This sermon was preached on January
14, 1985 at the first annual pastors conference
held at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. As I sat and stood with you singing
the praises of God, I could not help but think of how ecumenical
a gathering this is tonight. a true biblical ecumenicity. We have men from many churches
representing several denominations from many parts of the country.
We're especially delighted to have a contingency from the Brethren
Church in Surgeonsville, and a group from our dear friends
over in Hoboken at the First Baptist Church and we certainly
extend a very special welcome to you and we bless God for his
truth and above all for his son who has gathered us together
in his name. Now particularly for the benefit
of those who are visiting with us in this evening session, I
should say just a word of explanation about the relationship of this
evening session and all of the evening sessions to the pastors
conference which began yesterday and went into full concentrated
activity with respect to these 50 or 55 pastors and the men
in the academy throughout the hours of this day beginning at
9 o'clock this morning and concluding around 3.15 this afternoon. It
was our concern that certain aspects of biblical truth be
expounded to these men in the evening hours, but in such a
way as to make them suitable for a wider and general congregation
as well. And so the things that are set
forth in the program have had that dual concern. The concern
of addressing certain aspects of biblical truth and biblical
perspectives peculiarly relevant to the pastors who are with us
in the pastors' conference, while at the same time underscoring
those truths to the prophet of God's people in general. Now,
in conjunction with the planning of that conference and the assignment
of the subjects, it fell to my lot to address you on the subject
of our biblical distinctives. And it would be artificial for
me to read a text and then simply use it as a springboard to take
up this subject, for this is a subject sermon. And it was
the thinking of my own fellow elders that in conjunction with
these goals of the conference and the wider purpose to include
you in this evening's session, that it would be well for me
to take up this subject, our biblical distinctives. And by way of introduction, I
want, first of all, to give a brief explanation of the title of tonight's
subject, sermon, or topical message. What is intended in the words,
our biblical distinctives? Well, a distinctive is defined
as a characteristic, that which distinguishes one thing from
another. And so I am to speak to you on
those things which form the dominant, the distinguishing characteristics
of our life together as the people of God in this particular context
of church life and fellowship, which happens to have the name
Trinity Baptist Church. Now in doing this, I am not inferring,
much less asserting, that we alone have these distinctives. There are other churches known
to us, and I'm sure many more not known to us, where these
distinctives are understood, loved, and powerfully exemplified,
and I would be bold enough to say there are no doubt churches
where more of that which ought to characterize a righteous and
biblical church where there are more biblical distinctives understood,
known, and practiced than are known, understood, and practiced
here. However, it is equally true that
there are many churches which claim to be subject to the Word
of God where these biblical distinctives to some degree, fleshed out in
the life of this congregation, are tragically lacking, ignored,
and sometimes even consciously despised and rejected. And over the years, as God has
helped us by His grace and the enablement of His Spirit, To
work out some of these biblical principles, I have often been
asked in pastors' conferences this question, if you were to
reduce to the major concentrated points of concern, that which
has constituted your life together, how would you describe those
distinctives? And men have asked this question
that they might have brought into sharp focus those biblical
perspectives which ought to be part and parcel of that which
they envision as the fruit of their labors in the work of God. He who labors in the ministry,
for he knows not what, will usually get what he's laboring for, nothing
much. And far better to hitch your
sights upon a star and only jump two feet than be glued to the
earth. And so, that word of explanation
about the title and why we felt it necessary to address it, I
trust will be helpful. Then secondly, by way of introduction,
I wish to give not only a brief explanation for the title, but
to make an affirmation of our unashamed commitment to the major
tenets of historical, biblical, or historic biblical Christianity. In other words, whatever distinctives
form the focal point of our concentration, all of those distinctives presuppose
our commitment to the tenets of historic biblical Christianity. While on earth, our Lord said,
I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. And it is that church which Christ
Himself builds that is described in the passage read in your hearing.
It is the church built upon the foundation of the apostles and
prophets, Jesus Christ Himself, the chief cornerstone. And as
Satan attacked that church built upon the truths revealed by apostles
and prophets, Very, very early, as he launched his attack, it
forced the church to articulate its understanding of the truth
as it is in Jesus. So that even in the days of the
apostles, there came into the life of the church certain touchstones
of orthodoxy. For example, in the book of 1
John, he that confesses not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh
is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist. In other words, certain fundamental
doctrines about the nature of Christ, the person of Christ,
his true humanity as the incarnate God, that truth was being attacked.
and it forced the people of God to articulate what was revealed
concerning this foundational truth. And throughout the history
of the Church, when the enemy has attacked the doctrine of
the apostles and of prophets, Christ himself the chief cornerstone,
the Church has been forced to articulate with precision her
understanding of the truth deposited in the Word of God. and that
articulation has found expression in the Church's historic creeds
and in its confessions. Now, why have I said all of that?
For this simple reason, that in addressing the subject tonight,
our biblical distinctives, I want to affirm our unashamed commitment
to those major tenets of historic biblical Christianity embodied
in her ancient and more modern creeds and confessions. We as a church are committed
confessionally to a confession that dates back to 1689. That confession, in turn, was
based in great part upon a confession articulated a few years earlier
in 1644. That confession, in turn, was
based upon confessions that grew out of that mighty spiritual
work of God called the Protestant Reformation, which was really
but a rediscovery and a fresh articulation of apostolic and
biblical Christianity. And so, unlike the cults which
always have as their frame of reference the mentality that
nobody has known from nothing until our leader came along,
and now we really have the truth. There is a rejection of the continuity
of the presence of truth in the people of God in all of the cults. So on the issues that constitute
the foundation blocks of historic biblical Christianity, We stand
with the people of God in all ages, unashamed and unembarrassed
in our confession of those truths. The Word of God, the Scriptures
of the Old and the New Testaments, as divinely inspired, inerrant,
and authoritative. The doctrine of the Trinity,
the great mystery of the one in three and the three in one.
