Strong Teaching

Heavenly Father, thank you for this hour of worship that we have, to sing your praise and to hear your word.

Lord, we pray that as your word is open to us today, we would be changed by it, conformed into the image of Christ.

And Lord, today especially, we ask as we focus on your word itself, that we would recognize that your word is life to us, that we do not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the

Father. We need this, your word, God. It is our food. Without it, we die.

Raise that awareness today, in Jesus' name. Amen. Some of the guys went to see a movie called

Dunkirk this week. Dunkirk is a historical setting, where in World War II, the ruthless

Third Reich machine, war machine, is moving in upon what remains of the

English and the French army. They are literally being driven into the sea at Dunkirk.

That's their last stronghold. They've set up a perimeter, and from the ports of Dunkirk, they are evacuating the last of the

British troops back to England, to try to make another stand against Hitler. And it is intense.

The only goal at that point is survival. There's no longer a hope of pushing back and taking ground back from Hitler.

Rather, they're just trying to escape. They're just trying to survive. Imagine if on the shores of Dunkirk, when nothing is left of hope but that last glimmer that you can be rescued by a boat coming from England.

Imagine if a soldier saw a destroyer sailing off to England, and all that he had left to get on to was a fishing boat.

Imagine if he turned up his nose against that rescue, or said, ah, fishing boats are boring.

I'm not getting on a fishing boat. I'm not getting on a lifeboat. I'm waiting for the destroyers to come back.

Can you imagine that? In that moment, when all you have left is one last hope of survival, you will take any kind of boat that you can get.

You'll take a rescue boat, if it's a fishing boat, a yacht, if it's a lifeboat that you have to paddle all the way across the

English Channel. Your last hope of survival depends on escaping from that German war machine.

Albert Moeller, one of the leading theologians in the world, he runs, he's the president of the largest seminary in the world,

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He says that expository preaching is the survival strategy of the church in this secular world.

Expository preaching is the survival strategy of the church in this secular world.

According to Albert Moeller, we, the remnant of Christians that remain in America, are at Dunkirk.

Only the army we face isn't shooting bullets, and they're not rolling in on us with tanks.

They're coming with ideas and cultural persuasion that's changed the thinking of the religious landscape and the worldview of this postmodern

America. The war machine that we face is called secular humanism.

The secularism that's taking over the culture is at war with the

Christianity that has been our heritage in this country, but remains only a remnant in the hearts of the people.

We are at Dunkirk as we sit here this morning, and according to Albert Moeller, our only boat, the only fishing boat that's coming to rescue us at the last minute, is expository

Bible preaching. What is that? Expository Bible preaching is the opening of God's Word and reading it, and then saying, what does this mean?

Giving the sense of it. What does this text actually say? That's what expository

Bible preaching is. Our culture thinks it's ridiculous, because they think this book is just, you know, thousands of years old, written by some guys in some particular cultural context that might have some little bit of something to do with us, but they don't believe it's the

Word of God. Expository Bible preaching assumes that the very words that we have in Scripture are the

Word of God. We've been talking for last week, and now into this week, and we'll do it for a few more weeks.

We've been using a construction metaphor to describe what the church is, and how the church can thrive in a godless culture.

The church is like a building. We are here in a physical building, but moreover, the people of God are the church.

So what are the things that it takes to thrive as a church? For us to grow and be built up in our most holy faith, what are the essential elements?

Last week we said it really starts with each one of us. Strong members.

A church that's made up of converted people who gather on Sunday morning.

They have been converted under Christ, which means they've repented of sin and turned to a Savior. A church that's made up of consecrated people, which means we've now climbed up on the altar and said, this is my offering my entire life.

Everything I have, God, is yours. I am a living sacrifice. I die daily. I am consecrated to you.

And finally, a church that's made of consistent members. People who not only do this in a rush of emotions, once in a while, when you have the feeling, but rather consistently, daily, year after year, decade after decade, like an ox grinding in the field.

Proverbs 14 .4, where there are no oxen, the manger is empty. But from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest.

A church that has oxen for members. Strong members that consistently, year after year, do the work of the

Lord. We'll be a strong church, and I believe we have that. I believe this church is made of strong members.

I don't believe we have an audience, an auditorium filled with unconverted goats who just like to gather with the sheep.

