Defiled Churches: Lessons from Pergamum and Thyatira

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I want to invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Revelation chapter 2.
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Last week, we began a four-week excursion into the opening chapters of the book of Revelation.
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This study, the purpose of this study is to come to an understanding of the seven churches that Revelation was written to, and I've noted that each week we're going to look at a profile of these churches and see what lessons that they can give the church of today.
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That's why the series is called Past Lessons for the Modern Church, and I've grouped the seven churches into four categories, the dying churches, the defiled churches, the dedicated churches, and the drifting church.
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That last one, since there are seven, the last one will be a singular study of the Church of Laodicea.
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Now, last week, we looked at the dying churches, which were Ephesus and Sardis.
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We noted how legalism, tradition, and the loss of love for Christ had been the focus of Jesus' rebuke against those churches, and he proclaimed that if they did not repent, their ability to remain a functioning body would be removed.
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They might still be a functioning group of people, but they would no longer be a functioning church.
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Well, this week, we're going to profile two more churches, Pergamum and Thyatira, and we're going to see what lessons we can learn from these churches, which we have identified as the defiled churches.
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Let's stand together and read.
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We're going to read Revelation chapter two, starting at verse twelve, and we're going to read all the way down to verse twenty-nine.
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Revelation chapter two and verse twelve.
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And to the angel of the church in Pergamum write the words of him who has the sharp two edged sword, I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is.
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Yet you hold fast my name, you do not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness who was killed among you where Satan dwells.
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But I have a few things against you.
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You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Barak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel so that they might eat food, sacrifice to idols and practice sexual immorality.
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So also you have some who hold the teaching of the teachings of the Nicolaitans.
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Therefore, repent, if not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth.
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He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers.
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I will give some of the hidden manna and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.
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And to the angel of the church in Thyatira write the words of the son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze.
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I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first.
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But I have this against you.
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That you tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food, sacrifice to idols.
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I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.
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Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works and I will strike her children dead.
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And all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works.
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But to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching, who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan to you, I say I do not lay on you any other burden.
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I only hold fast what you have and what you have until I come.
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The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron as when earthen pots are broken into pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father and I will give him the morning star.
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He who has an ear, let him hear what the spirit says to the churches.
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Our father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to again be about the business of studying your word.
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And as we seek to give overview of these seven churches and we seek to understand what lessons can be brought into our own church, I pray that you would encourage us to have ears to hear what the spirit has said to the churches.
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Pray, Lord, that you'll keep me from error as I seek to bring understanding of these passages.
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You'll open hearts to understand that, Lord God, that you will use it to bless and further the ministry here.
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In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
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I think those of you who were here last week know this already, but want to make it known.
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This is certainly not an attempt to give a lengthy exegesis of the quality and character of the churches of Revelation.
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This is an overview.
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It is certainly not intended to dive in and spend because this certainly could be many months of study looking into these seven churches.
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I could spend more than a sermon on each of these, Pergamum and Thyatira and all of them.
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But like I said, instead of doing that, I've wanted to give an overview so that we can look at the similarities in the churches and look at some of the similarities that the churches have been with the churches of today, make analogies to some of the problems that existed two thousand years ago and still exist today.
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And what things that we need to as churches, as a church rather, be cognizant of, be concerned about, that we would examine ourselves to see if we exhibit any of these qualities which the Lord himself has called these churches to repent of.
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That is my goal.
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So we're looking today at Pergamum and Thyatira.
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What I want to do in the beginning here is I just want to give an overview of the problems with both of these churches.
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Both of these churches receive a short commendation, but then they receive a very strong condemnation.
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Pergamum receives a condemnation for being overly tolerant and Thyatira receives a condemnation for being, what I have said, spineless.
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And we'll see that as we go through.
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Looking first at Pergamum, the overly tolerant church, Jesus speaks to Pergamum with a commendation.
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He commends them.
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He said they're holding fast his name.
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He said they have an ability to stand where Satan dwells and to be his people.
