Turn with me, if you would, back
to 1 John. Back to 1 John. Still in our series on the ecclesia
of Christ or the church of Christ. We've looked at the nature of
the church. We've looked at when did the church begin. Now we are looking at the gospel
of the church, the gospel message of the church. And we started
off looking and seeing that there is no other gospel, that we are
not to receive or to believe or to trust or to acknowledge
any other gospel except the gospel that has been given by the Lord Jesus Christ. And
we see in 1 John, actually 2 John, I'm sorry, 2 John, verse 9, 2 John, verse 9, we read, whosoever transgresseth
and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ hath not God. He that abideth in the doctrine
of Christ, he hath both the Father and the Son. If there come any
unto you and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house,
neither bid him Godspeed. For he that bid him Godspeed
is a partaker of his evil deeds. And then we also read over in Let's see, I believe it was in
Romans. Well, let's go again. Go ahead and go to Galatians chapter one. Paul wrote, I marvel that ye
are so removed from him that called you into the grace of
Christ and to another gospel, which is not another, but there
be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we are an angel from
heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have
preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before,
so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto
you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I
now persuade men, or God, or do I seek to please men? For
if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ. But I certify you, brethren,
that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man, for I
neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by revelation,
of Jesus Christ. And so we see here that John
tells us that we are not to accept any other doctrine. If somebody
comes and they have not the doctrine of Christ, then we are not to
receive them into the house or into the church. We're not to
receive them into the church. And we are neither to bid them
Godspeed, We're also not to be partakers of their evil deed. The Bible says that, again, I
draw this out because a lot of people draw hard lines here. And people that don't agree with
these things, they think that we're being hateful and sectarian
and exclusive and judgmental and things like that, and that
we're trying to look into people's hearts to see whether or not
they're elect or not. That's not what we're saying. All we're
saying is God has given us as the church. If you remember back
when we were talking about the nature of the church and the
beginning of the church, and then we're eventually going to
get into this when we talk about the commission of the church,
which will be coming up soon. We see that Christ has given
judgment in the church for those who profess to be children of
grace or Christians. Okay, there is judgment that
takes place And he's given that judgment in the church. And so
whenever someone comes to us and desires to have membership
and fellowship with us here, if they do not come with the
doctrine of Christ, then we are not to receive them into the
house and that we are not to partake of their evil deeds.
So that means that not only do I not receive them into here
to preach, and the minister, we don't receive them into our
membership because they're not believing the doctrine of Christ,
the gospel of Christ, then I also, I don't do anything that promotes
their stuff. You know, we talked back whenever
Billy Graham died, you know, Billy Graham was a very influential
and famous evangelist, yet he did not preach the doctrine of
Christ. And many people, came to that false gospel. Many people
fell away from that false gospel, if you can even believe that.
But anyway, there's this false gospel. Well, anything that we
would do to encourage that, that would be partaking in his evil
deeds. So anything that I would have to do with another church
that is preaching a false gospel, we would be partaking in their
evil deeds. For it says, for he that biddeth
in God's speed is partaker of his evil deeds. And what other designation does
it say there? Those who do not have the doctrine
of Christ, he says, have not God. So see, it's not being judgmental
and calling, you know, whenever we look at these Armenian, whenever
we look at these Armenians that are out there that have a zeal
for God, that have a religious activity You know, they go to
church every Sunday, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night
if they have services. They give money on a weekly basis. They go visit the sick. They
go visit the poor. They preach sermons from the
pulpit. They pray. All this stuff that
they might do, yet the Bible here says that if they have not
this doctrine, or if they transgress in this doctrine, then they have
not God. Okay? So can we, on the outside, examine
someone's profession of faith and say whether or not we should
call them brothers or sisters in Christ? Yes. How do we do
that? By the gospel. That is the thing
that we judge by, is by the God. We don't judge by how many works
they do. We don't judge by how much money they give, how much
they pray, or how much they travel the world and evangelize in their
doctrine. We don't judge by those things.
