Dangers of Deficient Theology

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I want to invite you to remain standing and open your Bibles, and turn with me to the 19th chapter of the book of Acts.
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And for our lesson today, we are going to read verses 1-10.
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Acts 19, 1-10 says, And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus.
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There he found some disciples, and he said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said, No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.
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And he said, Into what then were you baptized? They said, Into John's baptism.
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And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus.
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On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
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And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying.
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There were about twelve men in all.
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And he entered the synagogue, and for three months spoke boldly, reasoning and persuading them about the kingdom of God.
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But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them and took the disciples with him, reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus.
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This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.
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Let's pray.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth of the word.
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And I pray, Lord, now as I seek to preach it, that you would keep me from error.
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For the sake of your people, for the sake of your name, for the sake of my own conscience, I pray that you would keep me from error.
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I know that I am fallible and certainly capable of preaching that which is untrue, and I do not want to do that.
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And Father, I pray that as the word is preached, that hearts will be opened.
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I pray that folks would be willing to evaluate themselves in the mirror of the word.
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Particularly today, that we would be struck with our deficiencies in our own theologies, and have a new desire this year to see those deficiencies alleviated, and that we would learn more, that we would grow more, and that we would become better acquainted with the truth that you have given us in your word.
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And Father, for the unbelievers that are here, those who have yet to bow the knee to Jesus Christ, perhaps because of pride, or perhaps because they have not heard the gospel, I pray today that they would hear the gospel correctly, and Lord, that by your grace, you would save them.
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And I pray all of this, Lord, in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Please be seated.
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This month marks my 11th year as the pastor of this church.
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And every year since I have been the pastor, I have tried to, at the beginning of the year, preach a special message on the Sunday before New Year's Day, or as it would have been this year, on New Year's Day, because Sunday fell on New Year's.
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But as you all know, last week I didn't have the opportunity to preach, because Brother Aaron Bell was here from Kentucky, and he preached certainly a wonderful New Year's message, and I'm thankful for that.
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But I do feel like I need to preach my State of the Union.
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That's a joke that I sort of became over the years, that this was sort of the looking back at the last year, looking forward to the New Year.
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And you'll note this morning that we're back in the Book of Acts.
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We have been plowing through the Book of Acts a little at a time since December of 2014.
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My first message in Acts was the kickoff message for 2015, which was called Beyond Our Borders.
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And I said in December of 2014, looking at the New Year of 2015, I wanted to see our church expand in the area of evangelism, outreach, and missions.
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And I think that we have, in a lot of ways, reached goals that we have set, but I certainly also believe that we have a lot more to do.
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I prayed, actually, about whether or not I wanted to continue in Acts.
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We've been in it for two years, and I didn't know if that was something I wanted to continue starting this year.
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We finished Chapter 18 very nicely right before Christmas, and so I asked myself, well, should I continue in there, or should I do something else? This is the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
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We are now in the 500th anniversary year, and on October 31st, later in the year, we'll actually celebrate the 500th anniversary.
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So I got to asking myself, well, should I preach a series on something regarding the Reformation, particularly the doctrinal distinctives? Why do we make such a big deal about Reformed theology? Why do we even use that term? And should I preach on that? And after much thought and even counseling with some men and talking about the subject, I have decided to continue to preach in Acts for the first few months of the year.
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However, likely around the time of spring sometime after the celebration of the resurrection on Resurrection Sunday, I am going to do a series called Fundamentals for the 500th.
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And that's going to look at the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and the fundamentals of the faith that came out of that theological watershed moment in history.
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So that will give us something to look forward to.
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So you got to keep coming, so you can be here after Resurrection Sunday too.
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But between now and then, we're going to be studying the book of Acts.
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And one of the things that made me, convinced me that I should continue in Acts, was when I read the passage for this morning.
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Because when I read the passage this morning, I began to realize that this narrative has at the heart of it the subject of deficient theology.
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And the theme of today's message is this.
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We live in a world that is full of deficient theology.
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We live in a world that is just inundated with bad teaching, bad understanding, and bad theology.
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Just this last week, the Pope tweeted.
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Yeah, that's something in and of itself is interesting.
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But the Pope tweeted, Let us entrust the new year to Mary, Mother of God, so that peace and mercy may grow throughout the world.
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It amazes me that 500 years this side of the Protestant Reformation, the majority of the world's population that would call itself Christian, still define themselves by the faulty theology of Rome.