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He says they're having people such as Antipas who are even willing to die for the faith.
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So he gives them this great commendation.
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He even mentions that where they live is a difficult place to have a church.
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He says you're actually you have a church where Satan dwells.
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Interesting that he would say that they live where Satan's throne is.
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This could have been a reference to the many temples in that area.
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There were temples dedicated to false gods in the area of Pergamum.
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There was temples which are dedicated to Zeus and temples which are dedicated to others.
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But there was one in particular, Asclepius, well, I have to say it again.
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Asclepius, Asclepius was the god of medicine and there was a temple to that god.
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It was a gigantic temple dedicated to the god of medicine, and it was represented by a snake.
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Interestingly enough today, even in our modern times, the the modern representation for medicine is what? A serpent coiled around a pole, right? We've seen that.
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That goes back to these ancient times, this god of medicine was represented by a snake, and we know that Satan in scripture is often seen as a serpent.
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And in the early part of Genesis, he's seen as a serpent.
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Later in Revelation, Satan is called a serpent.
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So it's interesting here where the church of Pergamum is stated to be where Satan dwells, so it's likely a reference to this temple, it's likely a reference where these false gods are are lifted up, they're worshipped in these temples and this church is able to stand there.
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So Jesus gives them a condemnation, a commendation.
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You're able to stand even in the midst of Satan.
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However, this positive commendation is then dwarfed by a negative.
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Pergamum had a problem.
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The church had members within it who were holding to false teachings.
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Jesus says in this passage, because again, remember, this is Jesus speaking to the churches.
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And he says in this passage that they were holding to the teachings of Balaam.
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Now, who is Balaam? Do you remember where the story of Balaam comes into the Bible back in the books of Moses, particularly the book of Numbers? Balaam was the one who had the donkey.
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And remember the story of Balaam's donkey, that Balaam's donkey, God spoke through the donkey to the prophet Balaam.
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He was a false prophet, but he was still he was able to receive the word of God through the mouth of the donkey.
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Interesting historical truth there that a lot of people disbelieve that story.
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But it's told in the Bible narrative.
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There's no reason why we shouldn't believe it.
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But Balaam in the book of Numbers was called by the king of the Moabites, Barak, rather.
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He was called to come.
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I'm sorry, Balak, the king of the Moabites, called him to come and pronounce a curse on Israel.
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And he told Balaam to come and pronounce this curse.
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He was a prophet for hire, so he came to bring a curse on Israel and he tried three times to curse Israel, but yet he was unable to.
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God did not allow him to bring the curse on Israel.
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Finally, because he was unable to bring the curse on Israel, God did not allow that.
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He convinced Balak that the way to destroy Israel, rather than trying to bring a curse on them, was instead to spread corruption among them.
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So Balak sent Moabite women into Israel and the Moabite women went into Israel, they intermarried with the men of Israel.
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And in doing so, they corrupted Israel's worship and ultimately corrupted Israel as a whole and led to a great downfall.
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So how does that relate to Pergamum? Well, the same situation is happening.
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Some within the church were trying to marry the customs of the pagans to the Christian religion.
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They were trying to introduce immoral and ungodly practices within the church.
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And seemingly these false doctrines were going unchallenged, even though there were people who were trying to bring in these falsehoods, they were trying to intermarry these false teachings in with the Christian teachings.
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They were not being dealt with.
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False teaching was allowed to come into the church.
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It was allowed to grow and it was allowed to become a problem.
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This is why I call Pergamum the overly tolerant church.
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They were tolerant of that which the church can never be tolerant of, false teaching.
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You know, we are tolerant of a lot of things in the church.
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We're tolerant of people who make mistakes, at least we should be.
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We're tolerant of failures because we all have failures and we we want to encourage people who fail to repent and do better.
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But one thing we can never be tolerant of, beloved, is false teaching because it spreads like a cancer within the body of the church.
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So this was Pergamum's dilemma.