Creation by the Word of God. All things created out of nothing. Man made in the image of God. Man represented in Adam falling
into sin. God's purpose to save a people
by the person and work of a Redeemer. The uniqueness of the person
of Christ as truly God and truly man. As much God as though He
were never man. as truly man is though he were
not God, that great mystery of the two natures joined in the
one person, inseparable and forever. We confess without shame our
confidence in His substitutionary death upon the cross, taking
the place of the sinner, His literal bodily resurrection from
the dead, His ascension up into the heavens, His being seated
at the right hand of God, Our confidence that is surely, as
this day dawned, one day will dawn in which the heavens will
part as a scroll, and there will be the voice of the archangel
and the trump of God, and that same Jesus shall return in like
manner as He went into heaven. We confess without shame or tongue-in-cheek
our conviction that salvation is by grace, faith, and that
not of ourselves, but it is the gift of God. We confess our conviction
of the doctrine of the Church, its sacraments, these glorious
truths of the application of the saving work of Christ through
the Spirit and the Word, bringing men to faith and therefore to
justification and into a life of sanctification. Now I think
you get the idea of what we're asserting. We come with no novel
doctrines, and that's not a tongue-in-cheek statement. It is a great privilege
to stand in that great continuum and to confess these great truths. Therefore, in addressing the
subject of our distinctives, it must be understood on the
threshold that they are distinctives embedded in the reinforced concrete
of historic biblical Christianity. not the shifting sands of theological
novelty or the life-strangling quicksand of heresy. These distinctives
rest down upon those great realities. Well, having given you the explanation
of the title, an affirmation of our commitment to historic
Christianity, now, in just a couple of minutes, I want to give you
a very brief summation of our history as a church. Without
some understanding of this, what I will say with reference to
our distinctives will have nowhere near the amount of clout that
I hope they will have. In January of 1967, 18 years
ago almost to the week, a group of men and women numbering about
60 people met in the women's club of Caldwell, New Jersey
to worship together for the first time in a relationship of biblical
commitment which eventually grew into Trinity Baptist Church.
Now what they had in common was this, a burning desire to see
a biblical church established to the glory of God. They shared
a conviction that they could not pursue that goal while remaining
part of the denomination which made that pursuit both ethically
and practically impossible. And so rather than toy with the
ethics and try to accomplish the impossible, the decision
was made to start afresh in a totally unconnected context, that is
denominationally, and to seek, with the quality control of the
historic creeds and confessions constantly looking over our shoulders,
to establish, by God's grace, a biblical church. And way back
then, eighteen years ago this January, there were certain perspectives
which constituted biblical distinctives of that little group of people.
things that though they may have seen only in broad outline form,
some of them perhaps only half sketched in, they were distinctives
that had come out of a careful consideration of the Word of
God and became part and parcel of the life of that people from
the beginning. Now, with the passing of these
18 years, many of those perspectives, I should say some of those perspectives,
were put to the test They were proven in the crucible of experience,
refined, reshaped here or there, and as further light has been
gained from the Scriptures, to them have been added other equally
deep convictions and perspectives which now constitute the present
sum of our biblical distinctives. So that little bit of history
will help you to understand some of the things to which I will
allude when I seek to illustrate the significance of these distinctives. I have been a part of this from
the beginning in God's kind providence, so I am but speaking what I have
seen and heard. And I hope I can do that in such
a way that does not in any way appear self-serving. It's one
of the areas of reluctance I felt in even taking on this assignment. And I have cried to God that
there be nothing that even remotely approaches that which is self-serving. Our only desire is, if God has
helped us to lay hold of some perspectives of His Word, and
prove them in the reality of church life building from the
ground level up, perhaps God will use some of that insight
and experience to encourage and to help others, and that is our
only motive in taking up the subject. First of all then, and
fundamental to all others, has been, here's biblical distinctive
number one, The determination to follow the hand of Scripture
wherever it may lead us. The determination to follow the
hand of Scripture wherever it may lead us. Now the Word of
God makes it abundantly clear that the church is God's house
and His temple. That terminology is found many
times in the New Testament. And within that house there is
but one supreme Lawgiver and Master, and that is Jesus Christ
the Lord. In John 13, 13, addressing His
own disciples, He said, You call Me Master and Lord, and so I
am. In Ephesians chapter 5, Paul
reasons from one reality to the duty of wives, and he says, as
the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their
husbands in everything. The heavenly reality is the church's
subjection to Christ. Its earthly counterpart is to
be the submissiveness of wives to their husbands. Now you see,
without this former, this breaks down. As the Church is subject
to Christ, the assumption is that all who are in any way intelligent
as to the nature of the Church's relationship to Christ will understand
that the Church stands under His headship. and that that headship
involves a real and an extensive submission to Christ the Lord. Now, the Word of God written
is a transcript of the mind and will of Jesus Christ. All that is revealed is to be
believed. All that is mandated is to be
done out of love to Christ and independence upon the power of
the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, when our Lord gave
the commission with respect to the expansion of the Church,
this was His command, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them into the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe whatsoever I commanded you, and lo, I am
