Theological Triage - Maintaining the Unity of the Faith

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We experienced some audio difficulties during the first two minutes of the show but after that it went well. Pastor John Samson (kingschurchaz.com) guest hosts once again on today's Dividing Line, bringing an important teaching on first order and second order doctrines. As the quote attributed to Augustine says, "In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity."

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Hello, and welcome to The Dividing Line for today. My name is Pastor John Sampson of King's Church in Peoria, California.
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But I want to read verses 1 through verse 6. And I'll say now what
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I say always at the church. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Word of God. I, therefore, a prisoner for the
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Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the
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Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one
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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
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I want to ask you this question. Have you ever had need to visit a hospital emergency room?
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It's quite the experience. I had to do so a couple of years back with some really horrendous, as I saw it, stomach pains.
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And after providing your name and address and information, the person behind the desk asks you to state exactly what's going on, what the problem is, what your symptoms are.
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Then, rather than getting immediate attention from a doctor or someone who's got medical expertise, usually you're asked to wait, sometimes a long time.
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Sometimes there's no wait at all. Sometimes the wait is short. At other times, it can be hours before you're called.
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And the reason for that is, it's not a normal waiting area. There's something going on.
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People are called to have their needs met in order, not in order of the way they came into the room.
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It's not on a time basis here in the ER. Something else is going on.
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It's called triage. I remember an article that was written, I think it was July 2005, by Dr.
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Al Moller on this theme of triage. He related that kind of an analogy to theological triage.
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He writes this, Triage is a process that allows trained personnel to make a quick evaluation of relative medical urgency.
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Given the chaos of an emergency room's reception area, someone must be armed with the medical expertise to make an immediate determination of medical priority.
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Which patients should be rushed into surgery? Which patients can wait for a less urgent examination?
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Medical personnel cannot flinch from asking these questions and from taking responsibility to give the patients with the most critical needs top priority in terms of treatment.
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Dr. Moller was absolutely right. Someone entering the ER who's just stepped on a landmine should have priority over someone with a sprained wrist.
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In the same way, in the theological world, Christians must, they need to understand the difference between what we call first order doctrines or teachings, where to hold a different position or an errant position precludes someone from actually being a brother or sister in Christ.
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And then second tier or even third order doctrines, issues on which genuine
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Christians can disagree and yet still be saved, still be genuine Christians.
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In other words, we need to understand the difference between bad doctrine and heresy.
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Heresy I'm using with a capital H here, something that puts us outside of orthodoxy, the bounds of orthodoxy.
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It was, I believe, Augustine who said this, although if you dig deep into the history of this quote, it's not absolutely apparent that he was the first one to say this, but it's often attributed to him, this particular phrase, in essentials unity, in non -essentials liberty, and in all things charity, which is the old
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English word for love. Let me read it again. In essentials unity, in non -essentials liberty, and in all things charity.
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It's important we understand the difference between essentials and non -essentials. B .B.
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Warfield said this, if everything that is called Christianity in these days is Christianity, then there is no such thing as Christianity.
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A name applied indiscriminately to everything designates nothing.
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He's right about that. If everything is Christianity, then what is Christianity? There's nothing to be said of it.
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Mike Riccardi writes this on this particular theme, all biblical doctrine or teaching, the word doctrine just simply means teaching, all biblical doctrine is important.
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I'd go so far as to say all biblical doctrine is essential. It's difficult to put any doctrine into a second or third tier.
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God doesn't reveal what he's revealed to us of himself graciously, didn't have to, but he's done so, and we are responsible to believe everything he's revealed.
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We have no right to say, I'll take this about what you've revealed, and I'll ignore this, or I won't believe this.
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No, we are responsible to believe all that is theonoustos, God breathed, what
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God has revealed to us in the holy scriptures, and yet there are some things that are more important than others, and we see that from the scriptures themselves.
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Mike Riccardi goes on, but employing theological triage doesn't mean that everything that's not first order is unimportant any more than a doctor prioritizing a gunshot would necessarily think a sprained ankle is unimportant, but the fact remains genuine
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Christians can disagree on things like the mode and recipients of baptism, but if two people disagree on the triunity of God, that's the holy trinity, one is a
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Christian and the other isn't. Phil Johnson says this, a lot of quotes here at the beginning, common sense makes it crystal clear to most people that some truths in scripture are of primary importance and other truths are less vital.
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He writes this, for example, most people would agree that the deity of Christ is an essential doctrine of Christianity.
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Jesus himself says this in the gospel of John, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins.