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And then you have Thyatira.
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Thyatira had a problem similar to Pergamus in that the people were allowing false doctrine into the church.
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Thyatira more seriously, though, was allowing a false prophet within their midst.
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She is called in the text Jezebel, but I imagine that was not likely her real name.
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It could have been certainly not outside the realm of possibilities, but it's most appropriately understood, in my estimation, as a description of her character.
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Most of us know the term Jezebel relates to an Old Testament character, the wife of Ahab, king of Israel.
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She was a pagan, and when Ahab married her, she brought pagan worship into the nation of Israel.
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This led to the prophet Elijah standing against both Ahab and Jezebel for their idolatry.
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Well, this false teacher in Thyatira, whatever her name was, may have been Jezebel, may have been something different and just Jezebel being a note of her character.
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She was working the same spirit as the Jezebel of old.
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She was bringing in the worship of false gods.
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She was promoting worship of God in a false way.
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Either way, she was corrupting the people of God.
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Under her teaching, the church tolerated sin, apostasy, idolatry and communal feasts or sacrifice were offered to idols eaten by the people and followed by an orgy.
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The church even became deeply involved in those things, practicing worship as the pagans worship, using everything in their worship, including outrageous and just terrible acts which are not to be mentioned.
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They had genuine believers who sat by and did nothing while a false prophetess spread a message of defilement in their ranks.
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This is why I call them the spineless church.
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Because here is this false prophetess preaching falsehoods, bringing in paganism in the church, and she is not dealt with.
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Spineless.
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Both churches give examples of dangers of being overly tolerant.
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And the problem, beloved, is that if you if you bring this to today and moving into application, if you bring this into today, tolerance is the new buzzword that we're all supposed to cower underneath.
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Isn't that true? That tolerance is the new absolute.
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And as a result, we look out at our nation, we look out at churches, and many of them have sought to become tolerant and have so they have began to tolerate sin.
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The result is that Pergamum and Thyatira are no longer the only churches which could rightly receive the rebuke of Christ for their defilement.
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And there are many others who are headed towards that defilement.
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So I want to ask a question this morning and lead into our outline.
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The question is this, how would a church or how would a person know if they were in a defiled church? How would a person know if their church was headed towards being a defiled church? Well, I have three things I want you to consider, three things that that that either identify a church that's already defiled or is headed that way.
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OK, three three things to consider.
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Number one, a congregation which holds to various and conflicting doctrinal positions.
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Let me say it again, a congregation which holds to varying and conflicting doctrinal positions.
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If a church is made up of people who all have a different view of sin, the Bible, Jesus, the way of salvation and the character of God, if a church has people that's made up of people, all different views on those subjects, then that church is doomed.
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Someone may object and say, but pastor, it's impossible that everyone in a church would believe exactly the same way about exactly everything.
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And that's true to a point.
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And some things are always going to be debated, even among God's people, there's always going to be questions that we come to different conclusions on, however, where the essentials of Scripture are concerned, there should be unity.
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Imagine, if you will.
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Having a people in a church, a group of people in a church who believe, let's say, imagine that this third of the church will start with Byron and go this way.
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OK, that this third of the church believed in salvation by works, that's a relatively small amount, it's less than a third, maybe a quarter of the group.
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But yet they wholeheartedly believe that salvation comes by works.
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And not by grace through faith, what then should be done? Should we have different Sunday school classes? We have the works based class and the grace class.
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We'll have Mr.
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Jack do the grace class, Mr.
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Byron do the works class and every every quarter we'll have a debate.
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And maybe some people will move from the grace class to the works class and some will move from the works class.
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I mean, seriously, what should be done? Should they be allowed to teach this position, which is obviously antithetical to the belief of the church as a whole? And obviously opposed to the biblical teaching.
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Should not the pastors and the elders get involved in assisting with the clearing up of this error, or should it be left to fester? You see, in today's belief, tolerance is is absolute, it's the most important thing, it goes above all else, and many would say, well, you know what? They're not hurting anything by believing different.
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They're not hurting anything by holding to different doctrines.
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And we certainly don't want to offend anyone, so we leave them be.
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Beloved, the Bible has a much different view.
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If you look at the book of Galatians, you find the apostle Paul dealing with a group of people, those group of people were known as the Judaizers.
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And Paul writes against that group who are coming into the church and they're teaching salvation by works, they're teaching salvation by the keeping of the Mosaic law.
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The Judaizers believe this very simple.
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If you're ever just having trouble, what is a Judaizer? Judaizer is a person who believed that before you could become a Christian, you had to become a Jew.
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And how does a person become a Jew? Well, if you're a man, you have to go through the ritual of circumcision.
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So it was very simple for you to become a Christian.
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You had to become a Jew for you to become a Jew.
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You had to be circumcised.
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So if you were not circumcised, you were not a Jew, thus you were not a Christian.
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You understand, it's very simple logic and it made sense as far as it went.
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That's what they believe.
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What they believe, though, was false.
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What they believe was not true biblical teaching.
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And did Paul say, hey, you know what? You guys are good.
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Why don't you come on in and fellowship and we'll all be right on.
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Hey, we're tolerant.
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No, the apostle Paul did not.
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He wrote to the Galatians warning them about the Judaizers.
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And he took the issue before the apostles in Acts 15 as to have a formal condemnation brought against the Judaizers.
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Ultimately, he showed that while tolerance is good, false doctrine can never be tolerated ever.
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If a church allows for various and conflicting doctrinal positions to flow throughout its ranks, especially concerning the essentials of the faith of salvation and what and God's character in these things, it's on its way towards defilement because there's no unity in the faith.
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There has to be a unity in the faith.
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There has to be a unity of what we believe.
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This is why the ecumenical movements are they will never work.
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I don't know if you know what ecumenism is.
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Ecumenism is another way of saying it.
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The ecumenical movement says this, we don't need any denominations.
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We don't need any separations.
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We need to all come together and we need to all just sort of bury the hatchet.
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Everybody believes in Jesus.
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It doesn't matter what we believe about him.
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It doesn't matter what we believe about salvation.
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We all believe in Jesus.
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So we're going to bury the hatchet and all just be Christians.
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Well, there's a problem with that, because while I do believe there are Christians in other churches, that most of those churches I cannot join because I cannot go in with the beliefs that I hold about the Bible and be a member.
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I can't be a member of the Episcopal Church.
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Not with the things that are being taught in the Episcopal Church, I can't be a member of many Pentecostal churches because of the things that are taught in Pentecostal churches.
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I couldn't rightfully go in and join.
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Beloved, this is why it is so important that if you are coming here as a visitor, I don't know if we have any visitors this morning.
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I don't know what we have this year.
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If you're coming as a visitor, learn what we believe and teach.
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We want you to know what we believe and teach.
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We have had people come into this church before one lady in particular called herself an apostle.
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And we don't live in the apostolic age anymore.
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And yet she had this self-proclamation of her own position in God's economy of apostle.
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We cannot accept that.
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I told her very early on, you will not ever preach here because your positions are so foreign.
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You will never have a teaching position here because we have very solid beliefs and we will not allow for someone to come in and defile that.
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So that's number one.
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Number one is very simple.
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A church that's on its way towards defilement or is already there.
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And I'll tell you, I hate to pick on the old disciples of Christ, but Patsy will remember this and Jack, I'm sure Jack and Troy, the old disciples of Christ, it didn't matter what you believed.
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Come in and believe whatever you want.
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Right.
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That was part of the that was part of the appeal for liberals.
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Well, it doesn't matter what you believe.
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Where is that church now? It's total defilement.
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Right.
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That's where it's gone.
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And I'm telling you what happens.
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Number two, you said the first one is congregations hold to various and conflicting doctrinal positions.
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That's that's a road to defilement right there.
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Number two, teachers have no accountability.
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Teachers have no accountability.
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That's a major problem.
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In Thyatira, Jezebel, she's doing her thing totally unchallenged.
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She's garnering a following.
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They believe her nonsensical doctrines and the church is not holding her accountable.
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Beloved, this is something important for you to remember.
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Anyone who teaches in the church should be under the authority, first of the scriptures and second of the elders, whose job it is to interpret the scriptures.
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You understand that, right? In the church, the scripture is the authority.
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This is the authority, not the bylaws, not the Constitution, not the American Constitution, not the laws of Florida.
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This is the authority.
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In the church and the elders job is to interpret this, this is why people, if you have a concern about elder leadership, that's the way the Bible set it up, because this has to be the authority.
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If something else becomes the authority, we're no longer a church, we're a social club, we're a country club, we are a men's and women's club, whatever you want to call it, we're not a church if this isn't in charge.
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And anyone who teaches in the church must be under this authority.
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This is why I believe in a plurality of elders.
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Many churches have one pastor.
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He's the sole elder.
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The elders are not to act as one man proclaiming his authority within the church.
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The elders are to be a plurality of men, all of whom have been vetted by the congregation, all of whom have been examined by the congregation to know if they fit the character of an elder.
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And the qualities for an elder are found in the Bible.
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First Timothy chapter three gives us very clear stipulation, what man fits that category.
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And the pastor is not to have all power.
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I don't want all the power in the church, but I shouldn't have it even if I did want it.
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I have to be accountable to someone.
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I'm accountable to the elders, I'm accountable first to God, to the word of God, to the elders, and then also to you.
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You all have the same Bible I have.
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Not all the same translation, because I haven't converted you yet.
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No, you have some dirty looks, death teasing, but we have the same scriptures.
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You can call me to account.
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If I teach something that's not in accord with the word of God, you have that in the word.
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You have it right in front of you.
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This is one of the things that was so dangerous about the Catholic Church during the time of the Reformation was that the Bible was in Latin and the people didn't read Latin and even a lot of the priests didn't read Latin.
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So all the information about their faith was coming from the church hierarchy.
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They were not able to read and study it for themselves.
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Beloved, the church leadership must be accountable to scripture.
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The church teaching must be accountable to scripture.
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If it's not, it's a slippery slope.
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This Lady Jezebel, she is the problem in the church.
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She's not being held accountable to scripture and she is bringing defilement.
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And beloved, it can happen anywhere.
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Can happen anywhere, anywhere where somebody is allowed to preach the word of God and they confuse it, they twist it, they make a mockery of it and they are not held to account.
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A church is defiled.
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Number three, we saw the first two, the first one, excuse me, the first one was that congregations would hold the various and conflicting doctrinal positions.
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The second one is that teachers would have no accountability.
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The third one is that immorality and idolatry would be tolerated in the church.
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And this is a major problem in the world today.
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So many churches have decided that sin itself is not worthy of rebuke and instead it must be tolerated.
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Not just thinking and believing wrongly, but blatant sin must be tolerated in the church.
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Consider the sins that happen in the church, go totally unquestioned.
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I mean, people think, you know, I can mention homosexuality, I can mention abortion.
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Obviously, those are issues that the church in many areas has tolerated.
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Tolerated homosexuality.
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Some churches even glorify it.
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I see people online all the time, Facebook and whatnot, glorifying homosexuality, calling themselves gay Christians.
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And I tell them, you know, that to me is as sensible as calling yourself a Christian murderer, a Christian liar or Christian thief.
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Has anybody ever tried to start the first church of Christian liars? No, because we know lying is a sin and the two don't go together.
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Has anybody tried to start the first church of Christian thieves? No, because we know thievery, theft is a sin and we don't equate that with our faith.
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But yet there are churches that are calling themselves gay churches, even though homosexuality is a sin.
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It's an attempt to force an agenda.
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But again, that's not the only thing that we see in churches, that's just one of many.
