Now again, lest any mind be unnecessarily
distracted, I'm only wearing this because the doctor's orders
were very strict to me. Right now, everything's being
held together in there by tenuous sutures, and until all the tissues
bind to one another, I must not do anything that would undo two
and a half hours of surgery. I treat doctor's orders in matters
like that as the revelation of the will of God, and for me not
to obey it would be sin, for therefore, to him who knows to
do good, does it not, it is sin. So just bear with me. It's enough
distraction for me being left-handed and doing so many things awkwardly
with the right hand. And there'll be many times, I'm
sure, when instinctively, when I'm saying something, the brain
is going to be telling that left hand to go this way and that
way. And it's going to be saying, no you don't, buddy, and stay
there. And I'm trusting God that it will not be a mental distraction
to me, nor a visual distraction to you. Now hear with me the
word of God as it is found in Paul's second letter to Timothy
in chapter 3. Chapter 3. And I want to read
the familiar words of verses 14 to 17. 2 Timothy chapter 3
at verse 14. Writing to Timothy, his son in
the faith, to whom the baton of Christian leadership at Ephesus
has been passed on by the apostle, Paul writes, But abide in the
things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing
of whom you have learned them, and that from a babe you have
known the sacred writings, or the holy scriptures, which are
able to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. All scripture is inspired of
God and is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction or training which is in righteousness in order
that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every
good work. Let us again seek the face of
God for the blessing of His Holy Spirit in the preaching of the
Word. Our Father, we thank You for
the privilege we have had in the past moments to worship You
together, to seek Your face, to sit under Your authoritative,
inspired Word as it was read to us, And now as we come to
the opening up and the application of that word to our minds and
hearts as your people, we pray that the Holy Spirit will come
in abundant and even surprising measures to every one of our
hearts, to the heart of the one who seeks to open that word to
every listener. Lord, do not leave us at the
mercy of ourselves, but come to us in our need. To the praise
of the glory of your grace we pray, in Jesus' name, Amen. It was in July of 1962 that I
traveled here to New Jersey with my wife and one child at the
time. to begin my ministry among the
people of God, now organized and identified by the name Trinity
Baptist Church. And from the beginning days of
that ministry, close to 45 years ago until now, I've sought to
make it evident that I believe the words of the text read in
your hearing. that scripture is indeed God-breathed
stuff. That when we pick up this book,
we pick up the out-breathing of the mind and the heart and
the will of the living God. And that that being the nature
of scripture, objectively, whether we believe it, understand it,
obey it, that it is that very scripture that is profitable
for teaching, that is, to instruct us about God Himself, about ourselves,
His ways, for reproof, that is, for pointing out erroneous thinking
and living. for correction, to show us, after
having put its finger upon the wrong, what is the right way,
and then also profitable for training in righteousness. That is, to give us what parents
give to their children in seeking to train them up into responsible,
mature adulthood Scripture is profitable for that training
in the way of righteousness resulting in spiritual maturity. And it
is that God-breathed Scripture profitable for teaching, reproof,
correction, and instruction that the man of God must believe is
indeed a sufficient revelation of the mind and will of God to
make him competent for every task that he faces in the will
of God as a preacher of the Word of God. All of this, Paul says,
in order that The man of God, a peculiar term for Timothy as
a preacher, that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely
unto every good work, that is, every work that necessarily attaches
itself to his ministerial responsibility, Scripture is sufficient. He does not need to go to the
latest psychobabble. He doesn't need to go to the
sociological experts and all of the gurus who are constantly
foisting their notions upon us as though they've discovered
absolute truth. And believing that, I have sought
in these 44 years of ministry that The ministry would be marked
by consecutive exposition of large portions of the Word of
God, sequential logical development of biblical themes taking us
through the total witness of the Word of God, and that has
been the backbone of the ministry all these years. However, when
there have been international events, national crises, or particularly
critical issues in the life of our own assembly. I have broken
off whatever series I was in and brought an individual message
or a brief series of messages in order to show the adequacy
of Scripture for us as the people of God to relate to that crisis,
whether it was international, national, or internal in our
life as the people of God. I think the first time I did
it was with the assassination of President Kennedy in 1964.