I believe that this is a church that's made of genuine believers. Converted people who are seeking to live for Christ.

People who have been doing it for years, and prove themselves faithful over time. We have strong members, and we need to keep getting stronger.

But the second thing, and what we're focusing on today, is that a church that thrives in this culture has to be built on the

Word of God. The teaching of the Word of God. The preaching of the Word of God. From the pulpit, in the classrooms, in homes, in the bedroom at night when you're putting your little child to bed, before he or she sleeps, expositing the

Word of God. That that child would understand and clearly grasp the Scriptures. It's our only hope.

This is our only lifeline. This Word of God is our only hope in this culture.

So let's get into it. We're gonna start with Ephesians 2 .20, with this cornerstone motif again.

Ephesians 2 .20. Last time we saw from Luke 20, that the cornerstone is like a dividing line.

Some people come to that stone and they stumble on it, and the stone turns around and crushes them.

They're crushed by the stone. Others build their lives upon that stone. It becomes the rock on which they stand.

Christ, the solid rock, the foundation of their lives. And so that is an evangelical call, to be converted, to come to that cornerstone.

Don't trip on it, but build your life on Christ Jesus. That's an evangelical call.

That's the gospel. Christ presents the gospel himself. He calls himself the cornerstone.

Today we go to Ephesians 2 .20 and we recognize the second thing that comes from this cornerstone idea, and that is the

Word of God. Ephesians 2 .20. Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus, and he's speaking to them about how they're no longer aliens or strangers, but even

Gentiles have been grafted in with the Jewish believers, so that now there's just one church.

And in Ephesians 2 .20, he uses this construction metaphor. Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. The picture here is

Christ Jesus being a square and solid stone that's laid first in the ground, and everything else will be built around that stone.

That's the chief. That's the preeminent stone. But notice what makes up the rest of the foundation. Even before you start going up the walls with living stones, individual members who have been born again, even before you build the walls, you have to lay the foundation.

Without a foundation, the building will crumble. And yes, Jesus Christ himself is that cornerstone, but the rest of the foundation is the apostles and prophets, the

New Testament and the Old Testament. The apostles come to establish the church, sent forth, the sent ones go forth proclaiming the kingdom of God in the name of Jesus, and they codify what they are saying in written literature.

Now, not everything written in the New Testament was written by an apostle, but the apostles oversee the writing of the

New Testament, so that at the death of the last one, John, the apostle, no more inspired

New Testament books can be written. Everything that we have after 33

AD, the death and the resurrection of Jesus, until 90 -something

AD, the book of Revelation, which John gives us from the shore at Patmos, is overseen by the apostles.

They give us the New Testament, and the Prophet speaks from all of the prophets, from Moses the first, who wrote

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, the first five books by the Prophet Moses, until the last prophet of the

Old Testament, which is Malachi, those 39 books form the

Old Testament. Together we have the 66 books of the Bible.

This is the foundation on which the church is built, the writings of the apostles and prophets.

So, that's our foundation stone. How do we approach the Word of God?

The second thing it takes for a church to be strong enough to thrive in a godless culture is strong teaching of the

Bible, and strong teachers are three things. Write these down. Number one, exegetes.

E -X -E -G -E -T -E -S. Exegetes. Number two, expositors, and get this, number three, extremists.

The church's life flows out of the Scriptures. In the

Greek, the prefix ek, E -K is what it would translate, transliterate to, where we get the

English E -X. X means out of, whereas the

Greek prefix eis, E -I -S, means into. An exegete is someone who goes to the

Scripture and reads out of the text what is already there. Exegesis means to lead out of the text.

Turn with me, if you will, to 2nd Timothy 316. Paul, writing to Timothy, who's probably pastoring a church again at Ephesus, speaking to a young man now who has grown up hearing the

Bible. He's grown up because his grandmother and his mother were both believers, and trained him in the

Scripture since he was a child. If you're raising a kid to know the

Word of God, you're doing a good thing. You are giving them the greatest gift that you could possibly give them.

You are laying a foundation for their entire life. Everything that happens in their life will flow from that foundation.