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And this is why we continue to herald the truth that the Reformation still matters.
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We are still reforming, and we're still Protestant.
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You know what the word Protestant comes from? The word to protest, to stand against.
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And what are we standing against? We're standing against that tweet.
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We're standing against the theology that's behind that tweet because it's idolatry.
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It's deficient theology that we stand against.
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So I want to study this text with that theme in mind.
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The theme of the fact that we live in a world of deficient theology.
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And what did Paul do when he came across a band of men who themselves had a deficient theology? And what can we apply from that to us? We're entering into Paul's third missionary journey.
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If you'll remember, and hopefully some of you will remember, we've studied up to this point, Paul had gone on his second missionary journey, gone through Macedonia, had ended up down in Corinth.
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And after his time in Corinth where he met Priscilla and Achilla, they got on a ship and went across the sea to Ephesus.
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And when he got to Ephesus, he preached there, and some people believed.
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And they asked him to stay, and Paul said, No, I can't stay.
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I've got a journey to take.
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And he had to get back to Jerusalem and to his church that sent him, which was the church in Antioch.
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So he left Priscilla and Achilla there, and he left.
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Well, Priscilla and Achilla met a guy named Apollos, who himself had a deficient theology.
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Even though he knew Christ, he had a deficient theology.
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They taught him better the way of Christ, and he became a pastor missionary.
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And he went across the sea to Corinth, and he took over in Corinth where Paul had left off.
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And that's why later the apostle Paul would say, I planted, when he was talking to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 3, I planted in Apollos what? Water.
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Because he came across and he became the preacher and teacher there in Corinth after Paul had left.
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And he said, and God brought the increase, of course.
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So Paul has gone back to Antioch.
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He's given what we can only assume is his missionary report, telling them about all the things that have happened in Philippi and in all the other lands that he has gone to and he's preached to.
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And now he's at Antioch, and he's left again.
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He goes up through Galatia and Phrygia, which are the land areas, and he leads him back to Ephesus.
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And this is where we are in verse 1.
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It says, It happened while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus, and there he found some disciples.
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Now, I want to make a point that may be debatable.
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And I'm not one to mind debating, but on this particular issue, I think I'll be able to prove my point.
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But if you take a different perspective, I promise not to call you up on charges of heresy.
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Because this is one of those points that there is some debate.
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When the text says that Paul came to some disciples, the term disciples there is mathetes in the Greek, and we often assume that the word disciples means disciples of Jesus, or Christians is how we often use that term.
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But we are soon going to realize, and this is the perspective that I'm going to take, that these are not Christian men, but these are actually disciples of John the Baptist.
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And I think the point is to make that.
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If it would have said he came up to believers who are believers in Christ, I think it would have called them that.
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But he calls them a very generic term, mathetes, indicating they're disciples, they're learners, they're followers.
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But we're going to see in a minute they're ignorant of the work of Christ.
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They know of John and what he taught.
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And this is important because this is the deficient theology that I want to point out today.
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These men were John's disciples even after Jesus' ministry.
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You must realize if you read the Gospel, John kept disciples even after Jesus came along.
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Now John did send his disciples.
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When Jesus came, it says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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And some of the disciples went after Jesus, but some stayed with John.
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In fact, when John was in prison, who was it that went and inquired of Jesus as to whether or not he was the one to come? Remember John had that question when he was in prison? He had that low moment where he said, Go and ask Jesus, are you the one or is there one to come after you? Who did he send? If you read the text, it says he sent his disciples.
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John's disciples went to Jesus and asked him that question.
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Later on, John the Baptist has his head removed after the daughter of Herodias pulled that trick on Herod and got him to have him killed.
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And what does it say happened to the body of John the Baptist? His disciples came and buried him and then went and told Jesus.
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So just because Jesus has come on the scene doesn't mean John didn't have followers or students anymore.
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So I believe that these disciples that's being referenced in verse 1 are the disciples of John who would have continued to be the followers of the last Old Testament prophet.
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Because that's who John was.
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John was a prophet.
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John was the last Old Testament prophet.
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And so you've got these men in Ephesus who have learned from John, knew Messiah was coming, knew that the Spirit was coming, but for some reason did not know all of the particulars about the fact that He had already come, the Spirit has already fallen, and the new covenant has been instituted.
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So these men are still operating under an old covenant mindset.
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Verse 2, And He said to them, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed? And they said no.