And many of you will remember the messages on the Challenger
disaster 20 years ago, Magic Johnson's announcement that he
was HIV positive, the recent hurricane, etc. But that's also
been true with respect to our church life. When we stood on
the threshold of a major building program, I brought a series of
messages on a God-honoring building program. When there have been
other needs, I have sought to address them, the opening and
then the closing of Trinity Ministerial Academy in the midst of what
we now call the mutiny of some years ago. Well, I stand before
you this morning, on the one hand, very desirous of getting
back into and completing the series I began several months
ago, on repentance and faith, issuing then, hopefully in a
series on justification, adoption, and sanctification, the fruits
of that faith. However, it is my judgment, and
I have sought counsel on the matter at the grassroots as recently
as even yesterday with one of the sheep, that in the light
of our present congregational circumstance, it would be helpful
to bring a couple of messages in which our minds are directed
to the Word of God and what it has to say to us in our present
circumstances. Three weeks ago today, the voluntary
resignation of one of your pastors was announced. And I simply underscore
again, unless there is deliberate duplicity on the part of all
of your leaders, it was a voluntary resignation in which the one
who resigned and the other leadership concurred that that resignation
was the part of wisdom and righteousness. And then this past Wednesday,
I announced my intention that during the next two to three
years, I will be relinquishing my role among you with a view
to relocating to Michigan in order not to retire but to concentrate
my remaining days and whatever energy and strength God gives
me on other facets of what I believe are God-given stewardships, a
conclusion that I have not come to, independent of much counsel
from many, many wise and godly and trusted men so that it's
not a matter of my sitting out on the porch and looking at the
moon and one day coming to this conclusion, but over many months
as I've wrestled before God with this matter, I believe it is
the will of God as best I can discern it. Now, in the light
of these two events in our life together, events that we do not
ordinarily face this close together in this set of circumstances,
that it's crucial for us to think and to act biblically. So in
the light of that, I want to preach at least two messages
to you on what I am entitling crucial words of consolation
and of admonition at this time in our life together. Crucial
words, important words of both consolation and of admonition
or exhortation at this time in our life together. And as I do,
I want to remind you of a vital principle of the Christian life,
and it's this. Ordinarily, a crisis creates
nothing new in the life of an individual believer or in the
life of a church. A crisis creates nothing new
in the life of an individual believer or in the life of a
church. Now granted, sometimes a crisis
becomes a catalyst for a believer to press into a whole new dimension
of spiritual vitality and experience. The crisis can be a catalyst
to shove a man or a woman into a new dimension of dealings with
God. On the other hand, a crisis may
be the occasion of a child of God, through the weakness of
the flesh, acting or speaking in such a way in a crisis that
is contrary to the ordinary substructure of the pattern of his life. I
understand that. But with those two exceptions,
it is true that a crisis creates nothing in your life Nothing
in the life of this church. What a crisis is, is a powerful
hand that lays hold of all the blankets by which we cover who
and what we really are. And it lays bare the real stuff. That's what a crisis does. You
see, when Job is told in one day, you've lost your kids, you've
lost all your goods, everything's gone, What did that crisis do? It laid bare who Job really was. He wasn't this fat cat who was
being coddled by God and who loved God and served God because
God was doing nothing but good to him. You wouldn't have known
that from the circumstances. The Son of Providence shone brightly
all over Job. And God says, I'm going to bring
him into a crisis in which I strip all of his stuff away. Let me
see what he really is. And where is he? He's on his
face, worshiping, saying, the Lord gave, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord
and the mouth of the devil. He shuts When he says, oh, Job
does not serve God for nothing. Job serves God for what he can
get. And God says, I'll show you. He serves me for who I am.
And we can go right through the scriptures and demonstrate that
principle, that a crisis creates nothing. It simply is a powerful
hand to pull off the blanket and show what we really are individually
and as a church. Now, that being so, if we want
to call the present circumstances a crisis of leadership, this
crisis of leadership is going to lay bare who you are, who
I am, what we are as a church. And in the light of that, I want
this morning to give you some crucial words of consolation,
and next week, God willing, some crucial words of exhortation
and admonition. Now, to show what you really
are, let me ask you, before I even get into the subject, what's
been the response of your mind and heart thus far? Can you be honest with God? Are
you sitting there cynical, saying, ah, here comes Pastor Martin,
he's going to pull a head job on us? God help you, if that's what
you think. If that's all I've earned in
44 years, giving my life to you. I'm a
pathetic man. And I'm not so naive to think
that some of you have already thought that. And your defenses
have gone up and said, I'm going to think what I want to think.
And nobody's going to change it. If so, this crisis is showing
you've got some fundamental defect in your soul that needs to be
addressed in the presence of God. But if your disposition
is what I believe the vast majority of you reflect, Lord, thank you. Lord, I pray. Guide, Pastor,
to bring things from the words that will help me to get my bearings.
And you wait in the expectation of dependence upon the Holy Spirit.