You are doing the most important thing for your child by teaching them the Word of God. 2nd

Timothy 315 says, from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, verse 16 is our first crucial text. We'll have three major texts today. 2nd

Timothy 316 is the first. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

The Greek word for God is theos, and the Spirit, you know, is pneuma.

So, putting those together in this adjectival form, all Scripture is breathed out, it's theanusta, from God.

The word Spirit also means breath. Pneuma means breath.

So, Scripture is the very breath of God. What you have in the writings of the

Apostles and in the prophets is not just the mere opinions of men who wrote thousands of years ago.

What we have in the Scriptures is theanusta. It is God's very breath put into writing and preserved for us.

Consider that for a moment. We live in a culture that believes that all truth is really relative to a person, and if there is no

God, what they say actually makes sense, doesn't it? If there's no

God, then your opinion and my opinion are just the private ideas of a person, and equally valid.

But if God has spoken, if God has breathed out his word into this world, that's a game -changer.

That changes everything. If God has spoken, he is not silent, and his word is absolutely true.

Not just true in the sense that one person's opinion is true to that person. No, it is absolutely true.

It is breathed out by him. That's why it's possible to reprove or rebuke somebody or correct somebody using the

Word of God. This is where people in our culture get a little bit squirmish.

Nobody likes to be corrected or reproved. In fact, the very idea that that's possible is offensive to this culture, because no matter what your opinion is about your identity, or about your preferences, or about your choices in life, who are you to say that your truth is better than my truth?

Nobody wants to be corrected in this culture, because truth is considered to be a private opinion, and it's you that makes it true by believing it.

And yet our Scripture says all Scripture is God -breathed and is profitable for what?

Teaching and rebuking and correcting and training in all righteousness. That means that this word is actually a standard.

Understand that. Our job is to exegete the

Scriptures. God has breathed it out, and so we are to find what is already here in the

Scripture and draw it out and lead out from what it says to understand what the author originally intended it for it to mean.

Okay, these are some big theological words. Exegesis and eisegesis. Why are we talking about that on a

Sunday morning? Because correctly handling the Word of God is the difference between believing and obeying and following Christ, and truly just doing whatever we want to do.

The question is, is this book our standard? I'm going to give you one example of exegesis versus eisegesis, and we're going to flip back one book to do that.

Turn with me to 1 Timothy chapter 2. So just flip a couple pages back in your Bible. 1

Timothy chapter 2, and a controversial verse is verse 12.

In the context here, he's talking about praying for all kinds of people. He addresses men and says, hey men, stop fighting, stop quarreling, and lift up your hands in prayer and in praise and pray.

And then he speaks to women and says, don't worry about your outward appearance, but let your appearance not be the outward, but rather the inward good works that you do in the name of Jesus.

And then he says something controversial. Verse 11, let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness.

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. Rather, she is to remain quiet.

That's the Word of God, 1 Timothy 2, 11 and 12, and it's kind of a hard teaching.

And from this teaching, we understand that the list of elder qualification comes in chapter 3, must be a husband of one wife, and things like that.

It's addressed as a male role. He must meet these qualifications. And so from reading the text, it would appear that only men are to be pastors if we hold this book as our standard, rather than as a mere opinion.

But here's what eisegesis would do. Someone who holds a different opinion would eisegete this text this way.

They would come and say, I want to read into this text what I want to see here, which is that women can be pastors, and so I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.

Rather, she is to remain quiet. This must mean that in the context of Ephesus, because of Diana worship, the cult of Diana which happens in Ephesus, that women in that context were getting particularly cantankerous.

And therefore, addressing that particular situation, Paul doesn't lay down a standard for all time.

Rather, he addresses a culturally specific context, and he's not telling women in the 21st century that they can't be pastors.

Women, thou art loosed. There's entire conferences that say that.

Unfortunately, that is not honoring the Word of God exegetically. Rather, that is eisegesis, reading into the text what you already believe and want to see there.

Rather, eisegesis means you allow the text to speak for itself. And if Paul makes an assertion about the complementary roles between men and women, all of Scripture teaches that men and women are equal before God, just as the

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equal before God. Amen? We're equal. However, just as the

Son will submit himself to the Father's will in the same way there are complementary roles between men and women, where the men are to be head of household, and the woman is to be submissive to the man in that sense, as he leads lovingly, she submits respectfully, so also in the church the teaching of Scripture is that men are to be pastors.