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We have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.
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And He said into what were you baptized? They said into John's baptism.
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Now I want to make something clear.
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They said they were unaware that there is even a Holy Spirit.
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I do not think that what they were saying was that they didn't know the Holy Spirit existed at all.
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Because these are students of the Old Testament.
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The Holy Spirit is mentioned all throughout the Old Testament.
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He is mentioned in the first verse.
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Well, actually, Genesis 1-2.
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He is mentioned, The Spirit of the Lord hovered over the face of the waters.
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There is no question these men knew there was a Holy Spirit.
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But their statement is that we didn't even know He had come yet.
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John had been saying, I baptize you with water, but one is coming after me.
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Who is going to do what? Who is going to baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire? So they knew He was coming, but they didn't know He had come.
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So their ignorance is not that the Holy Spirit exists.
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Their ignorance is that He has actually come.
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So Paul says, Well, what were you baptized into then? If you didn't know there was a Holy Spirit, you weren't baptized into Christ.
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No, we were baptized by John into John's baptism.
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You must understand, and I have mentioned this several times before, but I want to keep reiterating it, because this is where so many in Pentecostalism and Charismaticism really get off the rails.
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They look at Acts as being the normative standard for all of church history.
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And Acts does not represent the normative standard for all of church history.
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Acts represents the transitional time between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.
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This is a transitional moment where you are going to see believers in the Old Covenant and believers in the New Covenant existing at the same time, and both rightly called believers.
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This is why Paul said, Since you believed.
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But they're not Christians yet.
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They have not come to Christ yet.
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Now if you talk to a Pentecostal preacher or church member, they often will look to Acts 19 and say, See, here's where we get our doctrine of the Holy Spirit, where someone can be saved, and then later get the Holy Spirit.
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But let me remind you that narrative should never replace or go before the didactic teaching of the text.
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And when you go over to the Apostle Paul's writings, when he's talking about the Spirit, he tells us in Romans 8 that a person who does not have the Spirit of God is not Christ.
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So we know that in now, in our current time, if a person says, I'm a Christian, but don't have the Holy Spirit, they ain't a Christian.
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So the whole Pentecostal idea that you get to be a Christian and then later you get the Holy Spirit is not biblical.
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I just want to make that clear because they often use this text as their example.
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See, these guys were believers, but they didn't get the Holy Spirit until later.
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First of all, these guys aren't even Christians yet because they haven't heard the Gospel completely yet.
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But on top of that, this is a transitional period in history.
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This is not meant to be normative for all time.
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So keep that in our minds as we're studying.
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Verse 4, it says, and Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe and the one who was to come after him, that is Jesus.
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See, this is the men hearing about Jesus.
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This is the men hearing the name of Jesus.
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John baptized you for repentance, but I'm telling you, you didn't get the whole story.
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You need to believe on the name of the Lord Jesus because in Him is where salvation is found.
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He is the one to whom John pointed.
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And if you didn't know it then, you know it now.
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Jesus has come and He is the one in whom you are to believe.
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And that's why verse 5 says this, On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
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Now again, I want to point out that there are some who have taken verse 5 and made an entire doctrine out of it because they have said that baptism should only be in the name of Jesus.
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That you should not baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but that you should baptize in the name of Jesus only.
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Maybe you've heard of these groups.
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They're called Oneness Pentecostals.
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That's not the normal Pentecostals, so don't think that I'm comparing it's apples and oranges.
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But Oneness Pentecostals and Jesus only Pentecostals are anti-Trinitarian, modalist, meaning that they don't believe that God is one essence in three persons.
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They believe God is one person who puts on three masks.
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The mask of the Father, the mask of the Son, the mask of the Spirit.
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And that is not what the Bible teaches.
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The Bible teaches there's a relationship between God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit.
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And though these three share the same essence, they are not the same person.
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And they interrelate to one another.
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I don't mean to go off the rails here, but this is why theology matters.
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Because they see this baptized in Jesus' name and they say, okay, when I go to baptize, I'm going to baptize only in Jesus' name.
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That is not what we're commanded to do.
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Jesus said, go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them how? In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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I have no doubt in my heart that when Paul baptized these men, he baptized them into the triune name.
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Why then does it say on hearing this they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus? It's because of the association in which they were being baptized.
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It's not giving us a formula.
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It's giving us a reason.
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These men hadn't known about Jesus before now.
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They hadn't heard about Jesus before now.