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As I said, abortion is sort of swept under the rug, it happens, nobody deals with it because it's happening in private, but it does happen.
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And never you think for a second that there aren't people that are in the churches that are having these, 4,000, 3,300 abortions every day.
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Some of those people go to church, folks.
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People go into the abortionist for convenience sake, using abortion as a method of birth control.
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Surely that's a sin.
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Surely it's a sin that the church has decided to tolerate in many areas.
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But there are a lot of other ones, there are a lot of sins that the church doesn't deal with about premarital cohabitation.
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People who share a married bed before they're married.
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That's a sin, but who cares, right? Who cares? It happens all the time.
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Nobody says a word.
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You know, if somebody comes to me and asks me to marry them, that's the first thing I ask them.
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Are you living together in the same bed? If they say yes, I say, are you willing to make a change between now and the wedding and repent of that because it's a sin? No.
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OK, find somebody else to do the wedding.
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Now, if a person is an unbeliever, the two unbelievers, I might use it as an opportunity for evangelism.
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I have done that.
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I might say, OK, we're going to talk about why this is a sin and teach them, but these two people living together in the married bed and call themselves Christian, we talk about the sin that they already know it's a sin.
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But they live it.
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Why? Because the church doesn't care anymore.
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The church doesn't care about drunkenness anymore.
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Oh, who cares? Church doesn't care about divorce anymore, even though the Bible says divorce itself is a sin.
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Oh, now you just went from preaching to meddling.
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It's truth, though, isn't it? What did Jesus say about divorce when he's approached? Let what God joined together, let not man separate.
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That's the words of Jesus, not the words of the pastor during a marriage ceremony.
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That was Jesus Christ's words.
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Very simple.
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Now, divorce is not an unforgivable sin.
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Divorce is not something that cannot you cannot repent of, but it is a sin.
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Beloved, don't don't get don't for a moment think that just because it's socially acceptable that it's right.
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Spousal abuse, child abuse, all kinds of sin within the churches.
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Many people talk about these issues, but the church does nothing about it.
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And that's the problem, that's the problem with these two churches, that's the problem with Thyatira, is they have these sins going on in the church and yet they did nothing.
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They were spineless and they went down the road of defilement.
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The Apostle Paul tells us in first Corinthians five that we should do something when they're sent in the church, that we should appeal to the person for repentance.
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And if repentance does not come, then we have to separate that person from the church because they are a danger to the church.
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Jesus taught us in Matthew 18 about church discipline.
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Something's practiced in very few churches.
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And now now if it's practiced, you end up on Fox News or MSN, CSB, 14, whatever.
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You know, you got so many news outlets now, you never never at a loss to know what's going on.
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It was a church.
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Some of you were a member of this church.
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The church on the other side of town decided to do church discipline.
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What happened to them? Scoured in the news for bringing about church discipline on a woman in the church who was living in sin, scoured in the news for it.
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But the Bible tells us to do these things.
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The Bible tells us to practice, tells us to practice not not being overly tolerant, but to be overly biblical.
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Both Paul and Jesus agree that when sin is blatant within the church, the church has responsibility to deal with it, remove it, has to.
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If sin is if sin is tolerated within church, the church will fail if it's either on its way towards defilement or it's already there.
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Some of you heard the story, but I like to tell it because I think it's a good example.
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Years ago, there was a couple visiting our church and this is I wasn't the pastor, but I was the preaching minister for a year before I became the pastor here.
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Our former pastor retired, but he stayed on for a year as the as the senior pastor.
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And I was the associate pastor, but I was the preaching minister for a year.
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And during that time.
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I made a lot of mistakes, but this wasn't one of them, I don't think this wonderful couple came into our church and we're visiting beautiful people, nice people.
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I thought they were married, thought they were a married couple, they were not a married couple, they were older, I hate to call anyone elderly because I don't know what that means anymore, but they were older than me.
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Looked like retirees and they sat with rapt attention at every sermon for weeks they were here.
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Remember, the guy looked like Jack Palance.