We don't judge by their moral turnaround. We don't judge by
how much they keep the Ten Commandments. We don't judge by how much they
are humanitarian to the poor, and to the widows, and to the
orphans, and to the homeless. We don't judge by that. We judge by a very few things. Do they love God? Do they love
the brethren? And when we say brethren, we
don't just mean those who claim to be Christians. Do they love
the ones who are holding the gospel? Those are who the brethren
are, are the ones who are holding the true gospel. Do they love
the brethren and serve the brethren? And do they here have the doctrine
of Christ? These are the things that we
see on the outward appearance where we know, are we going to
make mistakes sometimes? Yeah, we might make mistakes.
Will we let somebody in here that we thought had all three
of these things, but yet turned out to be not? Yeah, that's going
to happen. And whatever it does, what has
God done for us? What has Christ given us? Well,
within the church, he's given us church discipline. At that
point, if someone begins to show through that they've been a wolf
in sheep's clothing, so to speak, then we, by church discipline,
we remove them out. We try to correct them, rebuke
them, reprove them, instruct them in righteousness by God's
word. If they do not listen to that, if they do not repent from
that false teaching, then we have to remove them from fellowship. And if they are the child of
Christ, then that taking them out is what's going to bring
them back in, okay? That's how God has designed that,
is from that conviction, the work of the Holy Spirit, that
seclusion, that removal from fellowship of God's people. That
is how God does that. And so we're not saying that
they're saved and lost, we're just saying that they're in error.
And to be in the house of God, the church, they need to believe
the gospel, the doctrine of Christ. And so yes, we can make these
outward judgments by these three things. Do they love God? Do
they love the true brethren? And do they have the doctrine
of Christ? And so then in Galatians, Paul
writes that if anybody comes with anything other than the
doctrine of Christ, it says that that's another gospel. He says, matter of fact, this
is such a grievous thing that he said, let him be accursed.
Let him be accursed. He says, don't listen to it.
Don't receive it. Matter of fact, don't touch it.
Don't mess with it. Get away from that, because that
false doctrine is dangerous. Dangerous to the point that anyone
who holds to that, preaches that, teaches that, promotes that,
supports that, let him be accursed. See, today we've become so watered
down in churches that we do not realize that the danger of even
the slightest turn of the truth. Are we all going to have perfect
knowledge? Absolutely not. I'm not going to have perfect
knowledge. I stand here as the pastor and preacher here, and
I will have error. That error has to be corrected
by God's Word. So I'm not saying that we're
all infallible and all of our understanding is perfect. But
what I'm saying is there is the essential of the doctrine of
Christ that he preached that we can go and we can read that
and know those things. And those things are prevalent.
Matter of fact, Jesus even, as we'll read here in a little bit,
Jesus even says those who are born of God, those who have God
in them, who are of God, hear these words and believe these
words. and follow His voice, and understanding
those words, and holding to those words. And so, Paul here is telling
them, listen, you guys have heard the truth, and now you're listening
to somebody else that has a half-truth, and you're beginning to get off
base, and you're beginning to listen to that half-truth, and
that half-truth is going to completely wreck your day. It's going to
completely wreck everything. Stay away from that. Anybody
who comes with something other than what I give you, which I
got from Christ himself. So it's basically Christ, what
Christ gives you, then let it be a curse. And so that's what
Paul said. Now look with me in Romans chapter
16. Romans chapter 16. Again, recapping
what we've already talked about the last two or three weeks and
specifically last week. Romans 16, look at verse 17. It says, Now I beseech you, brethren...
Again, he's speaking to the brethren. Mark them which cause divisions
and offenses contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned,
and avoid them. For they that are such serve
not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly And by good words
and fair speeches, deceive the hearts of the simple. Whenever I look at those two
verses right there, and specifically verse 18, I see myself before
the Lord brought me and converted me to the truth of the gospel.
I see myself in all the years that I preached and teached in
the Armenian free will, decisionism circles. I see myself there. I did this with a false deceit,
thinking that I was doing it for other people. But to be honest,
looking back on that, I did a lot of it because I love to preach.