with you always, even unto the consummation of the age." Again,
our Lord said, you are my friends. If you do whatsoever, I command
you. If a man love me, he will keep
my word. And in our life together, from
the very inception, the thing that we have feared I trust above
all else. has been the terrible, frightening
possibility of having the Lord Jesus say to us in the language
of Luke 6, verse 46, Why do you call Me, Lord, Lord, and do not
the things which I say? Or to have Him say to us, O fools
and slow of heart, to believe all that is written. so that
from our inception of our life together, there has been this
determination brought by the Spirit of God in our hearts to
go wherever the hand of Scripture would take us, both with reference
to what we believe and what we practice. Now while conscious that there
is no doubt much that we do not yet see with respect to what
we ought to believe, and much we do not yet understand with
reference to what we ought to do, I can testify here in the
presence of more than the required two or three witnesses, in these
eighteen years, the one issue that has mattered to this congregation
is this. What saith the Scriptures? That's been it. If you were to
ask our people, how is it that some of you whose background
in terms of your instruction found you in a context of doctrinal
belief that is completely at the other end of the spectrum
of what is called tolerable orthodoxy from where you now are? How is
it that you once believed that ultimately the matter of man's
salvation was in man's hands and not God's hands? But now
you are prepared to confess without embarrassment, conscious of all
of the mystery involved, salvation is of the Lord from eternity
to eternity. The answer of our people would
be, that's what we saw taught in the Word of God. We could
no longer sneeze and blink when we came to the words elect, chosen,
predestined, called. We could no longer act. It may
be God somehow got his tongue mixed up when he used that terminology
and those words. So our present doctrinal commitment
and confessional stance is a result of this determination to believe
what is revealed. and likewise with reference to
what we practice. We have undergone, many of us,
nothing short of a Copernican revolution in our religious practice
with reference to worship and personal life and corporate life,
whether it meant walking into unknown paths walking, as it
were, over the live nerve endings of past patterns and traditions,
standing in much or no company, the great issue has been, is
it clearly revealed in Scripture? If it is, then it must be believed,
or we forfeit the right to claim to be disciples of Christ. Does
our Lord mandate it in His Word? Then we must do it, or we forfeit
the right to claim to be his disciples. You say, well, that's
pretty simple. Yes, it is. But alas, alas, alas,
alas, King Jesus is not king in many institutions that claim
to be his church. King pragmatism reigns. King
tradition reigns. Prince habit reigns. Prince rationalism
reigns. There are lords and princes and
kings many, but churches that manifest this determination,
we will go wherever Scripture takes us in the strength and
power of Christ, are few and far between. May God grant that
a time will soon come when that statement will no longer be true.
But then secondly, the second distinctive of our life together
has been the determination to maintain the primacy of the systematic
public preaching and teaching of the Word of God as the structural
backbone of our church life. I've given you a mouthful and
I've chosen my words carefully and I'll explain them. The second distinctive, and it
inevitably grows out of the first, has been the determination to
maintain the primacy, that is, the first place, that which has
the place of primacy has the place of eminence, to maintain
the primacy of the systematic, not the deliberately selected,
the systematic, public, open, reading, preaching and teaching
of the Word of God as the structural backbone of our life together. Now, where did we ever get that
notion? Well, we got it out of the Scriptures. Christ, the Head
of the Church, is deeply concerned for the nurture of His Church.
Ephesians 5.29 tells us, Husbands are to nourish and cherish their
wives as Christ nourishes and cherishes His Church. And in
his work of nourishing and cherishing his church, what does he do?
Well, Ephesians 4 tells us, when he ascended on high, he led captivity
captive and gave gifts unto men. And he gave some apostles and
prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers for the
perfecting of the saints unto the work of service. unto the
building up of the body of Christ, and then he launches into that
marvelous description of the church in its corporate life,
growing up into the stature and likeness of the Lord Jesus. But critical to all of that is
his continuing activity to give not more apostles, he has given
apostles, and apostolic doctrine is embodied in the Word of God. And in that sense, whatever was
of abiding worth in the prophetic ministry of New Testament prophets
that God believed was essential to the life of His church is
embodied in this His own Word. And now His abiding activity
is the giving of pastors and teachers. We'll leave the moot
question of evangelists for our purposes tonight. And He gives
them notice for the perfecting of the saints unto the work of
service. Now, there are many in our day
who say that the function of pastor-teachers is simply to
be a catalyst so the saints may build themselves up. I do not
so read my Bible. They are given to perfect the
saints unto the work of service so that the saints in their ministry
one to another may have all of the categories of their thought
about reality shaped by the responsible exposition and application of
the Word of God by Christ's special gifts to his church, pastors,
and teachers. And this is not to establish
some kind of carnal clericalism. It is simply to recognize the
wisdom and the will of Christ, the Head and Nurturer of His
Church. Now, as the Jerusalem Church
thrived while continuing in the Apostles' teaching, Acts 242,
So these very apostles refused to be turned aside from their
primary task of public teaching and preaching. For you'll remember
when the demands of legitimate benevolence began to erode that
commitment, they said, it is not fitting that we should leave
the Word of God to serve tables. Look out, seven men among you,
full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, whom we may appoint over
this business, so we will give ourselves to prayer and to the
ministry of the Word." And under apostolic guidance, the perspective
that they had was permanently embodied in the pastoral epistles.