And I do believe with all my heart that that's the disposition
of the vast majority. So we come now, with that introduction
behind us, some crucial words of consolation. I have three
this morning. And they all begin with the words,
remember and believe. Why do I begin each word of consolation
with the imperatives, remember and believe? Well, for the simple
reason you're not going to hear anything new. Oh yes, the opening
up of it may have some new nuances and some fresh side lights and
highlights. But the fundamental issues I'm
going to articulate, they're not new. They have formed the
very substructure of our life together since I arrived among
you in 1962. So I'm calling on you to remember
something, but not just remember, but to mix faith with it here
and now in the present circumstances. For it said of the Israelites,
the word preached did not profit them. Why? Not being mixed with
faith in them that heard. And so I'm calling upon you both
to remember and to believe these three words of consolation. Number one, remember and believe
that God our Father remains on His throne of unrivaled and undisturbed
sovereignty. Remember and believe that God
our Father remains on His throne of unrivaled and undisturbed
sovereignty. Many of us can remember in our
Christian pilgrimage the thrill of discovery when by various
means, a book written, some tapes heard, some sermons heard, and
for the first time in our lives, we saw this truth that is just
spattered throughout Scripture, that God is utterly, absolutely,
unqualifiedly sovereign in all of His ways and all of His works,
and my, it was like getting saved all over again. that the universe
that God birthed He controls down to every single atom and
every quark and everything that constitutes His world, His universe. When texts like Romans 11.36
were opened up to us, for of Him and through Him and unto
Him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever. And our
hearts sang with joy to know God was doing a good job controlling
this world. Or we came to an understanding
of Ephesians 111, that marvelous statement of the apostle God
who works all things after the counsel of His own will. His will determines His power
effects. He works all things according
to the counsel of His own will. Or Psalm 115 in verse 3, Our
God is in the heavens. He has done whatsoever He has
pleased. And we began to understand that
reality and it entered into the substructure of our entire perspective
about life both outside of us and within us and around us and
brought such tremendous liberty because not only could we see
in all that providence unfolded, this is the hand of God. but
it made prayer a whole new exercise. We are praying to the God who
governs and controls everything, and therefore there is nothing
concerning which we cannot approach Him and pour out our hearts in
His presence. However, as our faith in that
God who is utterly, absolutely, unswervingly sovereign in all
of His ways began to be tested, We found ourselves tempted to
begin to put parentheses. Our God is in the heavens. He's
done whatsoever He has pleased, parenthesis, except in this situation,
that circumstance. Or we began to put an asterisk
with a footnote. He works all things after the
counsel of His own will, asterisk, footnote, except when my boss
calls me into the office and terminates my job. Asterisk, footnote, except when
the doctor tells me a positive diagnosis for incurable cancer. Or in my case, not incurable,
but you've got carcinoma of the prostate. The temptation to put
an asterisk in the footnote. And we had to struggle to come
back again and have that needle of the soul pointing fixedly
northward. Our God is utterly, unquestionably
sovereign in all His ways and in all of His works. We find
ourselves coming back to those words that God had in a very
difficult classroom to wring out of the mouth and heart of
old Nebuchadnezzar. to make him like a beast of the
field until when his sanity returned he cried out in Daniel 4.35 that
this is the God, none can withstand his will, he does according to
his will among the armies of heaven and the inhabitants of
the earth. Then when we open up our Bibles
and come to a passage such as Revelation 4, John has said this
letter going to the seven churches is a revelation of Jesus Christ
to comfort afflicted saints. And after speaking to each of
the churches one by one, the first thing that is done when
God is going to, as it were, comfort the saints troubled and
persecuted in the first century, what does God do? He says, I
saw chapter 4, heaven opened, and I saw a throne and one seated
upon it. Does it still give you the goosebumps?
I hope it does. I hope the thrill of it has not
left you. Because that is indeed the substructure of stability
in the Christian life. All right? What consolation is
there to be in all of this? To me, this is a crucial word
of consolation. Three weeks ago, we had the announcement
of a voluntary resignation. Wednesday night, the announcement
that the man who has been with you from the beginning, intends
in the next two to three years to conclude his hands-on, day-by-day
pastoral ministry, relocate to Michigan, and live out the remainder
of his days, as far as he knows, in other forms of concentrated
ministry. What do we say with all of this?
Of him, through him, unto him, are all things, no parentheses,
no asterisks with a footnote. Are you there, my brothers? Are
you there, my sisters? If I were a black preacher, I'd
say if I got a witness. Are you there? You say, I'm a
Calvinist. I believe in Reformed theology. When someone asks you, what's
the cornerstone of Reformed theology? The absolute sovereignty of God. Are you there? Not in terms of
pointing your finger to a confession, but in terms of where your heart
is right now, this morning, in the set of these circumstances
that have unfolded in the last three weeks. Oh, what consolation
comes. What consolation comes. when
we are able to say in the language of the Book of Proverbs, though
man purposes, God disposes and directs his ways. A number of
texts, Proverbs 16.1, 16.9, 19.21, 20.24, but in the interest of
time I press on. Second crucial word of consolation And my message is framed in a
Trinitarian way. The first is, remember and believe
that God our Father remains on his throne with unrivaled, unremitting
sovereignty. Secondly, remember and believe
that Jesus Christ abides with his people in the unfailing sufficiency
of his grace. that Jesus Christ abides with
His people in the unfailing sufficiency of His grace. And here there
was so much. I just had to pray, Lord, what
token passages do I refer to? Because this is not something
new. I'm calling upon you to remember and presently to believe
what you already know. But my mind went to Mark chapter
6. In that incident, you children know it, the disciples are in
a boat, Jesus remains on the shore, and when evening comes,
the boat is in the midst of the sea, Christ is on the land, Mark
chapter 6. There is a great storm, verse
48, and seeing them distressed and rowing, for the wind was
contrary to them about the fourth watch of the night, He comes
to them walking on the sea, and would have passed by them, But
they, when they saw him walking on the sea, supposed it was a
ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were troubled.