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That's pretty clear, isn't it? He's speaking of himself in deity, you must believe the right thing about me,
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Jesus said, or else you'll not be saved, you'll die in your sins. So he writes this,
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Phil Johnson again, most people would agree that the deity of Christ is an essential doctrine of Christianity, but Sabbatarianism is not, in other words,
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Christians, committed Christians might differ among themselves on the question or whether or how rigorously the
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Old Testament Sabbath restrictions should apply to Christians on the Lord's day, but authentic Christians do not disagree on whether Jesus is divine
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God. Again, common sense is sufficient for most people to recognize the validity of some distinction between primary and secondary truths, and it seems to me that the distinction between primary and secondary doctrines is implicit rather than explicit in scripture, but I think the distinction is still very clear.
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I would absolutely agree. Here's what the scripture says, 1st Timothy 4, verse 1, now the
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Spirit, talking of the Holy Spirit, expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, not from faith, people will be believing a whole manner of things, but they will depart from the faith, talking of the
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Christian faith, by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons.
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This is not to say that someone who speaks about what the Bible says about demons is then speaking something in error, it's speaking of the source of the teaching, the teaching that has its source in the demonic, 1st
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Timothy 4, verse 1. 2nd Peter 2, verse 1 says this, it speaks of damnable heresies, that's the
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King James version, destructive heresies, other more modern translations, demon.
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These are doctrines, teachings, that if believed, damn the soul.
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Now, we need to understand this because on the essentials, as Augustine said,
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I believe rightly, there must be unity and we need to understand that, but secondary doctrines, although important, do not damn the soul, that's the distinction we're making.
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The Bible speaks of damnable heresies, there's things that are error and there are things that damn the soul.
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Christians are notorious for not understanding what we're talking about here because they will divide and call someone not a brother over the most minute things.
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As much as I really honor and value and esteem someone like Martin Luther, God used him in an amazing way in the
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Reformation, I'm one of the first to talk about it, love talking about what God brought to the church through Martin Luther, but he was a vessel who was imperfect, not infallible, and really what was happening at the same time as was happening to him in Germany, in Switzerland, another man was being raised up called
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Ulrich Zwingli, and what was happening was God was restoring the biblical gospel to the people of God and a great reformation was taking place in both countries and these two great leaders met together and they talked about a number of doctrines,
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I think it was in the teens, I can't remember the exact amount of material that they were talking about, and they agreed on every but one point, the point of dispute, even though they believed in the deity of Christ and justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, they understood the gospel together.
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They disagreed, didn't come to unity on the issue of the Lord's Supper, and Martin Luther would not even shake
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Ulrich Zwingli's hand, wouldn't call him a brother, call him another spirit, and that's a sadness, and that's just about everybody
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I've read who've discussed this event, speak of it with sadness, because if they had been able to say, we disagree on this point, on exactly what is happening in the
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Lord's Supper, but on everything else, we're united, you're my brother, you're my sister, in Christ, those who held the same things, the
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Lutherans, and then those who were of Zwingli in that sense, of the same doctrines at least, many believe that the
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Reformation could have, in unity, penetrated Spain, but it was not the case, and Spain remained
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Roman Catholic, very much the case. So there's a sadness about that, and although Martin Luther was used by God dramatically, because of his bullheadedness against the
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Pope and against anyone else who would dispute what the Word of God said, it's a sad point of church history that he was not able to recognize
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Zwingli as a brother in Christ, and such is the case in our day.
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We need to understand the distinction between big things, and while important things, less than big things in terms of division in the body of Christ.
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Let's go to Matthew 23 for a moment and see the words of Jesus. He writes, well, Matthew writes of Jesus, quoting him, "'Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.'"
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Don't you just love Jesus? Meek and mild. These were not words that, if they had refrigerators there, the
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Pharisees would have put on their fridges. Beautiful words from the lips of Jesus. What did he say?
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"'Woe to you, hypocrites.'" Nope. Here's why, Jesus said, "'For you tithe, mint, and dill, and come in.'"
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These were really plants. "'And have neglected the weightier matters of the law.'"
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Hear that phrase, the weightier matters of the law. Justice and mercy and faithfulness.
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"'These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.'" He said it wasn't wrong that you tithed on every 10th petal that came into your house.
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There's nothing wrong with that. I'm endorsing that. "'These you ought to have done without neglecting the others, you blind guides, straining out a gnat.'"
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That's a G -N -A -T. "'And swallowing a camel.'" I think that's terrific humor, even though he's making a very strident and strong point here.
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Straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. I think it's clear from these words,
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Jesus was suggesting that some errors are gnats and some are camels.
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The point, some are minute and some are gigantic in comparison.
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He speaks of the weightier matters of the law. Some matters of the law are weightier than others.
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Think about the implications of that. The distinction between a gnat and a camel.
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And such is the case regarding doctrine. Some things are camels, some things are gnats.
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We need to know the difference. The apostle Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 15 of doctrines that are of first importance.