Second of all, I did it to get people saved so that I can tout,
hey, look how many people came to the office today after my
message. Look how many people we added to our membership. Look
how many people we have now on our roll. All those things are,
no, they're not the prominent things that we thought about,
but yet we always talked about those things. We always, in the
back of our mind, would have those things. I at least speak
for myself. I don't know about anybody else. But whenever you
look, and I look from the outside now, looking back in, and see
where all the literature they talk about is how many baptisms
we get. When they talk about how big
their churches are, and the numbers are, and how many people they've
led to the Lord. Seeing people that make posts
on Facebook about, in our ministry, we have seen 1.5 million people
come to the Lord through our ministry. Well, what's that all
about? What is that? Are you advertising
how effective your preaching is? Are you advertising how effective
your singing is? Are you advertising how effective
your church entity is? I mean, what are you advertising
there? And so I find this right here. They that come with a doctrine
contrary to the doctrine that was given to them, which they
had learned from Christ, or in this case from Paul, who had learned it from Christ,
if they come with the doctrine contrary to that which was given
to them by Christ, what does it say about those people? No
matter how good they are, now remember this, no matter how
good they are, no matter how dedicated they are, no matter
how zealous they are, And no matter how much effectiveness
that looks like their ministry has, what does it say? For they
that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ. But you say, well,
wait a minute, they say that they're serving the Lord. Yeah,
you can say you're serving the Lord Jesus Christ. I can go out
across the street right now, and I hope nobody takes this
in a wrong way, and I hope it doesn't trigger people. But I
can go across the street over here to Dollar General. I can
blow that building up. And then run out there in the
street and say, praise be to Allah. I do this in the name
of Allah. And so I'm serving Allah. OK? Well, the people from the Middle
East are probably going to look at me and say, no, you're not
doing that in the name of Allah because you're not even one of
us. I could do that and come out in the middle of the street
and I say, I'm doing that in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, because I said it, does that mean it? No. No, the Lord
Jesus Christ didn't tell me to go over and do that. Blow that
up. Well, the false gospel adherents,
just because they have a likeness, just because they have an appearance,
just because they have a zeal for God, it's not according to
knowledge, and it's not according to the gospel. And so even though it looks like
they're serving Christ, in the eyes of Christ, they're not serving
Him. He says, for they that are such
serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly. You can
say what you want. We can say what we want, brethren.
But this is God's assessment of those who preach and teach
and hold to the false doctrines of the day. For they that are such serve
not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own bellies and by good
words and fair speeches. There's a lot of them, listen.
There's a lot of them. Good orators. Oh, listen, man,
they can outline a message. They can outline a sermon. Listen,
Adrian Rogers, that guy could outline a sermon. have all of
the alliteration where all of his points started with the same
letters, or rhyming words. All of them
had rhyming words. And I'm not putting that down
and saying that's necessarily wrong. But a lot of times, the
flash of preachers make us think that, man, they're really mighty
in the ministry. because they're great speakers,
because they're charismatic, because they're well versed,
because of their, again, their sermon outlining skills. But
it says, but by good words and fair speeches, they deceive the
hearts of the simple. Who are the simple? Those who
have yet to learn correctly. Those who still are babes and
immature in Christ, who are immature in the word of God, And so they
deceive them. So what do we do? Do we just
keep saying, I'll just keep on going there. I'll just keep listening
to him. Do we go and entertain that?
Do we go and say, hey, let's go. Let's go promote that. No, it says here, he says, they're
deceiving the hearts of the simple. And so he says there, mark them
out that cause divisions. and offenses. What kind of offenses? Well, you can offend the simple
minded who do not know by teaching them wrong doctrine. Not offensive
where they're mad and upset. You can offend them by giving
them what they don't need. See, if I fed my kids, if I fed
my kids candy every day, three meals a day, fill their bellies
full of candy, then I would be offending my kids. I would be
causing an offense to my kids by giving them candy. They're
just like, I'm giving them something that's not good for them. And
so given a new immature Christian, someone who is beginning to study
the God's word and to learn and to understand things, listen,
for the one who has teached them false doctrine, they're bringing
an offense to them. And it says here to mark them
out and have nothing to do with them and to avoid them. So we
had those warnings last week. We've seen those warnings. Very
strict warnings, I believe. Listen, I've really had to reassess
myself and fellowship and family and things like that because
this is pretty staunch stuff that the Lord says. Don't receive,
don't let them Come and be. Now, that doesn't mean that if
somebody comes with the doctrine contrary to Christ, they come,
they visit and everything, and they're wanting to see and learn.