That's what the text says, and here's how I'll prove it to you, because exegetically Paul will give a rationale for his own thinking, and he doesn't appeal to cultural norms like what's happening in Diana worship in some temple in Ephesus.

No, he appeals to one, creation, and two, the fall. The creation order and what happened in the fall.

And he gives his instruction based on that, and if you want to be an exegete of the Scripture, you have to follow along.

Follow along with the author, because the author ultimately is not just Paul. All Scripture is

Theanusta. When Paul writes by the Spirit of the Living God, he is giving the very breath of God.

He is breathing out. God is breathing and inspiring. That word inspiration comes to breathe out.

He is inspiring what Paul would say to us, not just to them, but for all time.

So the rationale in verse 13, for, so that word for then modifies what comes before it, right?

This is the rationale, the basis, the ground on which Paul is standing in order to say what he says.

For Adam was formed first, then Eve. So he appeals to the order of creation, that Adam was formed first, and then

Eve was taken from Adam's rib, not to be over him or under him, but a helper under the protection of his arm, complementary in relationship to him, with he as the head, and she submitting to his leadership.

And verse 14 and 15, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

Yet she will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with self -control.

That's a difficult verse we'll spend time on it another day, but recognize that the rationale for why women are not to be elders, overseer, bishop, pastor, it's all the same office, why that is reserved for men is based on creation order.

It's timeless. In fact, it goes back before the fall of man, and then in the fall of man it's confirmed again.

That's the two rationales we see in verses 13 and 14. So this is why it's so important.

Brothers and sisters, if you want to honor the God that you love, submit yourself to his word, in all things.

Sometimes it offends me, it's different than how I would be, by my natural reasoning.

But see, my private opinions have to become subjugated to the opinion of God.

When he speaks, it's with authority. So exegesis is to draw out the meaning that's in the text, not to bring your own ideas and your own presuppositions into the text and find it there.

That's the first X, first out of. The second one is exposition.

See, exegesis happens in the study. It's where I spend most of my time during the week.

It's studying the scriptures. It's me and God and his word and me praying,

God, speak to me. I need to understand this. That's exegesis. Exposition happens when you put out the word.

You come out of your study, and in my case, I come into the pulpit and I exposit the word of God as a preacher.

And you come out of your study and maybe you go into your child's bedroom to do night -night and you read a

Bible story and you exposit the meaning for their understanding to make it clear. Or you go to the classroom on Sunday morning and you teach the children.

Or you go to a home group when you're teaching your care group. Or you're in a men's Bible study, or you're a woman teaching women.

This is the pattern of Scripture. We come out of our study to exposit what God has.

We put it forth to others, and each one of us here should be a teacher in some way. We should be expositing.

Francis Chan was a great teacher and pastor of a church called Cornerstone. I still love Francis Chan, but recently he was talking to some

Facebook employees and he kind of threw his old church under the bus. He talked about how he used to come out and 5 ,000 people would come to hear him speak and him use his spiritual gift.

Meanwhile, all 5 ,000 people, in his own words, were dragging.

He was dragging the rest of the body along as they were chewing on the carpet. What he implies, what he's saying by this is, hey, he was the only one using his gift.

They would come to hear him preach on Sunday morning and they weren't really doing anything.

They're not using their gifts. They're just sitting there. To say that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what's happening here on Sunday mornings.

Expository preaching is not one person actively using his spiritual gift while the others sit passively.

No. Your job, as I preach, is to be active in listening.

In fact, it's possible that I'll say something wrong and your job is to be a Berean and search the

Scriptures and bring correction to me. You need to be very active. The worse I am as an expositor, if I miss the main thrust of the text and bring my own stuff in, you need to come and say, you know what, you missed something there, brother.

Okay, well, let's talk about it. Let's see if I did. You see, you have to be active in your listening.

And Francis Tran was doing a great job of preaching and the reason 5 ,000 people came is because they were listening.

They were engaged with what he was teaching and that was a good thing. See, the expository preaching of God's Word is the hope for our culture.

It's the only hope for our culture. It flies in the face of what our culture believes to be true.

Moeller went on to say, the culture is not opposed to the idea of God as long as he's silent.