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Again, we're talking implicit rather than explicit, but I think it's very easy to make the connection between something that is of first importance and then say, if something is of first importance, there must be something that is of secondary importance.
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I don't think we're reading into the scriptures too much to make that assertion.
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In 1 Corinthians 15, we read these very famous words from our apostle, the apostle
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Paul. 1 Corinthians 15, and verse 1. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel
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I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word
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I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what
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I also received, that Christ Jesus died for our sins.
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That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and then he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, and so it goes on.
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Just making the point here, according to the apostle Paul, the gospel and the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, these are things that are of first importance.
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1 John 4, 1. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
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By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
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In other words, the false prophet is someone who denies the incarnation, that there really was the second person of the
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Trinity becoming flesh. John chapter 1, verse 1, in the beginning was the
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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then verse 14, and the Word became flesh and dwelt, tabernacled among us.
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Someone who denies that, that's someone who is speaking as a false prophet.
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They deny the full humanity of Christ. It's interesting that in the first century, the attack upon Christology, the person of Christ, was in the realm of his humanity.
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Many would believe he is divine, but not human. He would be walking along a beach, perhaps, and would not leave a footprint in the sand, because he wasn't really man.
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That was the idea influenced by Greek thinking that matter is evil, spirit is good, and therefore
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God couldn't become, in any way, enmeshed with something as evil as the flesh.
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The apostle John points out, no, no, no, he came in the flesh.
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Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit, verse 3, that does not confess
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Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
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Many religions deny the incarnation, and according to the apostle
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John, that is the spirit of Antichrist in operation. We're seeing this from our study so far.
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Certain issues are described as essential, others are less so.
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I would say this, the gospel is essential, absolutely essential.
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Doctrines that make works, in any way, a part of our justification, in the sense of, we have to do things other than simply have faith in Christ, that is a false gospel.
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Now, already we're into deep waters. I remember a gentleman
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I respected greatly. I was converted as a teenager in the city of Chester in England.
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There was an Anglican minister who was very, very influential in my life at the time.
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About five years ago, keeping in touch with him, I came to see that he was having ecumenical meetings with Roman Catholics and having retreats with them often.
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I asked him, what kind of things do you talk about? Do you talk about justification? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
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These are spirit -filled brothers and sisters in Christ. I said, well, if they're
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Roman Catholics, do they go back to their Roman Catholic churches and share what the gospel is?
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No, we don't get into that. We're united in Christ. I said, I couldn't attend that meeting of yours.
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I couldn't go with you. Sorry. He was very flummoxed by this and very perturbed.
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He came back to me a couple of days later after this conversation and said, I had a little picture.
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I'm always a bit wary now of someone who's got a little picture. He said, I had a picture of Jesus with a clipboard.
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This is what I think you're saying, John, that Jesus stands at the doorway of our meetings with a clipboard and making sure that we can check.
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In England, we'd say tick. Here, it's related to the word tick off. That's not something that's a positive thing.
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We'd tick or we'd check off certain doctrines. Only when you could fill in all of the questions with the right checkmark would
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Jesus allow you into the assembly. I thought about it for a moment. I said, may
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I reply? He said, yes. I said, just one word's necessary. Galatians.
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I said, if the book of Galatians is inspired by God, which
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I believe it is, there's Jesus with a clipboard. It's the apostle
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Paul saying, you add anything to the gospel and it's not a gospel at all.
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You read Galatians chapter one. If there was a mailman delivering the letter of Paul to the
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Galatians, he must have had asbestos gloves. He must have been able to handle the fieryness of this letter that stormed from the quill of Paul.
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What amazing words are in chapters one and two regarding the truth of the gospel and standing for it.
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He said, even if we are an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel than what we've preached to you, let him be anathema under the eternal curse of God.
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The way of exclamation in the ancient world was not to put an exclamation mark or to underline, but to say it repeatedly.
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That's exactly what he did. He said, I've said it once, I'm saying it again. Even if we are an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel, let him be eternally condemned, accursed, anathema.
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I didn't hear back from this man. In fact, he unfriended me on Facebook, which is the ultimate, as you know.
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I thought about it afterwards. I thought if he was Facebook friends with Luther and Calvin and Spurgeon, he'd be unfriending them too.
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I'd be standing with them and saying, no, we have no unity with our
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Roman Catholic friends. We can call them friends perhaps in this modern day.
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In certain eras of the church, that would have been impossible too, but we could not call them brothers or sisters in Christ because there's a different gospel at work.
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Rome teaches that we are justified by grace plus works, plus human merit.
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It's grace plus, it's Christ plus. For the reformers, it was grace alone.
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Anyone can speak of grace. Anyone can speak of faith. Anyone can speak of Christ, but the reformers with the solas, as you know, spoke of grace alone, faith alone,
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Christ alone. That's how we're justified in the sight of God. Paul distinguished between the foundation upon which is to be built the things of God in 1
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Corinthians 3, and that foundation is Christ. No other foundation can be laid.