But he straightway spoke to them and said, Be of good cheer, it
is I. Be not afraid." Jesus enters
into the boat and the wind ceases and they are sore amazed. I imagine
this passage came to me because in my regular devotional reading
this was the passage. I had read the morning I got
the positive diagnosis that I had cancer. And can I ever forget
having soaked in this passage in the morning in my devotions,
and later on in the day to hear the words, the carcinoma of the
prostate. And the words of Jesus came to
me. It is I. Be not afraid. It is I. Be not afraid. It is I. Be not afraid. I did not vacate
my universe. I have not abandoned my people
because some aberrant cells have become the multiply and threaten
your life. No, no. Christ abides with His
people in the unfailing sufficiency of His grace. Remember what Paul
experienced there at Corinth. And this was the truth again
that the Lord Jesus brought home to him. In Acts chapter 18, there
is trouble as so often there was when Paul preached in the
various cities. The apostle continues his ministry
there at Corinth. And we read in verse 9 of Acts
18, And the Lord said unto Paul in the night by a vision, Don't
be afraid, but speak, and hold not your peace. And the Lord
could have said many things to comfort him. I am utterly sovereign,
and men cannot hurt you if I don't let them. But notice, his words
are these, I am with you. With you. You see, it wouldn't
have brought the same degree of comfort simply to have been
told, No man will harm you. as though the Lord Jesus were
controlling from afar. But he said, I am with you. I
am with you. And as a result of it, my grace
and my purposes for you, Paul, will not be frustrated, and no
man shall set on you to harm you, for I have much people in
this city. And the same truth was given
to Joshua. And I want us to turn now to
Joshua chapter 1. You see, I'm calling on you to
remember. I'm not giving you anything new, nothing profound.
Nobody's going to sit there and, oh, I never saw that before,
never heard that before. No, this is old stuff, folks,
but I'm calling on you to remember and to believe it in the present
set of circumstances. Joshua chapter 1, one of the
strangest passages. Joshua 1.1. came to pass after
the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke
unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' minister, saying, Moses,
my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise and go
over this Jordan." Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Moses is dead,
therefore go conquer the land. But wait a minute, Lord. You've
said there's nobody like your servant Moses. And there will
be none until you raise up a prophet like unto him. Now you're telling
me because the servant of God has died, I, upon whom the responsibility
of leadership has come, I'm to go and conquer the land. Something
he didn't do. Lord, it doesn't make sense. My servant is dead. Therefore, go over and conquer."
Well, what was the key? Verse 5, "...there shall not
any man be able to stand before you all the days of your life,
as I was with Moses. So I will be with you. I will not fail you, nor forsake
you. Be strong and of good courage."
What's the promise? The promise is of the unfailing
sufficiency of the grace of the present God. I am with you. You will not fail in your mission. And I can never forget when I
read for the first time A. W. Tozer's comments on this passage. And he said these words, nothing
of God dies when a man of God dies. Moses is dead. Go conquer. Why? Because I'm
not dead. I'm the living God. And if I'm
with you, you will conquer and do what Moses did not do. Nothing
of God dies when a man of God dies. May I give my own version
of it? Nothing of God leaves when a
man of God leaves. Nothing of God leaves when the
man of God is persuaded he ought to leave. Do you believe that? Well, remember it. Believe it.
Here, now, in this place, at this time, and any kind of carnal
nervousness is a denial of what you say you believe. Only one
person is indispensable to the life of Trinity Church and he's
not in this pulpit and he never has stood in this pulpit. He's
at the right hand of the Father and by the Spirit he's with us.
Did he not say as the capstone encouragement before the massive
mission of the church articulated to the apostles, going therefore
make disciples of the nations, baptizing them into the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching
them to observe whatsoever I have commanded you. And, lo, I am
with you each and every one of the days, even to the consummation
of the age." Dear folks, I'm calling on you to remember and
to believe that Jesus Christ abides with his people in the
unfailing sufficiency of his grace. And a crisis like this
tests whether we really understand our true identity. You see, the
fundamental identity of every Christian has nothing to do with
what he does and what his function is. It has to do with his position
in Jesus Christ. My fundamental identity as a
believer is what I am in Christ. I had occasion this week to comfort
my dear brother Bob Carr with that truth. He called and we
talked at length about his situation. For you visiting among us, a
very useful, able pastor for some close to 20 years and through
enigmatic illnesses is going to have to step aside from his
role as a full-time pastor. And I said, Bob, it's crunch
time. If you have thought your fundamental
identity had to do with what you're doing, you'll be shattered
because you're not going to be able to do it for the foreseeable
future. But if you've come to grips with
the fact that your fundamental identity is who you are in Christ,
nothing has changed. Nothing has changed. I tell myself
that periodically. one little blood vessel in my
brain with a mini-stroke and I could wake up the next day
and never be able to speak a coherent sentence again in my life! And I look myself in the mirror
and I say, Albert N. Martin, would it make any real
difference? And if I can't say, bless God,
no! Because my identity has nothing
to do with what comes out of my mouth. It has to do with who
I am in Jesus Christ. And that's true of a church.
It has nothing to do, essentially, with who God sovereignly puts
and removes from leadership. The identity of a church is described
in these epistles of Paul again and again. Paul, an apostle of
Jesus Christ, to the church of the Thessalonians, in God the
Father and in our Lord Jesus Christ, to the saints in Christ
at Philippi with the bishops and the deacons. Isn't that beautiful?
All the difference in the two prepositions. They are in Christ
at Philippi with bishops and deacons. But their fundamental
identity is not their bishops and their deacons. It's Christ. And dear people, if I've taught
you anything, I hope I've taught you that. And if I've taught
you that, now is crunch time to remember it and to believe
it with every fiber of your being, to confess it back to God in
private prayer, in family prayers, in our prayer meetings. Lord
Jesus, You are the only essential commodity to Trinity Baptist
Church. And in that confidence, we can
trust you for the sufficiency of your grace. Why? You who are
here in the adult class, what's the responsibility of a husband?