The idea that God would speak means that we are bound by what he speaks.

You catch that? You see, our culture has no problem with us being Christians, believing in God, or someone being a

Muslim, believing in Allah. They have no problem with people being religious.

In fact, most of them consider themselves religious. What they are opposed to is the idea that God speaks.

They want a silent God. The foundation of the church is the

Apostles and the Prophets. It's the Word of God. He has spoken.

God is not silent. He has given us the Old Testament. He has given us the New Testament. Because he has spoken, what he says is binding.

It is binding. He speaks with absolute truth. And so expository preaching does not say, hey guys,

I have an opinion here I want to share with you. Because, guess what? You really don't care about my opinion, do you?

Because I'm just like you. We all have our opinions, whether it's a political opinion or any other thing.

It doesn't really matter what Jeff thinks. But expository preaching says, here,

I'm gonna read the Bible, and the text will speak and say clearly what the

Word of God has to say to us. And that is binding. That's what's so threatening about genuine

Christianity. Now in America we know there's a liberal Christianity that no longer holds the

Word of God as being binding. And so it's just a conforming to the culture. And that's not a threat to the devil.

That's not a threat to that advancing army that has us pressed into Dunkirk today. The threat is the

Word of God. Proclaimed as true, let's see it in Nehemiah chapter 8.

Here's the best example of expository preaching that I know of in the Word of God.

Nehemiah chapter 8. The context here, the

Jewish people have come back out of captivity, they've rebuilt the temple, they've now rebuilt the walls, and they've hung the gates, and they've gathered at the request of Nehemiah to come.

And in verse 1 we hear that all of Israel, those returned from exile, all of them gather as a man, as one, every one of them coming to hear what is to be said.

Nehemiah 8. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate.

And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel.

So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month.

Just time out real quick. I'm gonna chase a rabbit. You guys want me to chase a rabbit real quick? I'm gonna do it anyway, so come with me on this quick chase.

Parents, your job is to teach your children that they need to be able to hear and understand the

Word of God preached. Your goal needs to be to raise them up so they're able to listen to a sermon, an expository sermon, as soon as possible.

That might be 11 years old. I kind of think of it when when they're able to hear and read the

Bible on their own, and not only be able to understand from a children's Bible, but to be able to understand the written

Word of the text. They can read the Bible on their own. They should be able to hear an expository sermon.

And it is a life -or -death quest for you to get them hearing the

Word of God before they go off on their own. Life or death, that's not an overstatement.

Remember the temptation in Matthew chapter 4? Jesus would always respond, it is written, it is written, it is written.

He says, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the

Father. It's life or death that your children learn to hear the

Word of God. Not get bored with it, not think that the Word of God has to entertain them, but to be able to sit and hear the

Word of God. That's what's happening in verse 2. All who could understand what they heard were gathered that day.

Now look at verse 3. Consider that rabbit chased. And he read from it, facing the square before the water gate, and from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and women and those who could understand.

And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose, and beside him stood

Mattathiah, Shema, Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maasaiah on his right, and Pedaiah, and Mishael, Milkijah, Hashum, Hashpadonah, Zechariah, and Meshulam on his left hand.

You got to memorize those, okay, before the service is out. I want you to recite those back to me. But look at verse 5.

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people.

So they could see, it was a visual thing, and audibly, that they could hear what he's saying. And as he opened it, all the people stood.

And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, Amen.

Lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads, and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

Before I go on, that word Amen simply means it is true. It means it is true.

It flies in the face of a culture that says there is no absolute truth. When you say Amen, you're saying it is true.

Absolutely true. It comes from God. It's the Anusta. I believe it. It's binding.

It's the Word of God. Amen. And here's another list of names. I'm just gonna call them the expositors, so you don't have to know all their names.

And I think maybe God provided their names to say it's really not about them.

It wasn't about Ezra. It's not about the expositors. You can't even remember their names.

But look what these men did. That's what matters. These expositors, we'll skip their names, they helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places.

They read from the book. That's what we're doing right now. We're reading Scripture. They read from the book, from the law of God, clearly.

And they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.

To me, that is as clear a definition of expository teaching or preaching as you can get.

You read what is written, and you explain the sense of it. You give the meaning of it.

The expositors next to Ezra that day weren't anybody special.

They weren't the most charismatic, gifted people in the world. They couldn't entertain you with the best jokes.

They didn't do flips on the stage or ride in on a motorcycle. You know what they did? They read the text, and they said, this is what it means.

They were faithful to the text. The people began to weep because they realized they weren't like what the text said.

It was cutting them to pieces. They stopped them in verse 10. The expositors said, for the joy of the

Lord is our strength. And in verse 12, the people go off rejoicing.

Why? Because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

Expository teaching is our lifeline. It's our lifeboat. It's why we will survive in this godless culture.

Because we have God's Word. His Word is true, and all we need to do is remain faithful to that.

To read it clearly. To explain the sense of it. We have one last X. We are called to be extremists.

Now, you know that when Christian was first applied to Christians, it was a derogatory label, wasn't it?

Look at those little Christ, those holy rollers. They think they're the little Christ. And Christians at Antioch said, we're

Christians. Call us Christians. Another guy that I like to listen to on his podcast is known as the

Bible -thumping wingnut. People would call him the Bible -thumping wingnut because he got out there preaching.

He was out declaring the Word of God. And it was derogatory. They'd make fun of that. Bible -thumping wingnut.

So he calls himself the Bible -thumping wingnut. He's not afraid of that.

Rather, he embraces the derogatory label. I would say the same thing is important for us to do with this term extremists.

The word extreme means as far out as possible, the uttermost, from a given point.

If something is in the center, the extreme is far from the middle. Now we live in a secular humanist culture, and the center is the autonomous man.

The person with his own private opinions, his own definitions of reality, his own right to do whatever he sees fit without anybody telling a word from God, telling what he must do.

That's the center point. And it's not just in the academy. Go to any university campus and you'll see that secular humanism is the god of our age.

Or the religion of our age, I should say. Because if someone brings a counter opinion, they're gonna get shouted down and chased off campus and mocked and ridiculed, forever declaring that the

Word of God is a standard for all people. Such narrow -mindedness and bigotry will not be tolerated.

But it's not only in the academy, it's also on the playground. Where the little children, playing with their friends, will assert, no one can tell me what's right.

Nobody can tell me what to do. Each one being raised as a little god, determining his own truth.

That's the cultural center. And if you want to be a faithful Christian, the only way to do it in America today is to be an extremist.

Far from that center. I have a quote here from Barna, which is a research group that talks, that looks into Christianity and the

Bible and people's beliefs in America. Barna says, more people have more questions about the origins, relevance, and authority of the scriptures.

The steady rise of skepticism is creating a cultural atmosphere that is becoming unfriendly, sometimes even hostile to claims of faith.

In a society that venerates science and rationalism, it is an increasingly hard pill to swallow that an eclectic assortment of ancient stories, poems, sermons, prophecies, and letters, written and compiled over the course of 3 ,000 years, is somehow the sacred

Word of God. Even in just the few years Barna has been conducting state -of -the -Bible interviews, the data is trending toward Bible skepticism.

With each passing year, the percentage of Americans who believe that the

Bible is just another book written by men increases. So too does the perception that the

Bible is actually harmful, and that people who live by its principles are religious extremists.

Barna says, more and more people think that if you believe this book, to be from God, you are a religious extremist.

It doesn't stop there. Twenty -seven percent of Millennials, of the non -Christians who are in the millennial generation, believe the

Bible is a dangerous book of religious dogma, used for centuries to oppress people.

Twenty -seven percent of non -Christians in the millennial generation think that this book is religious dogma that is used to oppress people.

That's the view that people have of us. That's a reality.

The question is, will you cave to the cultural pressure of our society, or will you hold the extreme position that this book is the

Word of God, and what it says is binding? It defines the difference between male and female.

It defines sexual morality of what is right and what is sin. It defines the identity of a sinner, and it gives us the rescue for sinners.

If you don't know that you're a sinner, you'll never cling to a Savior. But the good news of this book is that Jesus Christ is the

Savior, and the only Savior. That's what this book teaches.

So we have to be willing to be excluded. We have to be willing to be pushed to the extreme, to be so extreme that people will marginalize you for what you say.

They will persecute you. Anyone who desires to do the will of God will be persecuted.