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That's an essential of the faith. Regarding lesser matters, observance of days in Romans 14, he writes this, one man esteems one day above another.
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Another esteems every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.
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I find that astonishing because this is Paul with his quill. He's just written the most magnificent declaration in any part of Scripture of the gospel.
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He's on a roll, so to speak, and yet he doesn't say, now this is how you should view observation of the
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Sabbath here, observation of days. He just says, one person thinks this, another person thinks that.
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Here's my apostolic command. Let everyone be fully persuaded in his own mind.
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The whole context of Romans 14 is never do anything that would violate the conscience.
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Be convinced. Be absolutely convinced. Let everyone. Now, later on, I think it's very clear what his stand is and was.
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Colossians chapter 2 speaks very clearly to that issue, but it's interesting to me that he says, let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind.
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He's not saying you must believe this. This is an essential of the faith. If you disagree, you must divide.
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Not at all. Not at all. Be fully convinced, though.
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Be fully convinced. Where do we go with all this? Well, there are,
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I believe, essential doctrines of the faith. Let's just outline a few of them. We've talked about the gospel.
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Theologically, the word would be soteriology from the Greek word soter, which means to save.
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We have to start there because the Bible does. Things like the
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Apostles' Creed have been used through the centuries to provide a declaration of that which is most important.
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But there's not everything that is essential in the Apostles' Creed. There's no real understanding of justification by faith alone there in the
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Apostles' Creed. I embrace it. I embrace my fellow brother and sister if they can outline and agree to the
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Apostles' Creed. But I would also say, where are they on the gospel? I think reading Galatians, justification by faith alone needs to be part of what we call an essential doctrine.
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The Roman Catholic denial of sola fide, faith alone, it's a false doctrine.
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The guns of Rome still exist with their eternal anathemas against anyone who would speak of justification by faith alone.
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Until that takes place, there's no basis for unity. At the Council of Trent, I believe unintentionally, let's believe the best of these people, unintentionally, they put their eternal anathema,
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Rome did, on the gospel, on the gospel itself. On lesser matters, and I'm saying it in the light of it still being important, we can agree to disagree and still have fellowship.
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I love the fact that there are men of God like John MacArthur on one side of the
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United States and R .C. Sproul on the other, but they can come together in conferences, speak at each other's churches, do great ministry together, but they disagree on certain non -essential matters, though very important.
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For instance, John MacArthur would believe in credo baptism, someone who would affirm belief in Christ and then would be baptized, whereas R .C.
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Sproul would allow for that, but also would speak of infant baptism. There's a divide there.
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I remember hearing of a church in Asia where on the elders team, there was a disagreement on this issue and everyone was heralding the fact that there was unity, even though there was disagreement on this particular issue.
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What was interesting was it became problematic because when a couple had a child, who do they go to?
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When one elder would say, don't do anything right now, we can dedicate the baby, we can pray for you as parents, we can stand with you, but we need to wait for this child to come to the place where they can affirm their trust and belief in the
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Lord Jesus Christ and then be baptized at a later age. And then another elder would say, we can baptize straight away.
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And the unity crumbled. Now, what I'm saying is this, I believe that what is true about John MacArthur and R .C.
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Sproul needs to be true of us as Christians. I've heard Sproul say, and I've heard
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MacArthur affirm the fact that if one could convince the other from scripture of the truth of their position and get the other person to see what the scripture says and agree on it, they believe that the other person would change immediately.
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Now they've yet to be able to do that, but it means that they believe the best of each other.
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And that's a wonderful thing. And they can have unity at a conference and preach the gospel because they are agreed on the essentials.
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But it would be problematic if both John MacArthur and R .C.
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Sproul were on the same eldership team. And that's why these disagreements allow for the difference of denominations.
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And I think it's a good thing until we all come to the unity of the faith, which is something again outlined in Ephesians 4, we are to maintain unity, keep unity with our fellow
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Christians. So we can agree and hug each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. But having a denomination that allows for credo baptism allows
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John MacArthur to do and believe what he believes scripture says, and it allows
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R .C. Sproul to do what he believes. And they cannot serve as elders together in the same church, even though they're elders in the body of Christ.
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And both would affirm that the other is a Christian. We need to understand that we can have essential unity and yet have liberty on the non -essential matters to understand the difference between those two things.
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Regarding God, there needs to be an understanding of the Trinity and the belief in it for us to say, you're my brother, you're my sister.
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I think that's clear. I had an incident about 15 years ago, a couple were leaving
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Phoenix where I was pastoring and were moving north and had to do so very, very quickly.
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Normally, the best case scenario is to go to the place and find a church before you find your house.