So that Paul writes to Timothy and says, the things you've heard
of me among many witnesses, make sure that all the saints fully
understand them, so that in dynamic body life there will be no need
of a professional minister. No, that is not what the Word
of God says. It says, the things you've heard
of me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men who
shall be able to teach others. A special class of men is to
be recognized, not because of peculiar grace conferred by the
hands of prelates, but because Christ has fashioned them into
competent pastors and teachers. And so, Paul underscores the
centrality and crucial nature of this function. Even in the
practical matters of remuneration, the elders that rule well are
worthy of double honor, especially those who labor, kapiʻaʻo, who
labor unto toil and pain in the word and in teaching. And Timothy,
I've given you all kinds of directives concerning all kinds of concerns
in the churches there at Ephesus, but Timothy, till I come, 1 Timothy
4.13, give attendance to the reading, the public reading of
the Word, to exhortation and to the teaching. Timothy, above
all else, never allow the centrality of systematic public instruction
ever to fall by the wayside. Now this has been one of our
distinctives. Because when I was in an itinerant ministry, when
this perspective began to grip me many years ago, and I would
talk to pastors, and I was never in big churches, little country
churches, churches that averaged maybe 60, 70, 80 people, occasionally
a larger church or conference, but for the most part, little
out-of-the-way places, backwoods evangelical churches, small-town
churches, And pastors would bemoan the fact that Sunday nights they
could only get out about a third of their membership. And so they
were trying movies and they were trying this and that. And I'd
say, oh, but my brother, where can you justify that from the
Scriptures? They'd say, look, you're an evangelist. You're a Bible teacher. You don't
know. You cannot hold or gather a Sunday night congregation anymore
on preaching. It can't be done. I'd say, but
my, And they looked upon me like a naughty Joseph with my dreams.
Yes, they did. More than once I'd go back to
my room and back to my wife with a broken heart, told it can't
be done, it can't be done, it can't be done. And when these
same men would complain that in their church life there was
no discipline, meeting with their deacons was a free-for-all. There
was no authority, no order, no respect for the Word. And when
I would be so outspoken as to suggest that maybe they ought
to preach what Scripture says about the structures of biblical
authority, they said, you are naive. They don't tell me that anymore. without one movie, without one
singing group, without one big name, famous person, without
all of the gimmicks and trappings of this kind of carnal pragmatism,
God in mercy and grace to a bunch of poor, unworthy sinners has
brought together a congregation committed to this principle. that the structural backbone
of their life is the systematic, public reading, preaching, teaching,
and application of this blessed book. Now it's a tragic thing that
that should be a distinctive. But in this vast sea of metropolitan
New York, New Jersey evangelicalism, we are marked out by the simple
fact that we will not allow anything else to take this place. And it's not a personality cult,
this pulpit is shared by men of diverse gift. And God giving
us grace, it will ever be that way. brought us in the introductory
chapter of his work on preaching, said, there is no great movement
of the spirit since the days of John the Baptist to the present
hour. But what preaching was either
instrumental in the precipitation of that movement or, not only
being instrumental, gave birth to a renewal of the centrality
of preaching in the purpose of God. While conscious that none of
us is preached or taught as we ought, yet we refuse to allow
anything else either of God's institutions or of man's inventions
to replace systematic, authoritative, public reading, teaching, preaching,
and application of the Word of God. Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And any church that long thinks
it can exist without that structural backbone will find to its own
grief and pain that being wiser than God brings ultimately the
frown of God. But now I must hasten on to the
third biblical distinctive that has marked our life together,
and it is this. The determination to maintain
the primacy and practice of corporate prayer as our major spiritual
resource for the supply of all of our corporate needs. Our determination
to maintain the primacy and practice of corporate prayer as our major
spiritual resource for the supply of all our corporate needs. In that moving upper room discourse,
our Lord likened his relationship to his own as that which exists
between the vine and the separate and individual branches. And
in that setting, he said, as surely as a branch severed from
a vine is lifeless and can bear no fruit without me, apart from
me, severed from me, you can do nothing. But then he went
on to say, in that very context of that intimate shared life,
John 15, 7, If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask
what you will, and it shall be done unto you. And whatever else
that text teaches us, coming in that setting, it teaches us
that in our own native helplessness, While vitally united to Christ,
prayer is the great means by which the virtue of Christ comes
into the life of His people. And when we turn to the Book
of Acts, we see that that perspective pervades the life of the Apostolic
Church. The Spirit comes in the context
of corporate prayer. The church is steadfast in the
prayers, Acts 2.42. In each crisis, the church is
driven to pray. The crisis of persecution and
opposition, Acts 4. The crisis of one of its leaders
with his life in jeopardy, Acts 11. Seeking direction for new
advances of the kingdom of Christ and the spread of the gospel,
Acts chapter 13. And when we as God's people in
this place have faced the normal, routine responsibilities and
activities, or have faced critical situations in our life, we have
determined that above all else we should wield this weapon that
is mighty through God, not only to the pulling down of strongholds,
but to the obtaining of God's gracious intervention. A text
that is often quoted in this place is Luke 11, 13. If ye who
are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those
who ask Him? You have not because you ask
not. One of our distinctives as a
congregation has been this determination to maintain the primacy and practice
of corporate prayer. Now, confessing our prayerlessness
and our prayerless prayers, yet we have determined that no substitute
should enter. Let me be very specific. When
people hear what God has done in graciously giving us these
facilities, and when we're all done, God willing, shortly, it
will represent the total expenditure of somewhere around $1.7 or $8
million. I delight to tell them that a
few years ago, when the elders met in a special retreat to pray
and to cry to God, what should we do? Are we going to be stuck
as school vagabonds for the rest of our days, going from one school
auditorium to another? Lord, what should we do about
this matter of a building? We were landlocked where we were.