How is it defined? What is its awesome, in the truest
sense of the word, paradigm? Love as Christ loved the church. No man ever hated his own flesh,
but nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ the Church, for
we are His body. Christ is far more committed
to nourish and cherish this church than any one of you are. So don't
nervously bite your nails and push your panic buttons and give
vent to carnal perspectives and attitudes and dispositions and
suspicions that grow out of unbelief, forgetting that Christ is the
only essential commodity to His people. Remember, my dear brothers
and sisters, and believe with all of your heart that Jesus
Christ abides with His people in the unfailing sufficiency
of His grace. But then thirdly, and I said
it's Trinitarian in its structure, I have asked you to remember
and believe that God the Father remains sovereign on His throne,
that Jesus Christ abides with His people in the sufficiency
of His grace. Thirdly, remember and believe
that the Holy Spirit is still active in equipping men with
the graces and gifts essential for competent pastoral leadership. Remember and believe that the
Holy Spirit is still active in equipping men with the graces
and the gifts essential for competent pastoral leadership. And here
I want you to turn to two pivotal passages with me. First of all,
Romans chapter 12. Romans chapter 12. Here in what many would describe
as the practical or applicatory section of Paul's letter to the
Romans, though much prior to chapter 12 is very practical
and applicable, but this is more densely pastoral, more densely
hortatory, that is, its exhortation. And after calling the people
of God to respond to the display of the grace of God in Christ
with utter resignation of all that they are, with a determination
to be fixed in an ongoing pattern of nonconformity to the world,
increasing conformity to the mind and will of God. Then the
first point of application, growing out of that disposition. All
right, Paul, by the grace of God, I've been overwhelmed with
His mercy. As best I know, my disposition
is, Lord Jesus, I'm not my own. I've been bought with a price.
I want to serve you. I want to know how best I fit
in to the scheme of things. Lord Jesus, I'm yours. What do
I do? Verse 3. For I say through the
grace that was given me to every man that is among you, not to
think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but so
to think as to think soberly according as God hath dealt to
each man a measure of faith. He says the first thing you do
is you come to a sober assessment of what God has dealt to you. You have to come to a sober assessment
of what God has given. And in the context, as we'll
see, it's given in the way of aptitudes and competence for
service. And Paul, astute student of the
human heart that he was, knew that the practical danger in
that self-assessment was not thinking too lowly of ourselves,
but thinking too highly of ourselves. Do you see that in the passage?
I say to every man among you not to think of himself more
highly, he could have said, nor to think more lowly. But he figures
there's enough in us to contradict and to constrain us that he didn't
have to say that. The thing he had to address was
too high an assessment of what we think God has given us. Therefore,
the quality control on your self-assessment is the assessment of the body
of Christ. The context now, as we shall
see, is the church functioning as a body. So when I am called
to this matter of sober self-assessment, it's to be in relationship to
the body. Look at verse 4. For even as
we have many members in one body, and all the members have not
the same office, so we who are many are one body in Christ,
and several members one of another, having gifts differing according
to grace given to us. You see, when this right hand
is thinking soberly about its place in the body, the rest of
the body agrees with it and cooperates. But if this right hand suddenly
decided it was my brain, and it was going to organize my thoughts
and send out the impulses to frame my words, I'd be in bad
shape. It don't got the stuff to organize
thought and frame words. The body is the control, the
quality control upon the assessment of all the members. This is why
I said in these conclusions I have come to that I announced on Wednesday
night, I didn't come to them sitting on a rock somewhere looking
at the moon. I sought the input of men I call
them my seven mighty men, and when I totaled up some months
ago the investment of years, it's an investment of 215 years
of intimate friendship with these seven men. My brother, help me,
help me. Here's where I think I should
be going, what I should be. Be honest with me. And only one
of them expressed some tentative reservation about a certain aspect. The others completely unanimous. Laid the thing before my fellow
elders. Laid the matter before my deacons. Why? I'm part of
the body. I have no right to say, I've
got 44 years of seniority. This is what I believe I ought
to do. You don't like it? Lump it. What arrogance! What arrogance! He said, no,
no. Don't think more highly than
you ought to think. Think soberly. And sobriety is tested by the
validation of the body. Now, just a few people that want
to stroke me and make me feel good. few people that have a
disproportionate assessment of who I am. There are people out
there like that. If I believed what they said
about me, I wouldn't be able to walk. My head would be so
big it would drag me to the ground. I've got sense enough not to
believe them. Well, come back to the passage. There are differing
gifts. Where do these gifts come from?
They are given. They are gifts that are given.