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So the baptism that they had received was not Christian baptism.
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And so they needed Christian baptism.
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And so Paul gives them that which they were deficient in.
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And he doesn't tell us the words that were used, but rather the reason for the baptism.
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Verse 6 says, And when Paul laid hands on them, the Spirit came on them, and they swore speaking in tongues and prophesying.
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And again, this is another passage.
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And this isn't beat up Pentecostal day, so please forgive me.
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But I will say this, and if it makes me lose friends and not influence people, I wrote that book, so that's okay.
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But I will say one of the areas where there is the greatest amount of deficient theology in the church today is in what is called Pentecostalism.
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And it's followed up very quickly though by several others.
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But Pentecostalism has run roughshod over so much of biblical theology and replaced it with emotionalism.
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And one of the areas is this whole speaking in tongues idea that that is a necessary result of salvation.
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And if you've ever talked to someone who has died in the womb, tried in true Pentecostal, and you tell them that you haven't spoken in tongues, they'll tell you that you haven't been saved.
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Because speaking in tongues is the absolute necessity of someone who has been given the gift of the Holy Spirit.
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Here's the truth.
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Not true.
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1 Corinthians 12, Paul asks the question, do all speak with tongues? No.
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That's just it.
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Not everyone is supposed to speak with tongues.
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And to say that everyone has to to prove their salvation is nonsense.
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And what you have is you have people that fake it.
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You have books that teach it to children.
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I've seen it.
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I've shown it to people.
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There are books that are given out in children's churches that tell them how to shut their mind off and babble.
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And that's how you get to know that you have the Spirit because you can shut your mind off and babble.
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It's not exactly how it's worded.
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Maybe I'm being a little crass.
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But that's what it says.
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So anyway, we talk about here the tongues and prophecy.
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I want to make a point.
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This is one of only a few times that we see tongues mentioned in Acts.
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And in every time tongues is mentioned in Acts, what we are seeing is we are seeing a new work of the Spirit among a new people.
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Acts chapter 2.
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We see it in Jerusalem when it's going out to new people.
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We see it later when it's in the Samaritans and it goes out to new people.
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Now we're in Gentiles who have not heard of Jesus.
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They hear it and it goes out and they receive the gift of tongues.
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So what do we recall that's similar to that? Jesus said, you will be My witnesses where? In Jerusalem, and Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
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So every time this new thing is happening, we see it accompanied by this miraculous sign for the purpose of demonstrating that God is doing this work.
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So, by the way, this is the last time tongues will be mentioned in the book of Acts.
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We still have ten chapters to go.
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Verse 7 says there were about twelve men in all.
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I don't really have a lot of comment on that except for to say this.
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A lot of people make a big to-do about numbers in the Bible.
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There's even a whole book called the Secret Bible Code which talks about numbers.
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And some people say, well, it says there were twelve men in all here because there were twelve tribes in ancient Israel and there were twelve disciples of Jesus.
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And so the twelve here represent the twelve in fullness and wholeness.
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But it doesn't say, it says there were about twelve.
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It's like Brian Borgman said, they weren't about twelve tribes and they weren't about twelve apostles.
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So don't get caught up on the numerology stuff.
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Don't let people mess with your mind.
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Are certain numbers important? Well, yeah, we see certain things.
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Forty days of fasting comes up more than once.
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Seven days of creation are referenced several times.
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But don't let the numerology thing bog you down in the nonsense.
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You won't have a deficient theology, you'll have a messed up theology.
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Verse 8.
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And some people might think, well, you should stop at verse 7 because that's where this story stops.
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But I don't think so.
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Because verse 8, it says this, And he entered the synagogue, and for three months he spoke boldly, reasoning, persuading them about the kingdom of God.
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But when some became stubborn and continued in unbelief, speaking evil of the way...
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And by the way, that's what Christianity was called.
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It was called the way.
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Speaking evil of the way before the congregation, he withdrew from them, took the disciples, and we're not certain who these disciples are.
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It could be the twelve or so men that he's just brought to Christ.
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It could be another group or a combination of some.
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But he took them, and reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus, this took two years or continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord, both Jews and Greeks.
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And that would be Asia Minor.
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Now again, some people say, well, that's a new section.
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We should wait and start on that next week.
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But here's why I want to tie this to what's come before.
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Paul has come upon disciples of John who have a deficient theology.
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He has told them about Christ.
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They've received Christ, and now he's teaching them theology.