We didn't know. And the cry of our hearts was,
Lord, we know not what to do, but our eyes are upon you. And
we felt we should be responsible in assessing where we were, that
we would not tempt God. Well, one of our men punched
into a computer the patterns of our growth, the patterns of
increase of giving, what it would cost, the minimal cost to build
a building, the rate of inflation. And we had it demonstrated on
paper, out of a computer, fed the right information that every
day that passed, the possibility of having a building costing
$400,000, got further and further away from us. There's no way
we could have it. No way. No way we could do it. Well,
here we are. For four years, this building,
it costs some $435,000, I believe, roughly a half a million dollars,
by the time you think of its appointments, has sat here, not
a dime owed on it for several years. Every brick, every piece
of splitting tape, every bit of fabric on the floor
paid for, no one to lean on a thread of it. Where'd it come from? There was no canvassing of the
congregation. Oh yeah, we had the experts who'd come to us.
And they heard we were going to build. Our expertise is canvassing
the congregation, floating blah, blah, blah, blah. They say, we'll
cry to God. Men say, yeah, but what practical
thing do you do? We establish special prayer meetings. Oh yeah,
I know you pray, but what? We pray! What's more practical
than having the God of Heaven open His hand and do what He
said to do? He would do. Call unto Me, and
I will answer you, and I will show you great and mighty things
that you know not. Now what's more practical than
that? When there have been crises in the leadership, think of the
time when one of our men it appeared that he could no longer function
in the ministry, to call a day of prayer and fasting, call a
week of prayer when we hit what seemed to be an insurmountable
barrier with the whole building situation, fully conscious we
had not prayed as we ought, yet it would be a denial of our own
understanding of God's dealings with us were we not publicly
to affirm one of our distinctives has been our determination to
maintain the primacy and practice of corporate prayer as our major
spiritual resource. You see, when things happen in
answer to prayer, then it's pretty certain there's only one person
gets the credit. Not unto us, not unto us, but
unto thy name be praise and honor. and glory. And again and again,
God has confirmed to us his willingness to hear and answer prayer. Well, I must hasten on now and
touch on the fourth distinctive, and it's what I'm calling the
determination to take seriously the biblical doctrine of the
primacy of a well-ordered church in the purpose of God. the determination
to take seriously the biblical doctrine of the primacy of a
well-ordered church in the purpose of God. 1 Timothy 3, 14 and 15. Paul leaves his dear son in the
faith, Timothy, behind at Ephesus, hoping to come to him shortly,
but he says, Timothy, this is why I've left you behind. Though
I hope to come to you, if I tarry long, that you may know how men
ought to behave themselves in the house of God." Now here was
a church established by the apostles' labors. He spent some three-plus
years laboring at Ephesus. It was a church so well ordered
it had a plurality of elders. men competent to shepherd the
flock of God. Paul gathers them there at Miletus. You remember Acts 20? He charges
them with their responsibility. They had had the instruction
of Paul, the example of Paul. He had taught them the whole
counsel of God. He had lived before them. You
say, man, what else does a church need? Let Timothy get on and
break new horizons. And yet sometime later, Paul
leaves him back in that very area. in order to carry on the
work of seeking to advance and perfect the life of the church. And what issues does he address?
Purity of doctrine in chapter 1. I exhorted you to tarry at
Ephesus to charge men not to teach a different doctrine. Chapter
2. the great concerns of worship,
the centrality of prayer, and the advancement of the gospel
in their prayers, proper roles of men and women in public worship,
biblical standards for leadership, elders and deacons, chapter 4,
then the practical concerns of his own personal godliness later
on, I'm sorry, chapter 3, elders and deacons, then chapter 4,
and then the treatment of the various what we might call age
categories within the church that older men in the church
exemplify the gospel and younger men and older women and younger
women. What is his concern? His concern is that to be a well-ordered
church, why? Because he says that church is
the pillar and the ground of the truth. The church is God's
own divinely conceived and God's only instituted organism through
which to support, promote, promulgate the truth. And what is that truth?
The great truths that center in the person and work of Christ.
The heart of the gospel at great is the mystery of godliness.
And then we have that statement concerning the Lord Jesus. So
very early in our church life, the conviction was born concerning
the church that the church has been instituted by God. It is
the pillar and ground of the truth, and therefore, the totality
of its life must be ordered by Scripture. I'd be insulted if
my neighbor came in and started telling me how to run my house.
If it is my house, then I am to order its life. And if the
church is God's house, He is to order its life. Therefore,
we are not free to set our own standards for who comes through
the front door. The standards of membership have
been set by the Lord of the house. Who are you and who am I to swing
open the door to those whom He says should not be admitted?