Verse 6, having gifts differing according to the grace that was
given. And then he enumerates various
gifts. And then he says, give yourself
to that exercise. But now, who gives them? Here
I want you to turn to 1 Corinthians 12. 1 Corinthians 12. Paul begins this
section by saying, I don't want you ignorant concerning spiritual
gifts. Now verse 4. There are diversities of gifts,
and I want you to notice, Within seven verses, between 4 and 11,
there are seven references to the Holy Spirit. Diversities
of gifts, but the same Spirit. Diversities of ministration in
the same Lord, and there are diversities of workings, but
the same God who works all things in all. There's your Trinitarianism
again. But to each one is given the
manifestation of the Spirit to profit withal. For to one is
given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the
word of knowledge, according to the same spirit to another
faith in the same spirit, to another gifts of healings in
one spirit, and to another workings of miracles, to another prophecy,
discerning of spirits, diverse tongues, interpretation of tongues,
but all these working the one in the same spirit, dividing
to each one severally even as he will. And I am saying to you,
my brothers and sisters, remember and believe that the Holy Spirit
is still active in equipping men with the graces and gifts
essential for competent pastoral leadership. He's still giving
gifts and graces. And here I want to state something
very, very plainly. As we as a church will come into
a more concentrated period of praying and pleading with God
to help us to recognize those whom He may be raising up from
within, those whom He may sovereignly choose to bring from without,
to remember this fundamental fact, that the recognition of
the Spirit's work with regard to competent pastoral leadership
starts with and is foundational with respect to Christian character,
not to ministering gifts. proven, balanced, stable, exemplary
Christian character is foundational to the efficient exercise of
gifts in pastoral ministry. 1 Timothy 3, Titus 1. Don't just take my word for it.
I'll quickly turn to that passage with you. A man must desire overseership
that can't be imposed upon him from without. Faithful is the
saying, if a man seeks the office of overseership, he desires a
good work. The overseer, therefore, must
be eloquent? No. Must be clever? No. Must be able to give clear homiletical
structure to his preaching? No. He must be. without reproach,
character. No just cause to say, in the
light of what is preached, that the Word is the instrument of
sanctification and conformity to Christ. The man must be with
no just ground to point the figure and say, if that's so, how come
this is in your life? Not sinless, but blameless. He must be without reproach.
And then the apostle gets specific. husband of one wife, a one-woman
man. It's evident in the totality
of his, the ethos of his life. He's got one woman in his eyes,
one woman in his heart, one woman in his bed. It must be painted. He's a one-woman man. He must
be self-controlled, temperate, not just with regard to booze,
but have a control over his emotions and his passions, sober-minded,
in touch with reality about himself, about situations, about people,
about circumstances. And you go down through, and
only one issue touches gifts. All have to do with character. We read at the end of verse 2,
one Greek word translated with three English words, apt to teach.
He must have an aptitude to teach. That is the only gift issue identified
for an overseer. Now, it's crucial. The Lord have
mercy on people who call someone to be a public instructor and
he has no aptitude to teach. It's crucial. But in the requirement,
it is not the focal point of emphasis. And the same is true
in Titus. So what does that say to us?
It says we must believe with all of our hearts that the Holy
Spirit is still active in equipping with the necessary graces those
whom God will make competent pastoral leaders in this place,
as well as with the necessary gifts. And what are the graces? Well, there's no greater, succinct,
beautiful, collage of the statement of those graces in Galatians
5, 22 and 23. The fruit of the Spirit is love.
What is love? How does it manifest itself?
Read 1 Corinthians 13. That's all you need to do. The fruit of the Spirit is love.
Joy. The prevailing tenor of a man's
life is joy. For the kingdom of God is not
eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Joy when he must stand before his people having left his wife
on a deathbed, and doesn't come with the pallor of death on his
face and in his voice and in his demeanor, but can stand before
you expressing joy in the Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, peace, quietness
of spirit, tumult in his family, perhaps tumult in the church,
But you never sense he's nervously running around biting his nails.
But you look at that man in the crisis and you say, ah, God can
give grace. It's like old Jackson. You know
when he got the name Stonewall? When he sat on his horse on the
hill in the midst of all of the musket balls and cannon fire
and the rest, and they said, there sits old Jack like a stonewall. That's the kind of leader you
want. And the Holy Ghost still makes men like that. Steady,
emotionally stable. Joy, peace, long-suffering. Gentleness. Not ready to lop
off heads. Line people up in firing squads.