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And he's trying to take solid teaching into the synagogue, and instead of them receiving it, he has been rebuffed and essentially put out with prejudice.
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So Paul leaves there, and he goes to a place where he can teach in dialogue.
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The term in Greek is actually for dialogue, so he's probably having sort of a question and answer type of lesson with the people that he's teaching regarding the way of Christianity.
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Tyrannus, the man mentioned here, we don't know much about him.
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He might be the owner of the hall, or he might be the primary instructor of the hall.
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And in the King James Version, I think it mentions the 11 o'clock hour to the 4 o'clock hour as being the time that Paul used it, which would have been the time that it wasn't being used by the standard lecturer, because that was a time in the ancient world where a lot of people rested during the day.
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They rested during the hottest part of the day.
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So Paul would go into the hall and use that time as his time for teaching.
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So here we have this story.
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Paul comes into Ephesus.
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Paul meets a group of people who have a deficient theology.
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He instructs them in right theology and they believe.
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He continues on with them.
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He goes into the synagogues.
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He tries to preach Christ in the synagogues.
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He is rebuffed with great prejudice, so he leaves there, and he opens up essentially a school of theology.
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And he begins to teach in a school of theology in a rented building.
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And so what do we get out of this? What are the four things? I have them on the back of your bulletin, and four application thoughts from this message.
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Four things I want us to consider from what we've learned from this passage.
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Number one.
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Each blank is a little long because it's more than one word if you're filling in the blanks.
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Number one.
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We all begin life with a deficient theology.
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That's right.
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We all begin life with a deficient theology.
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Sometimes I meet new people and I'll be talking to them about the church or about their faith, and they'll say, well, I've always loved God.
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Or they'll say, I've always been a Christian.
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Neither of those is true.
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Now you might have become a Christian at a very young age, and if that's what you're saying, that could well be.
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I mean, Christ can save anyone of any age.
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But you need to understand we come into this world as fallen sons and daughters of Adam.
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Nobody comes into this world as a squeaky clean Christian right off the bat.
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Maybe someone could argue John the Baptist was saved in the womb, but outside of that, the normative understanding is that we all come into this world as sinners with a deficient theology.
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And I can tell you from personal experience, and I don't mean to make my own experience the arbiter, but it's the only experience I have.
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I didn't experience your life.
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So I'll share from my own life a little bit by way of testimony.
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When I was a young man, I had all the wrong ideas about God.
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My theology was so bad that it's hard for me to even fathom today the things I used to think were right.
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When I was a young man, I really did think my good outweighed my bad, and that was how God was going to judge me.
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I thought my sin was not that bad and wasn't certainly worthy of God's punishment.
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I prayed when I was a kid, but I prayed when I was in need or I wanted something, and even then it wasn't a real prayer.
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I had no desire to worship God as a young man, as a teenager.
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And at one point, I even thought it would be cool to become a Buddhist because I was doing martial arts, studying the history of Japan and China and Korea.
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And I thought, wouldn't it be interesting, at least if I worship Buddha, the God who looks sort of like me.
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No, I worshipped my wants.
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I worshipped my desires, and I worshipped my own passions.
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And even though I had people around me who knew the truth, I had a woefully deficient theology because I began with myself and my wants, and I had a me-ology.
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This is all about me.
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And you might not tell the same story.
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You might say, Brother Keith, I got saved at seven years old.
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I got saved at six years old.
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Praise the Lord if you got saved at a young age like that, and praise the Lord if He has kept you in His hand for so long.
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But I imagine if we were all to come up and share a bit of testimony, we'd say there was many, many, many years where we had a deficient theology.
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So understanding that we all start out with a bad theology is helpful because of number two, the second thing.
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A deficient theology can mean a person is outside of Christ.
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A deficient theology can mean a person is outside of Christ.
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There's a popular phrase, and maybe you've heard it.
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It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere.
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Or what did you say? Yeah, as long as you're a good person.
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But people say it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere.
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In fact, the Pope said that.
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The Pope said there's good Muslims, there's good atheists, there's good Jews.
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It really doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're good at what you do.
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It doesn't matter what you believe as long as you're sincere here is a lie from the devil, because what you believe does matter.
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There are people that are sincere and sincerely wrong about God.
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And sincerity does not replace the truth.
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The Bible is clear that there are certain things that we must believe if we are to be in Christ.
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I talked about this on Wednesday night.