And who are you and who am I to keep out those whom He says should
be welcomed? He's the Lord of the house, not
you, not me, not any group of ecclesiastics. He's the Lord of the house to
say what function men should have and women should have. It's
not an expression of an extended rabbinical prejudice that God
says men only are to rule and to take places of public teaching
in the mixed assembly. That's the expression of the
Lord of the house. who poured out His life in the
agony and the horrible baptism of Golgotha to redeem not just
men, but women. And it was that same Lord who
loved women enough to die for them and tell husbands to treat
them with the love wherewith He loves them. It's that Christ
who says, I don't want them in a position for which I never
made them. It is His love as well as His
authority that bars the door of rule and public teaching in
the mixed assembly to women. Who are we to tell the Lord of
the house he didn't know what he was doing? So in the matter
of the proper implementation of male and female roles, church
discipline, what should and should not be included in worship, who
are we to play around with the Lord's house. It's His house,
pillar and ground of the truth. And He has so ordered all of
these aspects of church life that there will be an optimum,
both fleshing out of truth and the most credible base for the
proclamation of that truth. That's why again and again in
these pastoral epistles, after some practical directive has
been given, it is appended with these words, that the Word of
God be not blasphemed. Men must be careful to adorn
the doctrine of God in all things. And so what has been one of our
distinctives from the very beginning has been this determination to
take seriously the biblical doctrine of the primacy of a well-ordered
church in the purpose of God. and not to have the attitude,
look, if the church just meets and worships and sings orthodox
hymns and preaches orthodox sermons, why be so fastidious about seeking
to measure the height and width of the door of who should enter?
Because it is His house! And to let in those whom He has
said should be kept out is some way to reflect upon the truth
of Christ Who is the Lord of the house? How can we love Him
and tolerate having His name in any way willfully degraded
because we've been careless with the size of the door? You see, there is no intelligent
biblical love for Christ coupled with a pragmatic view of the
church. You love Christ, you love his church. And if you love
his church, you're concerned for a well-ordered church, a
church regulated by the Word of God. Furthermore, it was this
conviction that gave birth to the Academy. Some of us had the
temerity to think, you know, what's more crucial to the life
of the church than its leadership? The Bible teaches that from way,
way back, right on through, Old and New Testaments. The state
of the church is often most accurately reflected in the standard and
quality of the leadership it both produces and tolerates.
Now then, if that's so, then surely the Bible ought to have
something to say about preparation for leadership in Christ's church.
And I can remember the looks I got from intelligent men when
I said, have you seen anywhere anyone try to hammer out a theology
of ministerial training from the Bible? And he'd look at me
and say, here he goes again. I mean, man, why don't you be
content? We've got seminaries and Bible
schools. Now just get on. I mean, you're asking questions.
Well, I had the temerity to ask it. So did our fellow elders.
And for seven years, we wrestled off and on with that question. Until one preacher became yet
more evil and dared then to preach a couple of sermons on the biblical
theology of ministerial preparation. Think of it. Daring to suggest
that maybe there were principles and precepts in the Bible that
had something to say about this crucial issue. Well, you see,
that grew out of this serious determination to take the doctrine
of the church seriously. And that has spawned many other
commitments and concerns. We stand with Thornwell's conviction
that the church is competent to do all that the Lord of the
church has given her to do. And if she cannot do it, he has
not commanded it, or it's not his time to do it. Simplistic? Until it can be shown that it's
unbiblical, there we stand. Well, I hasten on now. You've
been very attentive. Can you take a little more? Well,
if you can't, you're going to get it. All right. Now, in a sense, everything is
leading up to this fifth distinctive. And so I ask you to gird up the
loins of your mind and do your best to grasp it with me. I'm
going to give you a mouthful, then I'm going to go back and,
like a cow, let you chew it up bit by bit. This fifth distinctive
has marked our life together the determination to maintain
the primacy of Christ-centered, transparent, experimental, practical
religion. The determination to maintain
the primacy of Christ-centered, transparent, experimental, practical
religion. Now let's burp it up and chew
it bit by bit, all right? The determination to maintain
the primacy of Christ-centered religion. Now what do I mean
by that? Simply this. When we pick up
the documents of the New Testament to consider its central concerns,
this much is clear. Jesus Christ pervades the whole. You pick up the Gospel records
and what do you find? The very first words of your
New Testament point you to the central subject of that entire
set of documents, the book of the generations of Jesus Christ. You take the next Gospel record,
the Gospel of Mark, and what do you confront in the opening
words? The beginning of the gospel of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God. You open up the book of Luke,
and in the first paragraph, the same emphasis comes through.
You open up the gospel of John. In the beginning was the Word. There breaks upon us in these
gospel records the centrality of Christ. Then we see the unfolding
of the account of his life and ministry, his teaching, but above
all, great and expanded emphasis upon his death, his burial and
resurrection. Some have even suggested, in
the hyperbole of what I would call sanctified rhetoric, that
the Gospels are really nothing but passion narratives with extended
introductions. That is, they focus upon the
great redemptive acts of Jesus Christ. in dying for His own
and rising from the dead. And you turn to the book of Acts
and what do you find? You find the record of how the
proclamation of these great events recorded in the Gospels goes
out to the entire existing Roman Empire and multitudes are brought
to faith in Jesus Christ. And communities of Christ-committed,
Christ-centered, Christ-bound people are established throughout
the Roman Empire. And then when we turn to the
epistles in which various of these churches are addressed,
what do we find? We find continuous explanation,
amplification of who Christ is and what he has done. We find
the drawing out of the implications of the relationship of believers
to him and to the world in which he has placed them. And when
we turn to the book of the Revelation, we read an extended account of
the triumphs of Christ that will carry on to the consummation. So you see, the religion of the
New Testament is Christ-centered. It is surely Trinitarian. Yes, we are not Jesus-only people. We believe the great historic
Christian doctrine that God is one in three and three in one.