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And that should be the first thing on your priority list. I need to find a good Bible believing church for the sake of my soul and the sake of my family as the husband, father, if that's the one making the decision, if he's the head of the house there.
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But anyway, they had gone to this state, it was north of Arizona, most states in the union are.
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So he was asking me, would you give me some advice about church?
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And I said, sure. He says, there's three churches we're looking at. We like these three that we found online.
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Would you take a look? And the first thing I do, not the second, not the third, is go to a church's statement of faith.
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That will tell me a lot. If it's fuzzy and mushy, I think, what are they not saying?
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That's not clear. Or else, if they are clear, that's good. And I want to make sure that they are not clearly heretics.
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Well, of the three that were given to me, one was fuzzy on the
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Trinity, in my mind. Because the phrase that should normally appear would be, we believe in one
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God and three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the orthodox view of the
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Trinity. It didn't say that. It spoke of manifestations. It said, we believe in one
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God manifested as Father, Son, and Spirit. And knowing what the ancient heresy of modalism is,
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I thought that sounds very much like that. And I just said, of this third church,
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I'm concerned. I don't think they're Trinitarians. They're using a phrase and a term that is often associated with modalism.
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The idea that God is one person, but functions in three different modes.
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It's like on a stage. Sometimes he appears as Father in the play, and sometimes as Son, sometimes as the
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Spirit. But there's not three persons in the Godhead. So I said, if you're able to have a talk with the pastor, just ask him directly.
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I've read your statement of faith. Do you believe in the Trinity? And just hear what he says.
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Well, I got an email a couple of days later saying that they went to the church and they asked the pastor that, and he denied the
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Trinity. He said, no, we don't believe that here. We want to be biblical. Oh, and for many people, those issues are just not essential.
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But I believe biblically, I cannot worship in a church that does not affirm the
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Trinity. I cannot listen to music that comes from a group that denies the
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Trinity. I don't think Paul would have had the Judaizers sing at his outreach meetings elsewhere.
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The gospel is essential. The Trinity is essential. Essential doctrine.
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The person of Christ, he's fully God, fully man. We call that Christology.
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And 2 Corinthians 11, Paul tells the Corinthians that the false apostles are proclaiming to them another
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Jesus. And it results in a different spirit and another gospel.
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That's always the case. There's only one Jesus, the Jesus of the
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Bible. And that's why the Jesus of Mormonism cannot save,
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Jehovah's Witnesses cannot save, the Jesus of Islam cannot save.
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It's not the biblical Jesus. Arianism, full blown, is really, though there's certain slight distinctions, it's seen in the
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Jehovah's Witness faith today. Pneuma, P -N -E -U -M -A is the
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Greek word that means spirit. And so it's speaking of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.
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We can't forget the third member of the Trinity in all of the essentials.
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And the Holy Spirit is God, just as the Father and the Son are God. And he's a person.
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The Holy Spirit is a person, not a force, not merely an influence.
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He's at times likened to wind. In John chapter 3, that's the case. Other times he's likened to water, but he's not wind.
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And he's not water. And he's not a dove. He's person. He can be lied to, according to Acts chapter 5, 3 and 4.
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The Holy Spirit speaks, Acts chapter 13, verse 2. He sends missionaries,
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Acts chapter 13, verse 4. He prophesies, Acts 21, 11.
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He knows the thoughts of God, speaking of the Father, 1 Corinthians 2, 11. And the
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Holy Spirit can be grieved, Ephesians 4, verse 30.
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Electricity can't be grieved. It's a force. It's not a person.
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But the Holy Spirit can be grieved. In context there, it's talking about the way we speak and our manner of communication can be grieving to the
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Holy Spirit. Force can do none of those things. Only persons can.
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To deny the personhood of the Holy Spirit is to deny something fundamentally true about the
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Holy Spirit's nature. And that is to deny the
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Holy Spirit himself, that he's God, that he eternally existed with the Father and the Son, co -equal, co -eternal with Father and Son.
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So we must believe the Trinity, must believe the right thing about Christ and about our
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Bible. I think that's an essential. I do believe that God gives grace for those who have been influenced by false teaching.
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And there's a real attack upon the scripture. But behind every assault on scripture is that serpent of old from the garden.
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Hath God really said? That was the first question in the universe,
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John chapter 3. And it's a question that is often on the lips of the serpent in our day as well.
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The serpent being Satan himself. We should be very clear, the Bible is
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God speaking to us. And that's Jesus' view of the Bible. Anytime we go down from that, from that high view, like standing on Everest and looking down, that's the high view
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Jesus had of the scripture. The scripture cannot be broken. It's, there's not one word that will fail to come to pass.
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Not one word will fall to the ground. It's the eternal word of God.
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It's God speaking to us. The Bible is God speaking to us.