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That's the one thing I remember about him, that he looked like the actor Jack Palance.
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And I was I was excited when he called me because at the time, if somebody wanted to join the church, they typically talked to me because even though the senior pastor was still here, I was the preaching pastor.
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People saw me and wanted to talk to me about joining the church.
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So he said, hey, can I come and can I come up to your office and talk to you about membership? Sure, come to my office, talk to me about membership.
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He came into my office, we sat down.
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I was excited to get to talk to him and we started talking.
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I said, well, tell me about you and your wife.
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Oh, she's not my wife.
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OK, no problem so far, so good.
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That's OK.
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Do you live together? Well, yeah.
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Roommates, you know, fingers crossed.
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Are you roommates? Do you have one room? Do you have another room to share a kitchen? You know.
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No, no, we live as husband and wife, but we're not married.
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I said, I said, you realize you're living in a sinful state, even if you're 60.
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You don't have to be a teenager to live in sin or 20.
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You have to be in your 20s to live in sin.
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I said, you realize you're living in sin.
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Well, no, I didn't ask you.
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I said, this is what's happening.
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Right.
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And he didn't get offended because he knew it wasn't like, I mean, you hear me preach for three or four weeks, you know, it's coming.
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It's not a surprise.
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So I said, well, why don't we do this? Why don't we set up and get you guys married? That way, no more sin.
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You can repent of what's happened.
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You can stay apart from now until the wedding and then you can get married.
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We can do it quickly.
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We can do it in the next few weeks and we can do it today.
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Let's go get a license.
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We'll get it done.
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Let's get out of this sinful situation.
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Let's get out of this.
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This is repentance.
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This is the easiest repentance you can make.
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Make this change.
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Oh, she doesn't want to do it.
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She's she's just don't want to go through all that paperwork.
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I was at first I was stunned, but then I was like.
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I said, do you want to get married? Well, yeah, I would like to get married, but she really doesn't want to get married.
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I don't know what her reasons were, and I don't want to even attempt to make an opinion.
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But I know this, he left that day knowing that if he continued to live in sin, he couldn't join the church.
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Because I was very clear, some people came down on me for that.
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So who are you to make that decision? I had to make that decision.
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The word of God tells us.
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The word of God tells us that if somebody's living in blatant sin, that we have to put them out.
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Why would we welcome them in just so we can kick them back up? Now, it sounds kind of funny, but it's true.
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I told him what he needed to do.
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He needed to repent of his sins.
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He needed to make things right with God before he could come and defile the church.
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And again, somebody told me later, well, they're very wealthy people.
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Fine, whatever.
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I don't care.
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It doesn't matter how much money we have.
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It doesn't matter how many people we have.
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If we have a defiled church.
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We need a church where we have a statement of faith that we can all stand on, and we do.
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We need a church where the leaders are accountable.
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And we do.
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And we need a church where sin is called sin.
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And repentance is called for, and I pray we will always have that church.
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Because if not, we will go down the road of defilement, as many have before us.
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So now, as we close this chapter of our study, let's pray for our church.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for this time of studying again.
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We thank you for this opportunity to consider what it means to be a defiled church and for our desire to avoid that defilement.
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Pray that you would keep us, Lord, on the right path of being a biblically functioning church.
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I pray, Lord, if there are those among us who have sin residing in their lives, that you would encourage us to repent.
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That we would know that sin does not just affect us as individuals, but sin has a way of permeating the body and affecting us as a whole.
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I pray for repentance.
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I pray for repentance on a church level, on an individual level.
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Lord God, we also pray for repentance on a national level.
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We pray for our nation, particularly our nation's churches, many of which are overly tolerant.
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They have Jezebels in the pulpit.
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They have Satan leading the way of their lessons, and they are not following the scripture.
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And we pray for them.
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We pray, Lord, that you would bring repentance in our nation.
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In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.
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Beloved, stand with us now as we sing, and if you have a need for prayer, please come.