However, we also believe that the religion of this God is a
Christocentric theism. It is indeed a Christ-centered
religion. And when he was alive and interpreted
to his own the thrust of the Old Testament witness, he said
that he was the great lodestone. of its sweeping teaching and
prophecy and precept. He showed them in all of the
Scriptures the things concerning Himself. What is preaching in
the New Testament, it is called preaching Christ. What is the
heart of the gospel? His work. He died. He was buried. He rose again. What is growth
in the Christian life? But growth in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we could multiply text. I'm
sure you're convinced of this. That the religion of the New
Testament is Christ-centered. But secondly, it's transparent
religion. There was a climate in which
people could afford the luxury of spiritual honesty. They are
told to confess their sins one to another. The assumption is
it is not abnormal for people in these Christ-centered communities
to have sins and to make it known to their brethren that they yet
struggle with some of them. They are commanded to bear their
burdens. The assumption is they live openly
enough before one another to let their brethren know that
they have burdens. They don't need to come into
each other's presence with a 32-toother on all the time, giving the impression
that they always have their act together. They are told to weep
with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, to exhort
one another while it is called today. Let your love be without
pretense. In other words, when we turn
to the New Testament, we find not only a Christ-centered religion,
but a transparent religion, where sham and hypocrisy are abominated. And we have sought under God
to capture something of that. And then I've used the term experimental
religion. And what do I mean by experimental?
I'm using it in the sense that it's the opposite of merely notional.
A man may have a head full of correct notions, but be utterly
devoid of the implications of those notions in his felt religious
experience. And the scripture says, the kingdom
of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness, peace, and
joy in the Holy Ghost, Romans 14, 17. The kingdom of God is
not in word, but in power, 1 Corinthians 4.20. Paul could say, our gospel
came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the
Holy Ghost, and in much assurance. So we are not at all embarrassed
to have as part of our common nomenclature such terms as, wasn't
God's felt presence precious this morning? We're not wild-eyed
mystics when we talk about his felt presence. We believe in
experimental religion, that is, religious experience grounded
on Scripture, centered in Christ, mediated to us by the Holy Spirit,
that brings to us reality in the deepest recesses of our being. To have a climate where tears
don't cause embarrassment, where amens and felt joy are not abominated
or squelched. Let me put it to you men this
way. Would you call it fanaticism for me to say that somewhere
about halfway through that second session this morning when Professor
Martin was teaching, God came into this room. The Holy Ghost
came down upon the teaching and began to rip our hearts open.
And we knew Now is that dramaticism? Or does
that answer to your experience? That's what I'm talking about.
Experimental route. Better felt than pelt. But it
is felt. And you see, because it is grounded
upon revealed truth, And it's not the fruit of someone playing
on the emotion, some master crowd manipulator. And this is what
sickens me with some of the leading TV evangelists. I sit there and
watch them play with crowds. Masters of pulling the bow over
the string of men's psyches and playing the tunes that they want
to play and eliciting what they want. But as we sat here this
morning, our minds were bent upon grappling with the words
of a portion of the Word of God when the God of that book came
and made his presence known and felt amongst us. And we have been committed, determined,
to maintain a climate in which experimental religion was our
portion Let me tell you something I've rarely told anyone. I've
said publicly, I should say I've spoken a bit privately, I shall
never forget. It was very early, after we had
begun as a church some 18 years ago, I think maybe in the first
year, there was one Lord's Day morning when there was no felt
presence of God. And you should have seen the
congregation panic. Everyone knew it. I knew it.
Everyone else knew it. And it was like everyone had
received news at the same time that husband or wife or mother
or father had been tragically killed. A horror of darkness
came over us. And people came to me and said,
Pastor, what was it? God was not here this morning. I said, I know. You should try
to preach when God's not We should have heard him pray
that next Wednesday. Lord, if we grieved the Spirit, if we
quenched your Spirit, Lord, come! Don't leave us without your felt
presence. God never has given us another
Lord's Day like that, to his grace. There have been times
when his presence has been more evident, more intensely felt
by the people of God But I say a tremblingly wonder, Lord, if
that time ever comes, I don't want to be here, when God's hand
would not be upon us and His presence amongst us. Why, why
should the fringe elements of external and organized religion
be the places where people who long to be transparent and experimental
have to end up? Because within so-called Reformed
and Orthodox circles, there is a stifling of any expression
that would grow out of the joyful or the tearful awareness of the
presence of the Lord Jesus. But then I must hasten to say,
I put another word in there, practical religion. That is,
a religious life which touches us where we live. There's been
a lot of teaching on family life, a lot of teaching on a biblical
work ethic, and interpersonal relationships, and what to do
with tensions between brothers and sisters. Why? Because that's
where the emphasis of the hortatory, the instructive passages of the
New Testament falls. You will look in vain in the
letters of the New Testament for an apostle giving a grandiose
scheme to the church at Rome. How to reorder the social structures
of Rome? How to come up with a grandiose
theology of sociology that will be distinctively Christian? Now
hear me out. I am not saying that there is
not a place, and may God add their number, greatly swell their
number, for men whose souls are absorbed with Christ and soaked
in His Word to have a legitimate calling in life in which they
seek to hammer out a biblical theology that will impinge upon
every single structure of this life as we now know it. As their
calling, yes, but where can it be shown that that is the task
of the church in its corporate identity? I challenge anyone
to show me from this book that the church is to become an issue-oriented
community. No, it is to be a Christ-centered
community, taken up with the realities of transparent, experimental,
practical religious experience. And so we've had to resist the
pressure. Some would like us to be more socially active, more
politically pronounced and active, more health and educationally
oriented. And we've had all kinds of pressure
put upon us from without and within. When will Trinity Church
get on the cutting edge of something? My brethren, we're going to stay
on the only cutting edge that's in this book as long as some
of us have breath. And that's Jesus Christ and him crucified.