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One of the most difficult things for people to take from the creeds of the past, like the Athanasian Creed, is that the Athanasian Creed says this, it says, if you are a believer, you must believe these things.
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It's not an option.
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People say, well, do I have to believe in Jesus? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.
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Very unambiguous.
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No doubt as to what he was saying.
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And yet people say, oh, that's not necessary.
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The Bible is clear, as I said, that there are certain doctrines that would mean a person would be outside of Christ.
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Now, that's not everything.
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You might hold to a different millennial position than me, and that does not mean you're outside of Christ.
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You might hold to a different position on who wrote Matthew.
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You know, because it doesn't say Matthew wrote it.
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I believe he did, but let's say you don't believe Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew.
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Okay.
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It doesn't say he did.
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Does that put you outside the kingdom? No.
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But if you came to me and said, Brother Keith, I believe that my works are what God is going to judge and allow me into heaven because I'm a good person, I would say you need to repent because that theology puts you outside of Christ.
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So that's why in my notes I say a deficient theology can mean a person is outside of Christ.
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Not always, because we all have a deficient theology.
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We're all deficient somewhere.
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No one is perfect yet, but there are things that are necessary to believe, or they would mean we're outside of Christ.
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And that's where these men were if you go back to the story.
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These men didn't know the whole story.
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They hadn't believed the truth, and when they did, they believed it.
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Now they're good.
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But up until that point, their deficiency meant they were outside of Christ.
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Third thing, and this is huge, an unwillingness to correct a deficient theology can keep a person outside of Christ.
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Let me say it again, an unwillingness to correct a deficient theology can keep a person outside of Christ.
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As I said earlier, we all started with bad theology from birth, but then we got saved, and God saved us.
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If you are saved today, God saved you, and guess what? From the moment of salvation, you didn't have a perfect theology then either.
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I remember when I got saved, my theology was so bad because I was getting a lot of it from TV preachers.
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And I remember one time my wife was sick.
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She used to have terrible allergies, and I mean she would seem like every other day she had an allergic reaction to something, and I was so just frustrated.
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It was the first month after I got saved.
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I wasn't even a baby in Christ.
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I was still a fetus.
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I was so new to all of it, but I was drinking it in.
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I was reading the scriptures.
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I was watching the TV.
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I was learning what I could.
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And my wife was sick every day, and I looked at my wife dead in the face.
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I remember right where I was, where we were when I said this.
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I said, if you just believed enough, you wouldn't be sick all the time.
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Now I know today that's nonsense.
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I know that's bad theology, that's deficient theology, but that's where I was.
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Here's where the danger lies.
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The danger lies is when you are in a deficient theology and you're unwilling to learn and move and grow.
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That's where the synagogue people are in this story, and that's why I'm telling you these stories go together.
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Because Paul goes into that synagogue, and the same way he went to those twelve or about twelve men, he went to them.
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He told them about their deficient theology, and guess what? They believed and received Christ and became his disciples.
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This synagogue, he goes in and tells them their unbelief.
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They mock him.
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They deride him, and the text says one of the most terrible things it can say about anyone.
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It says they continued in unbelief.
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Imagine if Paul came up to those disciples of John and said, hey, you haven't heard about Jesus or the Holy Spirit.
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Let me share with you Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the guy said, no, we're good.
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I don't need that.
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I'm happy with John's teaching.
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I'm happy with where I'm at.
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They would have remained outside of Christ, and the deficient theology would have become a deadly snare to them.
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What we believe matters.
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This is my point of the whole message today.
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And what you believe can be a telltale sign of whether or not you are inside of Christ or outside of Christ.
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So number four, the last point.
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Correcting deficient theology is one of the duties of the church.
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Correcting deficient theology is one of the duties of the church.
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You know what 1 Timothy 3.15 calls the church? 1 Timothy 3.15 calls the church the pillar and support of the truth.
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The pillar is something that holds something up and supports it.
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That's what the church is called.
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The church isn't the truth.
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The Word of God is the truth, and we support and hold up the truth.
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We don't determine it, but we do exalt it and proclaim it.
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And when an error attempts to make its way into the church, it needs to be corrected.
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This is really unpopular in certain places.
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Some would argue that no one should ever correct anyone else about what they believe.
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But we should just accept everyone just as they are.
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But let me ask you this, because that sounds good to me.
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We should just believe everybody gets to believe what they want.
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Nobody should ever be corrected.