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Understanding this, some will say, but this kind of confirms all I've thought. Doctrine divides.
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Well, yes, it does. It divides truth from error. It divides the true teacher from the false teacher, the true prophet using that word in a different way from the charismatic type of prophet.
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But the one who speaks for God and the one who does not. Doctrine divides the spirit of truth from the spirit of error, the true
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Christ from the antichrist. So in the church, there are Christians with differing views that while important, are non -essential.
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Things like eschatology, the end times. It's some remarkable,
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I don't know what the right word would be, but a lot of probing and a lot of effort for him to say,
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I am an amillennial. And then that's all he said about it.
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And off we go to defend the faith against every attack on the planet. But that's because for him, it's not something he majors in, but it's also not something that we should divide over.
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I remember doing a Dividing Line show some years back, not too long ago, when someone approached me by way of email and said, enjoyed your guest hosting on the
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Dividing Line and I'd like to visit your church. But first, before I come, what's your view on eschatology?
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I remember hearing of a minister who was arriving in a certain place and as he got off the plane, that was the first question before he was coming to this church he'd been invited to speak at.
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They said, so are you a pre or post, talking about his millennial position, amillennial, postmillennial or premillennial?
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And his answer was, that's a pre -posterous question and I'm not going to answer it. And I thought that was funny.
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Very, very good. But I believe it's good to have a position on that, but I wouldn't divide with a fellow
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Christian over it. And I stated my position in the email. I am amillennial.
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And I got the reply then very, very quickly that he wouldn't be coming to visit the church.
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And I, knowing that that was the case, I thought I've got nothing to lose anyway. I'm going to push back a little bit. And I thought, if you have any understanding of church history, it would mean this.
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If we take it to its logical conclusion, you might be three or four doors down from Martin Luther's church in Wittenberg, Germany, and you wouldn't visit his church, even though God is using him more than any other across all of Europe, because he has a different position than you.
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This particular gentleman was premillennial. Martin Luther was not. Would it be the case then you couldn't show up at John Calvin's church in Geneva?
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He was kind of the generation, although there's a little bit of interplay, he was a generation after Luther in Switzerland, in Geneva.
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If you live four doors down from Calvin's church, you couldn't visit because he has a different view.
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He's not premillennial. Jonathan Edwards couldn't go to his church.
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He wasn't premillennial. Do you see we're straining a gnat and we're swallowing a camel?
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The big picture is Christians are agreed on the big picture in eschatology.
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That is, Christ is coming back. He's coming back the second time. The details of which we can disagree with,
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I think it's good to teach on it and have a position. I think it's good for elders to have a position because if you're going to teach the
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Bible, you can't just say, I'm not going to talk about a third of our Bibles here because it's eschatology.
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No, we're called upon to declare the whole counsel of God. I believe there is a biblical vision.
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I used to be premillennial myself and understand that very, very deeply.
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It was ingrained in me and I've come to a different understanding, but I can still shake hands with anyone who has a different eschatological position than me, other than the full hyper -preterist who believes that everything that will happen has happened.
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We've already entered into the eternal age and this is as good as it gets and everything happened in AD 70.
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No, that's actually heretical. I put it in that category. It would not affirm even what we would see in the
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Apostles' Creed. We're still waiting for the resurrection of the body and all Christians would agree with that.
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Christ is yet to come the second time. So there we are. Doctrine does divide, but let me tell you this, doctrine unites.
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What unites us vastly outweighs what divides us. In essentials, such as the deity of Christ, the
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Trinity, justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, we need to be in agreement.
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But for some, not believing in a pre -trib rapture is the ultimate heresy.
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That's really? So Martin Luther and Calvin and these guys, they're not even
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Christians? That would be the logical conclusion because they weren't pre -millennial, pre -tribulation rapture people.
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They weren't. They were not. Augustine went on to say, in non -essentials liberty,
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Christians need to allow their brothers and sisters room to hold differing positions on some issues without breaking fellowship with them.
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And that takes a great deal of maturity. Christian church history shows us that the body of Christ as a whole has not been very good at this.
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We tend to disassociate ourselves from Christians who don't have the exact same understanding of the spiritual gifts, the end times, divine election, or even when a child is old enough to be baptized.
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Let's talk about divine election. I've met people who think Calvinists are heretics because they have a different view of the will, different view of election and how
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God elects. When we think of the big hitters in church history, we're talking about,
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I would say, Augustine in the first millennia of the church, the modern Luther, the John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, Spurgeon, Whitefield, these kind of people.
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Now, none of them individually are infallible, nor are all of them collectively infallible.
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But if you had a list of four, five, six people that God has most used, there'd be
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Wesley in there as well, I'm sure. But these guys that I've mentioned would certainly be in the top five or six.
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And yet, though they had disagreement on minor things, they were all united on the issue of divine election, that it's
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God who opens our eyes to see. As the song
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Amazing Grace, the hymn says, was blind, but now I see. It was grace that taught my heart to fear.
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It was God at work. It was God's grace at work that enabled me to believe. It wasn't the product of my human heart, which is hostile towards God since I was born
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DOA, dead on arrival, according to Ephesians 2 .1. But all of these guys were united on the issue of election.
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That doesn't mean they were right. None of them are infallible individually, nor are they all infallible collectively.
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But it packs a punch when these guys in church history were united on this issue.
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And that's what made me stop in my tracks when I realized, I need to know exactly why they believe this lunatic doctrine.
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Why would men of this caliber stoop to believe something that I think has no basis in Scripture?
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Where do they think they're getting it from? And you know what I found out? There was a lot of Scripture they were basing it on.
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It wasn't just an isolated text here or one there. When you begin to see it, one person
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I remember teaching a long series of studies on divine election, and someone came to me and said, after the fourth study,
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I was convinced. And since then, I've been reading my Bible through again. I now see it everywhere.
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I see it in Genesis. I see it where I couldn't have seen it before because my eyes have been opened. This God who is sovereign, it's all through.
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God chose Abraham and didn't choose Hammurabi who lived down the street.
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And God chose Israel and didn't say, is that okay, Canaanites? He says, you're my people,
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Israel. I'm setting you apart for myself, for my own purposes. And it's not because there was anything in you that was good.
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You're a stiff neck people. But I'm doing it for my own purposes. Let's go back to Ephesians where we started out and just walk through some of the verses.
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We're going to do it quickly. The verse one speaks of walking.
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In terms of the lay of the land in Ephesians, there are three main sections.
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Chapters one to three, which speaks of the wealth of the saint, what we have because of Christ, the riches we have in Christ.
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Chapters four, five, and the first part of chapter six speaks of the walk of the saint, what he's to do now because he is in Christ, the things he should put off, the things he should put on.
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And then in the final part, we have the warfare of the saint, wealth, walk, and warfare.
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Ephesians six, verse 10 onwards, where we see the spiritual armory we're called upon to put on.
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Here in chapter four, it speaks of the walk of the saint. And as a result of all that's yours in Christ and ours in Christ, walk in a manner worthy of the calling, speaks of humility and gentleness and patience and forbearing with one another.
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Verse three is interesting. It's all interesting, but I want to highlight verse three, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.
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I see what it says and I see what it doesn't say. It doesn't say strive to get it.
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It says maintain it. A lot of people have the idea that the Christian church is a divided body.
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Well, that's true in terms of organization, but in terms of spiritual unity, we are united.
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I've had the privilege of traveling the world with the gospel at various different times in my ministry, been to India four times, went as far as China and Mongolia.
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I've preached the Reformed faith in Mongolia of all places. And just in an instant meeting some of these people, there was instant unity because we have it already.
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It didn't take five hours for them to warm up. They met me at the airport and there was immediately just this oneness we had in Christ that cannot be found by supporting the same soccer or football or basketball team or belonging to the same political party.
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No, we are united in Christ. And if a business has a photocopier, there's an expense made in purchasing it, but there's another expense every month in maintaining it.
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And that's the word that is used in our English Bibles here. Maintain. Other versions says keep.
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Keep the unity of the spirit. Maintain like a photocopier. Maintain the photocopier.
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Maintain what you have. In other words, you have it. You have the photocopier. Now maintain it.
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You have unity in Christ with every fellow Christian. Maintain it. Do your best to walk in unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.
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As we read verses four through six, I invite you to join me in looking at those words.
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It speaks of one body. Speaking of the church here, all who have trusted Christ as Savior and Lord.
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What we have in the visible church are those who are Christ's and those who are merely professors.
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They profess Christ, but they have no possession of the true Christian faith in their heart.
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They're not really born again. They're not belonging to God. Nothing new about that. Jesus made it clear that that is the case.
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There's wheat and there are tares in the visible church. But the invisible church is speaking of that which is invisible to us, but very visible to God.
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The invisible church are his church. Amongst the realm of all that is visible, there is invisibly to us, because we can't see human hearts.
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To God, there is the invisible church and there is one body. We are united.
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Just go across the world. Meet another Christian. You are united already with all
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Christians. And we're united with those who've gone on before. The Christian church is the only organization that does not lose members at death.
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Praise the Lord for that. Absent from the body, present with the Lord. Next phrase, one spirit.
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In our Bibles, it's a capital S, rightly so. It's the Holy Spirit. We are united because of the work of the
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Holy Spirit. What he's done in converting the soul. We have a common experience of the
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Holy Spirit. Just as you're called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One hope.
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That's the Christian hope. All that will be ours at Christ's second coming. This calling and this hope refers to a certain knowledge of the future.