And the life of practical experimental godliness that grows out of living
vital union with Jesus Christ the Lord. Well now I hasten,
oh my, it's already after nine. Let me just give you the other
two heads and you can work them out in your spare time. The sixth distinctive, the determination
to lose our life in self-giving service to others. the determination
to lose our life in self-giving service to others, the great
principle of Mark 8.34 and 5, he that would save his life will
lose it, but he that will lose his life for my sake and the
gospel's, the same shall save it. Seek first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness and all things will be added unto
you. Would that I had time to tell you what God has done when
people told us we were acting foolishly. We had no land and
had no building and no prospects of the same. But we had some
text of scripture that said, withhold not good from them to
whom it is due, when it is in the power of thy hand to do it.
Say not unto thy neighbor, go, and tomorrow I will give when
you have it by you. And so we gave away our money
by the thousands like drunken sailors. That's right. Helped other people build churches
when we didn't have a square inch of postage stamp of real
estate. And people say, why do you do that? He said, in the
conviction that when the time comes and God's going to give
us land and give us a building, he will fulfill those promises.
Lose your life, you'll save it. We're putting all kinds of money
in the bank every time we give it away. And they scratch their
head and say, what an impractical nut. Let him come now and argue
with us. Argue? I don't care. Give any
explanation you want. Bang your head against it. There
it is. Living monument. living monument, he that loses
his life shall save it. The church's willingness to give
itself to others in prayer, spending its prayer meetings, three quarters
to seven eighths of every prayer meeting, not praying for ourselves
but for others. And what does God do? He brings
blessing down upon our heads that we could never have if we
prayed a half a century for it. The great principle, lose your
life, you're fine. Give, it shall be given unto
you. Seek first the kingdom, these things will be added."
The willingness to share the personnel of this assembly. When
I go forth to preach, reluctantly leaving this dear people in my
own family to know that I'm not relinquished grudgingly, but
a people counted a privilege to send forth and share whatever
God has given to give to others. I just leave that with you, I
can't say any more. And finally, you men will remember,
I touched on this this morning, or this afternoon, the determination
to maintain that delicate tension between biblical idealism and
biblical realism in our life together. Dear Dr. A. W. Tozer, I'll never forget
whether he said it at a conference or said it to me in a personal
conversation, I can't recall, but I know he said it. He said,
young man, through the years, I found that having two churches
in my mind and before my heart has been a great benediction.
First of all, the church that I see when I turn to my Bible
of what the church ought to be and can be by the grace of God
and the power of the Spirit. And he said, that's the church
that's in my mind. That's the thing I pray that
God will bring to pass under my labors. Then he said, there's
another church. made up of the real people that
I must look upon and preach to and work with and weep with and
struggle with. And I seek in love to love them
and weep with them and care for them where they are while I labor
to see them brought to where they ought to be. Idealism, not simply accepting
the status quo. You remember Some of you have
heard, no doubt, when someone asks the preacher, he's always
using the term, status quo, status quo. And one of his members came
and said, preacher, what's the status quo? And he said, well,
sister, that's the mess we's in. That's the mess we's in. That's the status quo. I'm not
saying accept the status quo, but what I am saying is this,
in love, embrace people where they are. And by prayer and pains
and passionate preaching and loving counsel, seek to bring
them to where they ought to be. Don't be disillusioned because
you've got some unrealistic, unbiblical idealism. As we said
today, when people say with starry eyes, oh, to be the early church,
ask them which one. Which one? Which one? Because the churches I know about
in the Bible had their problems. some of them problems that make
ours pale into insignificance. When I've been ready to have
a pity party and be crippled and tie a juniper tree on my
back because I lost a friend or two, I read Paul saying, all
that are in Asia have forsaken me. I said, Lord, I've got it
easy. And when I get weary and irritated
because there aren't more men who share a given perspective,
I've never had to say, I have no man like mine save Timothy. And God, God has surrounded me
for years, always with at least three or four or five like-minded
men, committed to the same vision and purpose, standing shoulder
to shoulder in leadership, and then a host of others who share
it at lesser levels of intimacy. Oh, keep a biblical realism.
You see, if the devil can't get you, perpetuating the mess we're
in because you don't have any idealism, He'll get you crippled
in the pursuit of your idealism because you don't have enough
realism. So you need to keep that proper tension. May God
help us. Well, you've been patient while
I've tried to get out 18 years of things that I trust by God's
grace have at least to some little degree been proven in our life
together. And may the Lord help us all
to learn yet more of Him and to press on to the fullness of
the stature of Christ. Our Father, we thank you for
this evening together. We thank you for your Holy Word. We thank you that it is a lamp
unto our feet and a light to our pathway. And we give you
praise for whatever principles and precepts of that Word you
have taught us and enabled us to obey. But, O God, in that
very praise we must also acknowledge that we have left undone so much
that we ought to have done. Our light has exceeded our obedience
many times over, and in any area where we could have done all
that we should have done, we still would have to confess that
we were at best unprofitable servants. So have mercy upon
us, quicken us in your ways, And Lord, where your servants
especially need to have some of these perspectives hammered
out in their own thinking and burnt into their hearts, have
dealings with them, we pray. Hear our prayer and receive our
thanks and be with us as we part to go to our several homes. Take
us in safety and in peace and in the joy of the Holy Spirit,
we ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay.