talk to him. Yeah, I think that'll work.
Chief priest or high priest. Good. Demas. Bad. My first, he did, I think he was one of those characters who did harm to Paul. Elihu. I'm going to get him confused. Cornelius. Centurion. What about him?
Believer, converted. First Gentile convert. Okay. Simon Magus. Magician.
Anything else? So is David Blaine, by the way. Okay. All right, Steve, on God's holiness here. Would you regard that as a communicable attribute or an incommunicable attribute? Incommunicable attribute.
Because God's holiness, I think I mentioned something about this last week, so just bear with me. But for those who were here, God's holiness is so much more than what we attribute it or how we think about it.
I think our tendency is to think about his sinlessness in terms of his holiness. But in Isaiah 6, the angels covered their faces, and they had no sin. Right. So it wasn't due to that. It's because it's just his holiness, his separateness, not only from sin, but his holiness and his separateness from his creation is something that is just difficult for us to grasp.
Hebrews 12, 11 says this. All discipline for the moment seems to be not joyful but sorrowful, yet to those who have been trained by it. Oops, wrong verse. Verse 12. Verse 10. I'm talking about our fathers.
They disciplined us for a short time, it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good so that we may share his holiness. Would that suggest to you that it's rather than incommunicable, something that's communicable?
Not in the fullest sense.
I think we can share in his holiness. I mean, this verse says that. I just don't think that we can share in his holiness as in his transcendence. We're not going to be holy, holy, holy, as Isaiah 6 says.
We can strive for holiness. Right. But it's the same with love, right?
Because God is pure love. We'll never be pure love unless we're glorified. Right. But love would be a communicable? Yes. Okay. All right, Steve. Just one last question for you here because I've probably gone over my time.
Give me the theme of the book of Zechariah.
Is that future judgment of the planet? It's either Zechariah or Zephaniah. I was going through all those cards. I might mess that up.
All right. I've got some tennis balls, but I'm going to trust the other guys are going to get to those things. Thank you, Steve. All right.
Steve, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy 1 and verse 12 that God put him in the ministry. Could you explain to us, are you confident that God has called you, that God's hand is upon you, that he has prepared you for and enabled you and put you in the ministry?
And maybe just give us, I know you did touch on this, but just maybe touch on that a bit.
Well, I'm as confident as a human being can be. I think back, I mean, it's kind of like contemplating your own death. I thought about these things all this week, and I thought about how God so many times, on so many different occasions when things could have gone one way and they went the other, a small example, still unsaved, I was involved in a one-vehicle traffic accident.
And as most of you know, a one-vehicle traffic accident means it was your fault. And just spun out of control. And on one side was a concrete ditch, and the other side was about a 40-foot drop. And the car stayed on the road even though I was doing 60 miles an hour.
But there are any number of circumstances, and I know it's always dangerous to judge circumstances, but circumstances where things could have gone a different way and they didn't. But then I also just see the results.
And not because of me. I mean, so many times I've done a lot of dumb things. But God has consistently been gracious to me and has used me in various ways beyond anything that I deserve.
My second question, there is definitely confusion today as to exactly what the gospel is. The word is bantered about, but people do not know what it means. Outside in the world of all the different churches, could you please tell us what biblically the gospel is, how it has gripped you, and about your passion to see it proclaimed?
Okay.
The gospel is simply this. It has to start with the bad news. If people don't grasp the bad news, they cannot possibly accept the good news, which is what the gospel is. But you have to give them the bad news.
And the bad news is that God is holy, that God cannot abide sin, that God is going to judge sin. Habakkuk says that his eyes are too pure to approve evil. Nothing unholy is going to get into heaven. Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and scribes, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
One sin, James tells us, if you break one part of the law, you've broken the whole law. So people have, generally speaking, I would say most people have a very low view of what it takes to get into heaven.
And the Bible says it's a very high standard. And the bad news is that we're all sinners. Every single person has failed to meet that perfection that God demands. We're born with a sin nature. We cannot possibly, of our own volition, of our own will, we cannot be right with God.
And so every single one of us stands condemned before a righteous and holy God who would be right to send us all immediately into hell. The good news is that God did not want that. He didn't want everybody to go to hell.
He sent his son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save sinners. That's Matthew 121. Christ came to save sinners. And he did that by living a perfect life. He never sinned. He obeyed his parents all the time.
He loved the Lord as God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength. He did everything that he was supposed to, never did anything that he wasn't supposed to. And when he went to that cross, he did so as the innocent God man.
He was always God, came and took on a human form, went to the cross willingly, and died so that those who believe might be justified before God. He was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and God declared that, in Romans 1, we find out that God declared him to be the Son of God by virtue of his resurrection.
He raised him from the dead. And it is by believing, by confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, and believing in our hearts that God raised him from the dead that we can be saved. My passion is to teach that, to see that come to fruition in people's lives.
I've been blessed over the years to see a number of my good friends come to faith in Christ, and it is very, very exciting. I mean, it's one thing to, I remember a couple years ago I was teaching a class about evangelism, and one of the young women in that class had been in my FOF class a couple years before.
And so we're going around kind of getting to know everybody, and how did you get saved, how long have you been coming to the church, and she says, I got saved in your FOF class. I didn't even know that.
So it is just a thrill to see people come to faith, to watch people grow in Christ, to be able to shepherd them, to teach them along the way. Thank you.
When you drive to this building and you're going to perform your duties as a pastor here at BBC and serve in ministry, could you just outline what you would, if you had to pare it all down, what are the priorities of pastoral ministry?
What should be your focus?
Well, the word of God, prayer, and how do we implement that? How do we implement the Bible into what we do here? I think we're always looking for ways to encourage and to exhort and to equip the saints for ministry.
I mean, that's what we do in terms of Ephesians 4. We need to be as elders, as pastors. That's why we're here, is not to do everything ourselves but to equip the people for ministry. And so that's what I try to do.
I guess I'm kind of losing my way here in the question. I don't know if there's water in here, but let's find out.
And kind of just a follow-up to that, you had alluded to earlier in one of your answers about your heart. And to be an elder, to be a pastor, to shepherd the flock, it definitely involves a change in the man's life.
Of course, he needs to be a saved man, a God-called man. But you talked about having a love for people. Could you just speak to that? Do you believe that it is necessary? And could you testify how God has given you what some people might call a pastor's heart or a shepherd's heart?
Well, I think you absolutely, if you don't love people, you can't be in this job. The difference between this job and my last job is you could be in that job and not really love people. It would be a bad thing, but you could do it.
In this job, if you don't love people, if you don't care about their souls, you absolutely cannot do it. I just think, as an example, some men in the past would like to marry their own children, perform the ceremony.
And my kids know I can never do that. And it's because I'm basically a softie. I can't do that. And I ache when people come into my office for counsel. I ache with their problems. I identify. I understand what they're going through.
I want to encourage them, exhort them, tell them what the Bible says. And as I said last week, I think the most painful thing is to see people make a wreck of their lives because they won't do what God commands them to do.
God has given me just empathy and a desire to help people.
Okay. Steve, what is the church, and do you love it, and why?
The church is the, I mean, for example, I would say that the church here, Bethlehem Bible Church, is the visible gathering of believers. There's also the universal church, the invisible gathering of believers.
And I love both of them. I love the invisible group because what that means is I can go virtually anywhere in the world, gather together with other believers, and know that we love the same Lord, and we're right away on the same page.
I love the local body because it's just a joy to be able to get together and to, I mean, I feel like in two years that we've just gotten to know so many people. And, I mean, frankly, I can't imagine being anywhere else, depending on how things go, you know.
Steve, in the book of Philippians chapter 1, the apostle Paul said, for me to live is Christ, to die is gain. The first phrase there, the first part of that phrase, for me to live is Christ, what does that mean to you, and has that truth gripped you, and can you testify to that in your life?
Well, not to put words in the apostle's mouth, but there is no reason for us to be here if we're not proclaiming and trying to glorify Christ in all that we do. To die is gain means obviously it's better to be with God than to be here, but as long as I'm here, my intent, my purpose, my goal is to glorify Christ in all that I do, to serve him, to proclaim him, and to serve his people.
Amen. My last question, Steve, what is it that you are willing to die for?
Well, I've thought about that some. I mean, obviously at one point in my life I had to be willing to die for other things, but I would absolutely be willing to die. My family, obviously, and I would, I wonder sometimes if we're heading for this world, but I would be, for this and the world, but I would be ready to die for the truth.
I think it's that important. I don't think we can, just reading about Athanasius, being ready to give everything that we have on account of the truth, and if that's our lives, then that's our lives. The church has, for 2 ,000 years, not been, it hasn't grown by means of going out and forcing people to believe.
It's been standing for the truth, and even if that meant their lives, and that propagated the truth. So I think it's important to stand for that, and if that's life, then that's life. Amen. Thank you, brother.
Steve, I've always been impressed by the quality and caliber of men that the Master's Seminary sends out. So being a native New Englander, I want to welcome you to come and work in this difficult part of the country, and I want to know what it's really like to work with Pastor Mike.
Senator, I'll take the fifth on that. Would you offer to us your philosophy of ministry? As I said earlier, maybe I'll just build on this a little bit. My philosophy of ministry is that we exist here to equip the saints for the work of ministry.
What we want to do as an elder board, what we want to do as a pastoral staff, is we want to give people the tools, the training, the exhortation they need to go out and do the work. We would love to have about 200 evangelists walking around here.
We would love to have 200 trained theologians. We would love to have a body that just serves and loves one another and reflects Christ. So that's what we want to do. In terms of how do we accomplish that, we want to preach the word.
We're not interested in I had somebody call me this week and ask me if I wanted some video presentations that we could use on Sunday morning for PowerPoint and things like that. It's not about technology.
It's about faithfulness to Christ. It's about seeing him exalted on Sunday morning. It's about hearing his word, teaching his word, and those things. We're not interested in building the numbers. We're interested in building the depth of our ministry.
Let me bounce a little with my questions that follow up on your answers. What is the role of heralding, caruso, proclaiming, for today's pastor, and is it exclusive to male leadership in the church? The answer to the second part is within the confines of the church body, church meetings, yes.
Obviously, we have a women's ministry, so we believe that women can teach women. But we believe that the prohibition would against women teaching, Paul says, I would not have a woman to teach a man.
So we would hold to that. Now, what was the first part of the question? The role of heralding for today's pastor. I think it's absolutely the key. If a man is not going to preach the word, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 4, if he's not going to do that, then he shouldn't be in the ministry at all.
That is the number one key. If the top three things that a minister can do are preach the word, preach the word, preach the word, there's nothing more central. Define for me the mission of the universal church.
Well, the universal church, certainly we would look at the command of the Lord in Matthew 28, 18 -20, 16 -20. The great commission it is to preach the word, preach the gospel, make disciples of men. That's what we want to do.
Okay, thank you. In the context of the local church, specifically your ministry here, how do you see this church's mission consistent with Christ's commission? Well, that's a good question, and that's something that we're constantly asking ourselves, constantly working on, trying to figure out how we go about not just creating a bunch of theological giants, but people who actually put their theology into practice, people who would go out and do what Bruce has been leading there, for example, the street evangelism in Worcester and other things.
We are, as a priority, we are looking for ways to increase the amount of evangelism this church does. And then along those lines, in terms of that type of evangelism, and these are more philosophical, practical ministry, how do we engage a culture without accommodating it, and how do we grow in a culture as the community of faith without conforming to it?
Well, I think it's important. It's pretty easy to get the first part of the question. I would just say it is a question of worldviews. You know, do I want to, am I going to fight, so to speak, because it is a spiritual battle?
Am I going to take every thought captive, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 10? Or am I going to grant them a certain level of the unbelieving world? Am I going to grant them kind of, we'll play on your home field, and I'll just try to knock down all of their argumentation?
I'm not really interested in that. I want to tell people the truth. Why? Because it is the Bible and the Bible alone that saves, so why would I give them something else? Why would I try to debunk evolution through scientific means and all that when the Bible debunks it?
Why would I try to, you know, I don't want to get into a discussion of half-lives and all those kind of things when I don't need to do that. I just need to tell people the truth and trust that the Spirit will do His work.
Now, the other side of that question was? Growing within a culture without conforming to that culture. And that can be on a personal level and a corporate level within the body. Well, I think how do we grow without conforming to the culture?
Well, I think it is simply a matter of, again, turning to the Word and letting the Word influence our lives. We don't want and we cannot afford to raise our children as the world would. We can't afford to ignore what God says about raising children, whether it comes to spanking, whether it comes to teaching, whatever, and just turn our kids loose the way others would.
We can't be involved in all the same kind of activities. If somebody says, from a worldly perspective, if something is acceptable but it's not something that leads to holiness, if it's not something that leads to an increased relationship with Christ, then why would we want to engage in that?
So those are the issues. Kind of following along those lines, in terms of church growth movement, kind of the seeker movement of the, I guess it was the late 70s, early 80s when it really took root, I believe diminished corporate worship to a quote-unquote experience.
But now what we see is the emerging or emergent church. Have you done any reading? Do you have any insight, any feeling or conviction, this next wave of 21st century, quote-unquote, seeker marketing the gospel?
Yeah, I would say this. I haven't done that much reading about the emergent church. What I will say is that every single time something new and improved comes along, run. Because if they're trying to reinvent church and the emergent church is the hermeneutics of humility, meaning we're too humble to say what the Bible means, we're going to sit around in a coffee house and kind of brood over things and not really come to any sort of determinative meaning of the text, well, that's not what pastors do.
Pastors preach the word that you can't preach the word if you won't say what it means. And it's also, it's basically just poison because it is setting up a whole other generation of people who will go week after week after week and have their consciences salved, but never hear the saving gospel of Christ.
To follow up on that a little bit concerning that generation or cultural context, the 20-something generation is missing from many mainline churches, and I'm new to the mainline church being in a congregational context and share that with a lot of my colleagues.
Should the church make any concentrated effort in reaching a certain people group, a particular people group, and I'm saying in the North American context, a generational group? If so, how, and if not, why that concentrated effort?
I think it's difficult to target a specific audience without compromising in some way. I do think, though, in terms of reaching 20-somethings, if we, for example, made an effort to target the colleges in the Worcester area, we could definitely do something there, and I think that's something that we talk about, something we'd like to do, something that we're still trying to figure out.
Beyond that, I think the only way you can do that is sending out flyers and rocking out the music, and I just don't think that's what you do. I think you have to trust the Holy Spirit. You do preach the word.
You do the right things. You exhort your people. You train your people, and you just trust the Lord to bring in the right people that he would have. Let me ask you a doctrinal interpretive question, kind of changing gears a little bit.
Having been in ministry quite a long time, my eschatology is still unresolved, so I'll be honest with you. I believe Jesus is coming back, and he's coming back in a literal way, but beyond that, I'm still wrestling with it.
Now, because you're a master's grad, I kind of know where you stand on major doctrinal theological issues. Could you give us a layman's quick overview of the kind of four major interpretive views of revelation?
Okay. I'll help you with the four if you can't pull them, but just give me kind of your impression, and for layman terms, how do we approach the revelation? Well, here's what I would say. I mean, to me, I'm going to make it a little simpler because basically I think there are two approaches.
There are variations of those two approaches, but I think there are basically two approaches. One is that I'm going to be as literal as I can as I'm going through the book of Revelation, and unless there's some specific reason not to be literal, I'm going to be literal.
The other approach would be that there is an outcome that we have determined, and we will do what it takes. I mean, I've just been amazed because I've been reading about amillennialism and postmillennialism, not so much on historic premillennialism, but I've just been amazed at wanting them, as I read these men, wanting them to deal with the text in an exegetical way, meaning I wanted them to take the Greek apart.
I wanted them to explain to me why, for example, in Revelation 20, a thousand years doesn't mean a thousand years. They don't do it. In fact, what you read repeatedly in their writings is if one takes this literally, then one must be a premillennialist.
And I'm going, okay, well, why wouldn't I take it literally? And the answer is because we don't, because we have to recapitulate the book of Revelation seven times. It's the same story seven times, and there's no real example or reason for coming out with that sort of hermeneutic.
It's just pre-understood. It's a presupposition that they come to the text with. Great. And just my last question is where do you see yourself 10 years, 20 years in the context of ministry and the local church?
172 Holden, 172 Jennifer Driven Holden. I mean, I have no designs of going anywhere else. I mean, I would hope that as time goes on, I would be more disciplined, better able to compartmentalize my time so that I would be able to do more writing because I think I have a little bit of a knack for that.
So that would be something I would like to bring to the table, not to take away from what happens here at Bethlehem Bible Church, but just something I need to do on my own. Great. All right. Thank you.
Okay. Continuing, I guess, with the question that you just fielded on Revelation, would you give a brief overview of what your views are on the future of Israel? And you might touch on things, you know, is Israel separate from the church?
Has the church absorbed Israel, that kind of thing?
Israel is separate from the church. God has put, in essence, God has put Israel on the shelf for a time. He's not done with them. And in the millennial kingdom, the promises made in the Abrahamic, Davidic covenants will be fulfilled to Israel.
They'll have a literal reign of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem, and they will have the land, and God will fulfill his promises to Israel as a people. Thank you.
When Nicodemus went to Jesus, Jesus told him, he said, you must be born again.
What did Jesus mean by that? He meant there had to be a supernatural work in the life of Nicodemus, that Nicodemus was, although he didn't use this terminology, he didn't tell him, you're dead. But Nicodemus needed to be born again.
He needed to have, in fact, if you look at John 3, he says the spirit goes where it will. Basically, the spirit does what it wants. Talk about a testimony to the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit. And he tells him that unless he's born again, he can't enter into the kingdom of God, meaning there had to be that supernatural regeneration of the Holy Spirit in order for Nicodemus to be saved.
Okay, and going on with that same thought, what is the relationship then between regeneration and faith?
Well, I would say they are virtually indistinguishable. I don't know how one could be regenerated, in other words, born again and not believe, and certainly one could not believe without being born again.
A spiritually dead person could not possibly believe. So I don't see how there could be a time differential.
So you would say then that regeneration is required before faith?
I think you have to be regenerate in order to believe.
Okay, where does the Bible discuss, where would you go if someone asked you to prove the imputation of Adam's sin?
Well, that would be in the book of Romans, and we'd be looking at Romans 5. And he says that, verse 12,. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, so death spread to all men, because all sinned.
Meaning that through Adam, through Adam's sin, Adam as our federal representative, when he sinned, that that sin passed to all of us. We all get Adam's, the sin nature by virtue of Adam's transgression.
Okay, where would you go to counter the Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory and prayers for the dead? Let me say, where would you go? Don't give me a reference or anything. But how would you counter the doctrine if someone started talking to you and asked you, well, what about purgatory, et cetera, et cetera?
Well, I think there are two fundamental issues there. Number one is, you know, is that taught in Scripture? Presuming that we don't take the Apocrypha of Scripture, which even the Roman Catholic Church didn't do until after the Reformation.
So that would be number one. Secondly, that really is an assault at the sufficiency of Christ's death. If he indeed died once for all, the just for the unjust, if he paid for all of our sins, then why would we go to purgatory?
Jesus said it is finished. He didn't say it's mostly finished. He didn't say it's finished. Well, my part's finished. Now it's up to you to suffer until you purge those sins. So there's no biblical basis for purgatory or for that matter for praying to saints.
In fact, over and over again, when you look at what the New Testament says about saints, it's a reference to every believer. So I wouldn't see there being any biblical basis for that.
Okay, this is a question. Remember, we're after short answers here. What place does Paul give to the doctrine of divine sovereignty? Very high place. Or call it election. Well, that's short. Would you like to expand on that just a little bit?
Okay. Well, I'm just, yeah, he says in, I think the quintessential passage on that would be Romans 9, where he winds up quite a monologue by saying, raising up all these possible objections and then shooting them down.
He's talking about the sovereignty of God and salvation. And he ends it in verse 19. He says, when he said in verse 18, so then he has mercy talking about God. He has mercy on whom he desires and he hardens whom he desires.
Verse 19, anticipating this idea that it's somehow not fair. He says, you will say to me then, why does he still find fault? In other words, that's not fair. If God has not decided to save me and I can't be saved, how can he judge me then?
For who resists his will?
And Paul answers that. He says, on the contrary, who are you, oh man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, why did you make me like this? Will it? So Paul has a very high view of the sovereignty of God.
Yeah.
Along that same line, would you define the doctrine of total depravity?
Total depravity means that before salvation, every single person is so, their person, their being, their thinking is so infected by Adam's transgression that they are utterly unable to respond to the gospel, to do anything good.
Ephesians 2 .1 says that before salvation, you are dead in your sins and trespasses. So total depravity would be the absence of any ability to please God, to choose what is right. Romans 6 would tell us that we were, prior to salvation, slaves to sin.
Would you relate that then to the issue of human will?
Yes. I would say that every single person has a will. The question that comes up often is, do we have a free will? And the answer is no. Our will is enslaved. As I said from Romans 6, it's either enslaved to sin, in which case the only choice we have is to sin, or it is enslaved to righteousness, meaning that we can then, not perfectly, but we can obey, that our desires and our longings are to obey God and to follow him.
Okay. At the risk of opening a hole with no bottom, what are some of the problems with modern psychology? You mentioned part of your testimony that you were seeing a psychologist.
Yeah. The problem is that it gets at the very sufficiency of the Bible. If God has, indeed, given us everything pertaining to life and godliness, and, well, let me just make it easy. The easiest way to look at it is the father of modern psychology is Freud.
Freud opened his practice on Easter Sunday, I believe it was, with the idea that man was self-sufficient, that man himself had the wisdom to resolve his own problems. So we have a godless heathen then saying that we alone possess our own answers, that we can work things out for ourselves, and that is totally contrary to what the Bible says.
The Bible says, for example, Jeremiah 17, 9, tells us that we have a deceitful, wicked heart, that we don't even understand fully the depths of our depravity. So for us to rely on our own wisdom, our own thinking, we're always going to choose the wrong thing.
Our dependence needs to be on the Bible. And so those two things are not something that can work in harmony. I mean, this would be, you know, what do Christ and Belial have in common? What do Satan and God have in common?
They have nothing in common. So I would apply the same presupposition to this. Psychology and the Bible and Christians just don't go together.
Okay, one last question. What is the primary reason for holding to six-day creation? The primary reason? Primary reason. Because I believe that's what the Bible says.
Amen, brother. I have a lapel mic. Thanks, Louis. Okay, Steve, in a minute or less, tell me the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Oh, by the way, before I start, I believe you referred to the Holy Spirit in one of your answers in regards to John 3 as an it.
Would you like to clarify that?
Please forgive me for that. Yes, he is a he. Okay, good.
It's hard when you talk about the Spirit in the wind and we refer to him as it. Ministry of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.
Well, the Spirit obviously would regenerate people. You can't be regenerated apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. But there was, I believe, some difference, and I don't know if I could exactly quantify it, but some difference in the way the Spirit operated in the Old Testament and the New Testament by virtue of a few things.
Number one, the Day of Pentecost, because if the Spirit operated always in the same way, then the Day of Pentecost in some senses kind of loses its significance, and we would wonder what the big deal was, the new way the Spirit was coming across on the Day of Pentecost and in the church.
But we also have David praying that the Spirit not be taken away from him. So I believe that there was regeneration. I believe that there was filling because we see that in the Old Testament, certainly among the prophets and judges.
But I think that there was some kind of a difference there.
Art, along the same lines, a minute or less, 15 seconds or less, how were people saved in the Old Testament? The same way they are now. By faith or by works? By faith. Okay. Is there a healthy ecumenism?
If so, give me a quick example, 30 seconds or less. Okay, is there a healthy ecumenism?
Yes. Among those who share a fervent faith in Christ and a desire to see the gospel proclaimed. Anything beyond that? If they're preaching Christ and an accurate gospel, then yes, I think there is a possibility of ecumenical work.
Okay, hypothetical.
Again, a short answer, please. If science determines that homosexuality is genetic, something given at birth or in the genes, will that change the way you preach to homosexuals?
Not at all because science doesn't inform the Word of God. Quite the contrary.
Okay, good. Please describe and explain the kenosis.
The kenosis, Christ self-emptying, Philippians 2. Jesus did not cease to be God when he took on a human body. He took on an additional nature and set aside the exercise, constant exercise of his attributes all the time.
We see, though, throughout the gospels that he knew their hearts, things of this nature, so he didn't stop being God. He didn't stop exercising his attributes, but he basically imposed limits upon himself.
Okay, good. The theme of the Bible. Theme of the Bible. I'd say it was Jesus Christ. Okay. Purpose of 2 Peter. Purpose of 2 Peter warns about false teachers, its character, and false teaching, I want to say.
Okay, good.
Difference between a Pharisee and a Sadducee.
Pharisees obeyed strictly the law. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.
Okay. The theme of Isaiah 40 to 45.
Well, I know it starts, Comfort, O comfort my people Israel. I would just say that that's just the greatness of God there. I mean, that's what jumps out at me.
Okay, good. The purpose of 1 Timothy. Leadership.
It's an instruction manual for church leaders. Okay. Central theme of Ecclesiastes. That life apart from God is vanity, hopeless, futile.
Central message of the Song of Solomon.
God's view of love and marriage.
Okay, good. What is meant by synoptic gospel?
That would refer to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And it just means that there are so many similarities that the term is synopsis. In other words, that they give us basically similar, although there are differences, they give us similar pictures of Jesus and his ministry.
Okay, good. Along those lines, Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Can you describe a little bit their audiences? Mark was written for what reason? Proclaimed Christ as?
Yeah. Jesus. As, see now, if I just took them in order, it's a little bit easier. Matthew is for a Jewish audience and proclaimed Jesus as king. Mark would have Jesus as servant. Luke would portray him as the son of man.
Okay, good. Is there a genealogy in John? The gospel of? Yes. It's divine. Okay, good.
Grammatical historical interpretation versus grammatical historical theological. What are the differences and why should we embrace one and shun the other?
Grammatical historical is just trying to bridge the gaps which exist, historical gaps, cultural gaps, geographical gaps. The difference between our culture and our language and the author's original intent, which is what we should be trying to get, and that's what the historical grammatical method is designed to do to give us, to drive us back to the original intent of the author as he wrote it.
The grammatical historical theological hermeneutic has many of the same features, but the theological component would take and impose a theological framework when a passage is, for example, Isaiah 2, Isaiah 11, a number of places where it would talk about the millennium or about Christ in a way that would fulfill the Davidic covenant or the Abrahamic covenant, will take and change the meaning of it.
For example, in Isaiah 2, instead of people streaming to the mountain of the Lord to hear the word of God, it is, according to the grammatical historical theological hermeneutic, it is people streaming to the church in Revelation 20.
Instead of it being a thousand years of Christ ruling and reigning, it is a very long time and Christ is spiritually ruling and reigning. And then we have the first resurrection in Revelation 20 being changed to just the idea of being born again, not an actual resurrection.
In other words, they take the plain meaning of the text and change it to their theological presupposition. Okay, good.
In 15 seconds, what is general revelation?
General revelation is creation, the things around us.
Okay, same time frame, special revelation.
Special revelation is the word of God, the Bible.
Can you think of a psalm that teaches both? Yeah, Psalm 19. Okay. I'm going to give you a name for God and tell me its meaning, please. Elohim.
I can't. I mean, I just have too many things floating around in my head. I can't take that one. That's good. Adonai. Adonai means Lord. El Shaddai. Does it make you want to sing? Yeah, that's the first thing that came to my mind was the Amy Grant song.
I don't think she actually wrote it. Yahweh. Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton. That's his covenant name with his people, what they would not even say. Kurios. It's Lord. Theos.
Theos is God, Greek. Okay. Difference between common grace. Well, strike that.
What is common grace? Common grace is simply that it's the rain. It's all the good things that God pours out on unbelievers, unbelievers who are at war with him, who despise him, who would destroy him if they could, and yet God constantly pours out the good things, whether it's family, friends, jobs, rain, whatever.
That's common grace. Okay, good.
Are you dichotomous or trichotomous when it comes to man?
Meaning, do I think that there are three parts to man or two parts? And I believe that there are two parts, so body and spirit.
All right, just a few others, although I'd love to do this all night. So would I. All right. Four stages of church discipline in Matthew 18. Without looking at your Bible, briefly.
The first one would be to go to the person. The second one would be to take two or three persons with you. The third stage would be to, I mean, you want me to go through the whole thing? You confront them and if they.
So far you're doing well. Okay. And then the next stage would be to take them to the church. And then the fourth stage, if they don't repent at that point, then you would put them out of the church. Treat them like an unbeliever.
Why is church discipline loving? Because your goal at every point is not to embarrass the person. It's not to shun the person. It is to bring the Word of God to bear on their situation and just pray that they will repent.
That's what you want at every step is repentance. Okay. Monasticism, good or bad, and why? Well, I mean, I tend to think it's bad for a couple of reasons. One is because unless you have a spectacular gift of singleness, I think there's a problem there.
Secondly, I think that if you just cut yourself off, I mean, I guess if we're talking about a length of years, I would presume that's what you mean. If you are saved, you are cutting yourself off from the body of Christ.
You're not exercising your spiritual gifts within the local church. And to me, it would be the equivalent of going off and contemplating your navel for years.
Good. Is there such thing as a biblical divorce? Well, yes.
Can somebody get a divorce? Yes. If their spouse is in unrepentant adultery, if they have an unbelieving spouse who leaves, that would be about it. What was the last one? I couldn't quite hear you. An unbelieving spouse who leaves and then files for divorce.
Oh, yes. Okay. I thought you said something about abuse.
No. If somebody is being abused by their husband, is that grounds for biblical divorce?
It would be grounds for a call to the local law enforcement agency. Good.
Tell me what's wrong with this statement. Just a couple more. What's wrong with this statement? I visited a church, and when they were singing, I really enjoyed the worship.
Because worship doesn't consist only of singing. Everything, hopefully, everything that is done at a Sunday service would be an act of worship, whether that's the praying, the reading of the word, the preaching.
Everything that is done during a Sunday service should be, ultimately, with the idea of worshiping and praising Christ. Okay. Last question.
Would the Christian be restricted dietarily because of the commands of God in Scripture? No. How's that for a short answer? Kind of wanted a longer one.
In other words, are we restrained or constrained in what we can eat? And I think, well, certainly, there's no prohibition against eating meat or that sort of thing. We're enjoined against drunkenness.
It would not be a good thing to be gluttons. I think that would be sinful. But other than that, I think Christianity in general, I would say, is not a list of do's and don'ts. It's a couple of boundaries, and you just want to stay between the lines.
I think we have freedom to eat what we like. Am I missing something?
Okay. No, that's fine. Ben, do you have any clarifying questions you'd like to ask based on any of the questions? I guess I just have one then in wrap-up. Tell me how your wife helps you in your ministry.
Well, I said when I graduated from seminary, and I've said consistently, I said to the guys when I was graduating, I said, I don't know how you single guys do it because I couldn't have gotten through seminary without my wife.
I've told the men when I taught the deacon's class, whenever I'm addressing a group of men, you can only go as far in ministry as your wife will allow you. And my wife is a great support to me. She lets me know how I'm doing, except sometimes I tell her I really don't need to know because I know how bad that was, so you don't have to help me out.
But she is very insightful. She is my best sounding board, my best friend. And like I said last week, she's just the best person I know. She's somebody who is a huge help to me because she just does so many things just to keep me informed.
I don't know what goes on at the Women's Bible Study or what's happening in the women's ministry. I don't usually sit in on that. I think it would be kind of weird. So she's just a great help in that way.
She's super hospitable. She's a great cook, and those who have been over at our house would know that, as evidenced by the fact that when we got married, I weighed 183 pounds. I'm a little bit more than that now.
She's great. Okay, good. Steve, you can step down. We'll have the men meet in my office for just a few minutes. I think Mark has left. Are you here? Let's just sing one hymn, Mark, while we're meeting, and then we'll be right back.
203 then. You want to stand? What do you think? I think he went five for five. Go ahead. Well, Stephen, we have good news and bad news. Which would you like first? Just kidding. Wasn't that a rich time?
It is wonderful to see how God can train up men and women for his purposes. And we rejoice in Steve and his ministry, and especially how God has called him for his own and ordained him in a gospel ministry.
And what we really do tonight is we don't have any power of ordination. We don't ordain people. That is God's work. The only thing we can do as men and as a church is recognize what God has done. And so we don't have any special powers to confer or special colored hats.
We can just say we've seen this man live among us. I've known Steve for many, many years, and the elders now for a couple years, seen him minister to people. And so it is a privilege for us and a pleasure to unanimously say that Steve has passed the test, has passed the oral examination, and we want to do what the scriptures say.
After testing, then lay hands on someone to say, we affirm and confirm that Steve Cooley is ordained in the gospel ministry. So, Steve, if you'd come up here and other men, we'd like to pray for him. There are all kinds of laying on of hands in scripture.
This particular one is to confirm and to recognize that God himself has called Steve to himself and then commissioned him, set him aside for the gospel ministry. And so tonight we'll do that as we lay hands on him in a symbolic way of affirmation.
So, Steve, why don't you just stand here, and we'll have the men come alongside. And good job, by the way. You can clap. Go ahead.
Our Heavenly Father, we come before you this evening, as we've said, in recognition of what you have obviously done in our brother Steve's life. Lord, you have called him. You have anointed him. You have given him to this expression of the body of Christ as one of your gifts that you give.
The Bible says that the men that are given to preach and teach are your gifts to us. And so, Father, we thank you for him. We praise you for him. We would hold him up before you and pray, Lord, that you would bless his ministry as he labors among us.
And may, for our part, Lord, may we always be supportive. May we always hold him up before the throne of grace in prayer. And we would ask this in Jesus' name.
God, in heaven we recognize we are but lumps of clay. And I pray you would take this brother and mold him, shape him into a vessel of honor. And we recognize, Lord, you have put the treasure in the gospel in jars of clay.
And so may the gospel permeate from his life and his home and his ministry all to the glory of Christ.
Father in heaven, what a privilege to be able to witness what you are doing in this church, and particularly in the life of our brother. And we thank you that it pleased you before the world ever was that you had selected him to be your very own.
To put your love upon him, that everlasting love to reveal Christ Jesus, your son, to him. And to call him to the ministry. And, Father, we pray for your protection on his life. We pray that you would give him grace and strength.
And a carefulness to remain pure and faithful to you. Faithful to the gospel, faithful to the word of God, and faithful to his wife and family and church family. And, God, that you put a hedge about him.
And, Lord, that he would be able to look those that would oppose the gospel in the face and declare boldly to them the truth of the word of God. And that he would have a power from on high as only you can do in the life of a man.
We praise you for this opportunity to see what you've done. And we pray that you would use him mightily for the glory of Christ. And we ask it in his name. Amen.
Father, we would ask that you would give Steve grace to know that the only authority that there is is the authority that comes from heaven. That there is no authority that comes from man that can provide any sanctifying or saving influence.
So set him apart for yourself. Make him a man after your own heart. A man deep in prayer, deep in the knowledge of yourself. Deep in abiding trust in the sufficiency of your wonderful word. A man whose authority comes from heaven so that he may minister to your people.
And that his feelings about himself would not come from what other people say. Or how other people treat him. But from strictly the fact that he's been saved by your great mercy. Father, we ask that you would grant him the grace that would enable him to speak a word in season.
Whether he's preaching or whether he's sitting around a table with someone. Or Father, whether he's just meditating before an open Bible. His heart would be your heart. You give him ministry, you give him grace.
And you give him strength. To love your sheep. And to live boldly for the Lord Jesus Christ. We ask in your son's name.
Father, we would ask tonight that you would make the psalmist cry, Steve's, bless the Lord O my soul and all that is within me. Bless your holy name. And Father, may that be the mark that you would have for Steve in his life.
That he would want to bless you by preaching the gospel, by sharing, by laying down his life. For his wife and for the dear people here at Bethlehem Bible Church. Father, we'd ask that you'd keep him pure both morally and doctrinally.
Lord, we would ask that you would use him in his neighborhood to preach the gospel there. Even in Holden. That people might smell the aroma of life that comes through Christ Jesus. Father, we would ask that you'd give Steve wisdom.
As our church is growing both in maturation and numbers. How to deal with the weak saints and how to deal with the strong. Just an understanding of people and a love for the sheep. Father, increase his love for the sheep.
Increase his love for his wife and for his children. For your word. And Lord, may he be like the songwriter who says, I love your kingdom, Lord. And Father, we would pray that Steve would be a man who preaches the gospel in season and out of season.
Father, give him strength to reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. Because we know the times are here and times will come in the future where people won't want that. So Father, we rejoice tonight that we've got to be a part of this.
Thank you for being such a good God and generous to us. And now we would ask that you would confirm and affirm until the day Steve dies that he would be a faithful minister of Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray.
Amen.