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Something that will definitely take place. Coming from England, we hoped for good weather when we planned outside events, parties or weddings or those kind of things.
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But there was no real assurance beforehand that it would be the case. You don't have anything but weather there.
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It can change at any moment. It could be sunny in the morning and before the morning's out, rain and then sleet and then snow and then sunny again.
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Aren't we just divided over these things, over eschatology and baptism? The details, perhaps.
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The mode of baptism, perhaps. Who should be baptized, perhaps. But not on the essentials, especially on the return of Christ, the resurrection, the last judgment.
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In the realm of eschatology, all Christians are united on those things. The hope we have is not based on who is entering and who occupies the
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White House, but who's coming back to bring in the age to come.
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Every knee will bow before Him. That's our hope. It will happen. One Lord, speaking of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, not my Jesus or your Jesus, but the one
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Lord Jesus, the only one who really is. One Lord. One faith.
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Here, speaking of the Christian faith, objective truth. That's what I believe we've been talking about today.
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When we speak of the Christian faith, we're talking about God as He's revealed Himself, Father, Son, and Spirit of the gospel.
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There's one faith. One baptism. Again, doesn't that divide us as Christians? Sprinkling versus full immersion
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Christian children. What do we do with them? Don't we wait till more like adulthood?
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Again, details. But I don't believe Paul's speaking about the mode of baptism here, but the significance of it.
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It's a public identification with Christ, and we stand together in baptism.
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One baptism. One God and Father of all, who's over all and through all and in all.
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Paul lists seven elements that unite us, and this is the seventh item.
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It's interesting. Normally, the order is Father, Son, and Spirit, but in this particular passage, he speaks of the work of the
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Spirit first, then the work of the Son, and then the work of the Father, from the effect to the cause.
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Because in our experience, it's the Holy Spirit who regenerates us and shows us the beauty of Christ and the significance of the person and the work of Christ, what
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Christ has done for us. All of this is the outflow of the love of the
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Father, and there's only one God. We affirm monotheism. There's one
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God, three persons. All of this unites us, and what unites us vastly outweighs what divides us as Christians, and the church is composed of God's people, the result of God's work existing for God's glory.
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Let me again quote Augustine. In essentials, unity. In non -essentials, liberty.
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And in all things, charity. If you look in chapter four, verse three, it says, maintain the unity of the
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Spirit. And verse 13 says, until we all attain to the unity of the faith.
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I believe that's our mandate. Maintain this photocopier. Maintain the unity we have until all of our secondary doctrines are believed, because I believe as the
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Holy Spirit works in us, we'll be believing more and more of what God has revealed to us in his word.
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Spurgeon is very humorous, and there's a quote of his, I'm not quoting verbatim, but it goes something like this, just as Christ has washed you from your sins by his blood, so God will wash your brains before you enter heaven.
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And I believe there we will all understand the reality that Jesus has saved us miraculously by grace alone, that it wasn't the power of our choice that got us into heaven.
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We'll be not for a moment thinking, oh, the power of my choice that got me here, but oh, amazing grace.
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Grace alone. It's God who's opened up my eyes, and as the focus of heaven is all about the
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Lamb, there'll be no thought of, oh, how wise I was while on earth.
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No, we were dead towards God. We were blind. We were deaf to the things of God. We were deaf to his voice, but God opened up our ears, and his sheep heard his voice, and we followed.
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It's all because of him. And in so sure of that, and I'm praying, and I minister, and I teach so that not only
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I would understand this clearly, but be able to express it clearly that the people of God can enjoy the beauty and the bounty of God's grace so that they would understand grace alone saves.
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It's God's power. It's God who gets all the glory for salvation because he's the author of it.
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Jesus has saved his people from their sins, Matthew 1, 21, and it's all because of him that we're saved.
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It's by him, through him, and to him, all things according to Romans 11, 36.
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We're out of time for today, but just want to thank you. King's Church, it's a church in Peoria, Arizona, started in our home.
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We've doubled in size in the last year from just a handful to more than a handful, and we're excited about what's taking place.
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We have a couple of elders. We have a church membership. Rich Pierce is director of Alpha and Omega Ministries, and he's teaching an adult
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Sunday school class on Sunday mornings, and it's just a wonderful blessing. Some of the people that God has brought in is amazing, and we're on track,
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I believe, to really make a dent in Satan's kingdom by honoring the Lord and preaching his word, and it's a delight to be at King's Church and just sense what
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God is doing. If you're in the Phoenix area, we'd love to have you visit or even stay for two or three
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Sundays and just check us out. You can find us on the web at kingschurchaz .com.
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That's kingschurchaz .com. Is that good, Rich? Good. Thanks for listening.
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Be praying for Dr. White as he's ministering overseas. God bless you as you walk in the light of his word.