Take advantage of the pulpit as a place to vent his spleen
upon those that irritate him. No. Gentleness, meekness, self-control. Control of himself. Acts 6-3,
look out among you, seven men full of the Holy Spirit. How
do you know they're full of the Spirit? God doesn't give you
a full of the Spirit-o-meter. When you place it on their forehead
or on their wrist, you see those character traits of the ministry
of the Spirit in a man. And dear people, for your consolation,
I'm pleading with you, remember and believe that the Holy Spirit
is still active in equipping men with the graces and the gifts
essential for competent pastoral leadership. Well, I've laid out
these three lines of consolation. Now, what am I going to say in
summarizing and bringing this home with more practical application? What should be the disposition
of our minds and hearts at this time in our life together? Number one, It should be a disposition
of quiet peace and confidence in the triune God who is committed
to our well-being as a church of Jesus Christ. That should
be our prevailing congregational disposition, quiet peace and
confidence in the triune God who is committed to our well-being
as a church of Christ. Isaiah 26, 3 and 4, Thou wilt
keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed upon Thee, because
he trusts in Thee. And some of you, frankly, are
going around altogether too nervous. Remember what happened when they
didn't believe God could take the ark His way? And in their
nervous solicitation to preserve the ark, they put forth their
hand. God didn't like it. God doesn't need the putting
forth of carnal hands driven by carnal nervousness at our
present state of affairs. If we believe this truth that
I've sought to expound, remember and believe with all of our hearts,
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit committed to the
well-being of this church, A disposition of quiet peace and confidence
will mark us. Secondly, a fresh impetus to
praise and prayer will mark us. The Triune God, in all the fullness
of who He is and in all the integrity of what He has promised, is our
God. I got shoutin' happy sittin'
in my desk contemplating these things. If I just think what
it's gonna mean to preach my last sermon as your pastor in
this place, I'll be a mess, slobbering and bawling and carrying on like
an idiot. But when I say, Lord Jesus, they're
Your people, Holy Father, You're on Your throne, You've ordered
the circumstances that have brought me to this place in my life,
then I find myself shouting, happy. And then I praise Him, worship
Him, Wait upon Him. You see, a lot
of you don't know the histories of the beginning of Trinity Baptist
Church. In a nutshell, it was this. That church in North Caldwell
to which I came in 1962, it had a pastor for eight years. God
had blessed his ministry. They saw an increase. They had
building plans. Then they had a big internal
fuss and he left. They called another man and in eleven months
he was gone. And there was a people having
lost two full-time pastors, and in that setting, the pastor is
the pastor. It's a de facto three-office
setting. They had elders, but they weren't regarded in parity
with the pastor. And they lost two pastors in
11 months. And they were desperate and didn't
know, what in the world is God going to do for us? And God's
got a 28-year-old itinerant preacher who's over here in Chester, New
Jersey, shoveling manure. Literally, folks, a pastor friend
of mine was in a church planning endeavor, and they bought a Catholic
retreat center that had a barn, and they wanted to turn the basement
into a youth center, and they had a bullpen. I mean the real
kind, not the kind of Yankee Stadium where you throw baseballs,
where the bulls were kept. And there was dried dung on the
floor an inch and a half to two inches thick. You can't put tile
over dried dung. So my preacher friend said, Al,
you got a little time between meetings? Yes. You ready to do
some work? Yes. Well, we need to have that
done, activated, and shoveled out of here. We'll give you 15
bucks a day back in 1962." I said, well, thank you, Lord. Next month's rent money is going
to come from the cow donor. And I was literally in Chester,
New Jersey, shoveling down. When the preacher who asked me
to do that for him said, my home church in North Caldwell is without
a preacher. They've lost two preachers in
11 months. Sometimes they can't get pulpit supply. If they don't
have one for Sunday, would you be willing to go up and preach
to them? I said, sure. You see why I can't doubt God?
I told David, I took you from following the sheep. The Lord
says, son, I took you from shoveling dung. And I've never forgotten
it. And all that God has done, that's
been like a sacrament of humility. Remember, son, you were shoveling
down when I put you here. And anything that's been done
that's been worth anything, I've done it. Don't touch my glory. Dear people of God, you're not
in that state. What a shame. After all the life
you've had, should you be going about dejected, dispirited, unbelieving. No, the disposition should not
only be one of quiet peace and confidence in the triune God
committed to the well-being of Trinity Church, but a fresh impetus
to praise and to prayer. And then thirdly, these things
are a call to mutual exhortation regarding these very things.
You see, in times of disruption, we can do one of two things.
And here I want you to turn to Luke 24 for the paradigm. This is a call to intense mutual
encouragement and exhortation. Luke 24. Remember the story. These two men are on the way
to Emmaus, having a walk together. And we read in Luke 24, 15, it
came to pass while they communed and questioned together, in other
words, they're talking, Jesus himself drew near and went with
them, that their eyes were held that they should know him. He
said unto them, What communications are these you have one with another
as you walk? They stood still, looking sad. And one of them,
named Cleopas, answering, said to him, Do you alone sojourn
in Jerusalem and don't know the things that are come to pass
in these days? Some people say there's no humor in the Bible.
If you can read that without a chuckle. Imagine. They're asking
the very one who was the center of everything that happened.
You don't know what's going on? What's wrong with you, man? And
I marveled that the Lord didn't laugh in their face, that He
restrained Himself. And He said, what things? And
they said, the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prophet,
mighty in deed and word before all the people, and how the chief
priests and our rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death
and crucified. But we hoped that it was He who would redeem Israel.
Besides all this, it's now the third day that these things have
come to pass. Moreover, certain women of our company amazed us,
having been early at the tomb, and when they found out his body,
they came, saying they had seen a vision of angels, and said
he was alive. Certain of them that were with
us went to the tomb and found it, as the woman had said, but
they did not see him." What is going on here? Here is what is
going on. They are a mutual discouragement
party. They're talking one to another,
and the result of their talking was, we had hoped this, it didn't
happen. Well, we wished this, it happened,
and the rest. No wonder they were looking sad. However, they
had received information that ought to have made them glad.
But they chose not to believe it. And what did the Lord do?
The Lord didn't kowtow to this as though unbelief were some
kind of an instant little pathology that if you got it, you got it,
and you're not to be blamed. Look at the Scripture. And He
said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart. You are acting
like fools. And in the Hebrew context, a
fool is not someone who is stupid. It is moral perversity. Fools, slow of heart, to believe
all that the prophets have spoken. You are groveling in unbelief.
Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer, etc.? What
does that have to do with us? In this call to mutual exhortation,
dear people, we can do one of two things. We can either feed
the nervousness and the unbelief and the resultant sadness of
our brothers and sisters and elders who reside. The pastor
who's been with us all these years is going to leave us. We
had hoped. We had hoped. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. That's wretched unbelief. Has Jesus Christ committed Himself
to be with us all the days to the consummation of the age?
Does the Scripture say, He despaired not His own Son, but delivered
Him up? How shall He not with Him freely give us all things?
Does the Scripture say, My God shall supply all your need according
to His riches in glory? Is that Bible or is it not? If
it is, stop your groveling in sad unbelief. Stop it! It's not morally neutral. It's
wicked. It's evil. God has given us His
Word, and there's nothing about God that justifies not believing
His Word. That's why Paul could say, when
there were some at Thessalonica having believed the negative
perspectives of others, that people that die, Before the Lord
comes, they're second-class citizens. Paul straightens them all out
in 1 Thessalonians 4, 14 to following. And what does he say in verse
18? He says, Wherefore, comfort one another with these words.
When you draw near to a brother and he looks sad and you say,
Why are you sad? Well, my uncle George died. Well, why are you
sad? Well, he's going to miss out
on when Jesus comes. That's going to be the real party.
Paul says, you take my words and you get that sadness out
of him. Preach it out of him. One to another. Comfort one another
with these words. Dear people in this season, we
ought to be doing this with one another. Someone comes up to
you and says, oh, it's terrible, isn't it? I mean, when Elders
resigned. Don't just enter into that. That's
evil, folks. That's what this passage is teaching
us. You've had another report brought
to your ears. That God is committed to the
care of His Church. We need, by the grace of God,
to encourage one another. You see, if I did anything else,
I'd not only be denying all my experience as a Christian for
54 years, But as usual, I can find a way to get my Dorothy
in, legitimately. Eight months ago, when God began
to heal the wound of my grief at the loss of my dear Marilyn
enough to begin to come to grips with the fact I was not meant
to live alone, and I began to say, oh God, help me to get clear
in my mind. what I must look for in a wife
before there's any twitching of my affections toward anyone.
Lord, help me. Give me the white light of my
Bible and good sense and honest self-assessment of what will
have to be present for me to feel before you, Lord, I can
let my heart go. And I had a shopping list. When
I shared it with some people, they almost looked at me, you're
crazy. You know, such women exist on the face of the earth like
that. You know what I told God day after day? When I've rehearsed
my list, I say, now Lord, I don't have a clue where a woman that
meets that list exists. I believe with all my heart somewhere
in this universe there is such a woman. You began to form her
into that woman into her mother's womb. All her experiences as
a child and through her development as a woman and into her maturity
have all shaped and formed her. And when I see her, I'll say,
there's the answer to my prayers. And Lord, I'm not going looking
for her. You're going to have to dump her in my lap. Now tell
me that's weird and wild! Five weeks from yesterday, she's
going to say, I do to this man, my wife, God willing. You see
why I can't be unbelieving in the face of these things? You
have God do something like that for you at age 71, and it's part
of your present life, folks. Don't tell me, well, that's Pollyannish
and we've got to be realistic. You mean believing God is not
realistic? Having your thoughts shaped by
the Bible is not realistic. Believing that your Heavenly
Father knows your needs better than you do is not realistic. That Jesus Christ, who poured
out His life under the wrath of God for you, it's not realistic
to trust He'll supply whatever needs we have in leadership.
You get real, friend. Get out of the orbit of your
unbelief. and believe that the living God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit who indwells this assembly, who
formed it, fashioned it, sustained it, is going to continue His
purposes of grace. But if through unbelief you join
the wilderness generation, the book of Hebrews, promises were
given to them. They failed at the promise of
what? unbelief. This crisis is not
creating anything. It's pulling the blanket off
the soul of some of you, and what you're seeing isn't pleasant. But God's helping you to see
it, that by His grace you might deal with it. Until you come
to that posture of utter confidence in the love of your Heavenly
Father, of the presence and sufficient grace of your loving Savior,
and the presence and power and operation of the Holy Spirit
within us as a people. If you're sitting here and you're
not a Christian, I hope, if you've got nothing else, you say, you
know, maybe being a Christian ain't so bad after all. The devil's
really spooked me into believing, oh, when you be a Christian,
you lose your fun, lose your excitement. What can be more
exciting? than looking to the living God
to bear His arm and to glorify His Son, and to manifest His
grace to ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinners. Well, my dear brothers
and sisters, that's my word of consolation, and God willing,
God sparing me, I want to preach to you next week a threefold
word of exhortation and admonition, and may God be pleased to use
His word to guide us in these days to conduct ourselves in
such a way that the Lord Jesus will look down from heaven and
say, Ah, that's what I died to have in that bunch of people.
Look at them. They're not reacting and acting
according to the flesh and according to carnal perspectives. They're
conducting themselves like people who both remember and believe
all they've been taught. Let's pray. Our Father, how we praise You. We worship You for the perennial
relevance of Your Word, that indeed it is not only God-breathed
stuff but is also profitable to teach us, to reprove us, to
correct us, to instruct us. And we pray that that Word will
do its work today in every single heart. To the praise and glory
of Your Name we pray. Amen.