Stand on the morality of this book. Preach the Christ of this book. Accept the label without cowering, without giving in to shame, because the desire of secular humanists is to shame you into silence.

But go to the Scriptures on your own, in your study, and exegete the Scriptures. And go forth expositing the

Scriptures. And don't worry what the culture says. Be willing to stand on this.

You do this, our church will thrive. Your spiritual life will thrive. In closing, if our church is to thrive, which

I know that it will, we're gonna need to stand on this book. Calvin put it this way, insofar as the preacher preaches the

Word of God, the Holy Spirit accompanies every word. My job isn't to come up here and entertain, or even to give you ideas that have come into my mind, or what's the latest movement.

My job on Sunday mornings is to exposit this text, to read it clearly, section by section.

Last week I said pericope by pericope, and someone said, what is a pericope? A pericope is just a section of Scripture.

My job is to read the section clearly, and to give the sense, to explain the meaning, and let the

Word of God correct us, not us bring our thoughts to it. Luther said, insofar as you preach the

Scripture, the words of Scripture go where you can never go. He was teaching his seminary students at the time,

Martin Luther. He said, your job is to get the words of the Scripture from your lips to their ears.

But, here's the good news, the Sovereign Spirit can go from ear to heart, where the preacher can't go.

Let's be a church that stands on this word. Be individuals that you truly go and exegete the

Scriptures. And I use that word intentionally, because it's really trite to say, go home and read your Bibles.

You've heard that too often, I think. But, what happens?

The busyness of life, and dust collects on the Bible. But, I say go home and exegete the

Scriptures, because that means you go be a student, and let the Bible teach you. Go home and open that book, and read what the

Scripture says. You be an exegete, and do it with the purpose, and with the intention in your mind, that God will make you an expositor.

Somebody here might be a preacher one day, young people, older people.

But, every one of you is called to exposit in those classrooms. What a sacred trust has been given to you, to faithfully and clearly read what the text says, and to give the sense of it.

We're expositors, and let's be extremists. Let's eat and breathe the

Bible. Let's, morning, noon, night, instead of flipping onto Facebook, and just receiving a little bit more dribble, open up that Bible app, and say, speak to me

God, what is this saying? All day long, like it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

I remember somebody saying to me, don't you have that thing memorized by now? You always read the

Bible all the time. Why don't you just have it read? Well, it's a lot of pages, that's a lot to memorize. But, you know what?

We should try to memorize it. That's why I love that there's people that are memorizing entire books of the Bible right now in our church.

I'm trying to get this entire chapter, Acts 2, and I'm getting close, but man, be extreme in your devotion to the

Word of God, no matter what the culture says. This is the Word of the Living God, Theia Nusta, breathed out by God.

We're at Dunkirk. Our culture is moving in a very fast and ungodly direction.

Will you take the lifeboat? Otherwise, if you don't, if you do not open up the

Scriptures regularly, even on a daily basis, you will be conformed to the culture. I promise you that.

You won't know it, because that's the nature of conformity. You're being pressed into the mold of the culture around you, if you're not being transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Romans 12, 2. Open the Scriptures. Let the Scriptures teach you.

Become a student of the Scriptures daily, and conform to it. Amen. Let's pray. Worship team, come on up.

Lord God, we thank you for the example of Nehemiah, and how

Ezra took the platform to read and to explain the sense. We thank you for those named, but somehow nameless, expositors.

Wasn't about them. Their job was only to give the meaning. And Lord, we thank you for the reaction of the people who so humbly came to hear, eagerly, and then wept because they were cut to the heart.

Cut us to the heart, Lord. But then rejoiced because they understood the meaning.

Let us approach your Word like that. And God, we want to have a thriving church. In every way, growing numerically, but growing deeper in your

Word, growing closer to each other, thriving as a church. We know on this day that the only foundation on which we stand is the

Apostles and the Prophets. The writings entrusted and given to us, preserved for us.

Teach us, God, to really be exegetes of your Scripture, and not impose our thoughts upon your text.

But to hear your Word. Teach us to exposit to our children, to our teenagers, our men, our women, our adults.

And God, let us be extreme in our devotion to your Word of God, not conformed and pulled into the cultural center.