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Just accept everyone and kumbaya.
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We'll all gather in a circle and hold hands and sing kumbaya.
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But let me ask you a question.
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What if somebody came into this church and believed that they were saved by their works? Should they be corrected? Would it be wrong if we didn't? What if somebody came in and said, well, I don't believe Jesus Christ is divine.
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I think he's a normal, created man just like you or me.
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He was just special because God chose him and adopted him as his son.
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There's a belief.
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They're called adoptionism, and people believe that.
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So we just say, okay, well, you get to be in the adoptionist group.
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We're going to put you over here, and we're just going to keep singing kumbaya.
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What if somebody came in and said, well, I have a Koran, and I think it's the same as the Bible.
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They're both the Word of God.
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Would they need to be corrected? It is the responsibility of the body of Christ that we correct one another with the Word of God.
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In fact, 2 Timothy 3.16 says, All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, and for correction.
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We have a responsibility to correct one another, and I am not above correction.
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I know some preachers who would never allow themselves to be corrected.
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I pray I never become that.
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I'm not above being corrected, and neither should any of you be.
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The Bible is our ultimate corrector, and we do sometimes have to correct one another.
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Imagine if these men came to Paul.
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Paul knew their theology was deficient, and he said nothing.
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They come up, and he says, Have you received the Holy Spirit? And they said, No, we didn't know there was a Holy Spirit.
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And he said, Okay, see you later.
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That sounds dumb because it's dumb.
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Instead of letting people remain in their bad theology, Paul taught them the truth.
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Then he went on to start what I like to dub the first seminary because in the Hall of Tyrannus for two years, Paul taught for several hours a day anyone who would come and learn.
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Call it a Sunday school class.
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Call it a seminary class.
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Call it a home Bible study.
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That ain't at home.
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But he taught the people daily.
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You know, Martin Luther preached every day too.
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Every day he just went and preached.
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They had their special services on the Lord's Day, but preached every day because people wanted to learn.
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They didn't have Fox and all kinds of other stuff to keep their attention, so people wanted to learn, so they'd come and learn.
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We live in a world of deficient theology, beloved, and this is sad because we live in an age when there is so...
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there's never been more opportunities for learning than there is right now.
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We have more books, more articles, more sermons, more avenues for research, more software, more hardware than we've ever had in the history of man, and there is no excuse today for having a deficient theology, yet it exists everywhere.
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And my biggest concern as a pastor is that it exists here.
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Because I can't change what's going on down the street.
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I can't change what's going on at another church.
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But it is my fear, and always has been, that some of you have a wrong understanding of God.
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That some of you have a wrong understanding of salvation.
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That some of you are still trusting in your works.
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That some of you are still trusting in your religious exercises.
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That some of you have not been born again.
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Some of you have not repented of your sins.
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Some of you have not trusted in the finished work of Christ.
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Like I said, no one has a perfect theology.
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We all have deficiencies somewhere, but on those things which would separate us from Christ, we need to know that we know what we know.
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So do you know? Do you know that you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ in a way that is biblical? That your salvation is sound? Do you know that what you believe about God is scriptural? And do you know that if you died right now, and you faced God, that your sins have been covered, and that you are in Christ your Savior? By repentance and faith in Him.
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If you don't, I want to call you to repent of your sin.
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That means to turn from your sin.
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To look at it the way God does, as an offense to Him.
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To trust in Christ because there is only one name under heaven by which we must be saved, and it is the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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And the Bible tells us this, whoever comes to Christ in repentance and faith will in no way be turned out.
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So if today you are there outside of Him, I beckon you to come.
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Come to Christ.
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Come all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and He will give you rest.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth, and I know, O Lord, that we all have a deficient theology somewhere, but may it not be that our theology is deficient on those areas that would keep us separated from Christ.
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Lord, if there are those here today, and I'm sure there are, who have not bowed the knee to Christ, I pray that they would be broken under the weight of their sin and understand their need to follow Him.
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And for the believers in the room today, I pray that they would understand their responsibility to study to show themselves approved unto God as workmen who need not to be ashamed, rightly understanding and dividing the word of truth.
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I pray, Lord, that you would give us all this year a desire to understand you better, a desire to increase our own theology, which simply means to increase our knowledge of you that we might love you better and serve you more rightly.
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We thank you for the word of God.
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We thank you for the truth.
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Lord, may we serve you in a way that is pleasing to you.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.