And who knows, the Lord may be turning their hearts and bring
them to the truth and things like that. We don't meet them
at the door and kick them out and say, oh, no, what's your
doctrine? We've got to give you a little test and all like that.
No, what does that mean? That if they come, for one, we're
not quick to just bring them into the membership, open up
the Lord's table, open up the baptistry, to baptize the Lord's
table, to bring them into making decisions as a church. We don't
do that right away until what? We've examined them and their
doctrine, to listen to their profession of faith. What do
they believe about the gospel? And then we can go from there.
So very harsh words, but words indeed from Christ. Now, so now
the question is, what is the doctrine of Christ? What is it
that Christ taught that we should hold to? I don't know, some of
y'all probably don't deal with this as much as me or some of
the other preachers do, that get in some entanglements in
discussions around different circles or in Facebook, and maybe
you do. But if you have, you've probably
heard But this whole issue of, well, just how much do you have
to know to actually believe in the gospel? And we talked about
it last week. It's kind of what we've been
looking about. The Bible says, Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians,
matter of fact, turn there real quick, because I was actually
going to read that before I start talking. Over in 1 Corinthians
chapter 2, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians chapter
15. Look at verse 1. 1 Corinthians 15 verse 1. Moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have
received, and wherein ye stand. Okay, so Paul is saying to these
Corinthians, not only have I done this before, but I continue to
do this. I declare unto you, that's the gospel, that's now,
he's declaring the gospel to them, which I preached unto you,
that's past tense, that means he's done it before, and wherein
ye stand, where he's asking them to continue in. I preached it
to you, I'm still preaching it to you, and you need to stand
in it. You need to continue in this
gospel. By which also ye are saved if ye keep in memory what
I preached unto you, unless ye believed in vain. Now, is he
talking about eternal salvation? Is he talking about justification
there? No. You're not saved by keeping in
memory the gospel. You're not saved by even believing
the gospel, as a matter of fact. you believe the gospel because
you've been saved. What does he mean by which he
are saved if you keep in memory of what I preached unto you,
unless you believed in vain? What does he mean? What kind
of saved is he talking about there? Well, the saved that he's
talking about there is that if we believe and keep in retention
and stand in the gospel, then we will be saved from judgment. from God's judgment upon us. If you remember back in Revelation,
Jesus wrote to the seven churches, and they were churches. Legitimate
local assemblies. And they were filled with believers.
And they had pastors who were preaching to those congregations.
And Jesus sent letters. Why? Because they began to err
from the truth. And what did Jesus say? or I will remove your candlestick,
right? See, there can be a judgment
upon us that if we do not stand in the gospel, if we do not continue
in the doctrine of Christ, that Christ can just remove the candlestick
altogether here. What is a candlestick? It's a
bearer of the light, right? It's the one who holds forth
the light. We're holding forth the light
here in Joplin. Who's the light? Christ. He's the light. We're
holding forth Christ in Joplin as his church here. And so Christ
can easily remove the candlestick, the one who bears the light.
He didn't say he would remove the light. He said he would remove
the candlestick, the one that bears the light. He can remove
us if we move away from this gospel. And he says, by which
also ye are saved. So this Corinthian church is
going to be saved from judgment, can be saved from judgment. Also,
it will keep you saved from turmoil. Hardships, but know what else
it can keep you safe from? Wrong thinking. Why do we continue
to preach the gospel? Why do I get on these little
side issues like right now we're talking about the church and
actually the church is a very important thing. Right next to
the gospel, the doctrine of the church is very important. Because
the gospel is preached by the church, through the church, in
the church. The preachers of the gospel come
up in the church, ordained by the church, sent by the church.
The church is very an integral part of the Christian life next
to the gospel. But whenever we start getting
off on side things like, you know, husband and wife relationships
or children, raising children or financial things and all that
kind of stuff, whenever we get to preach on those things, you
know, we preach on those things once in a while. But what's our
main focus here? I would hope, and trying to think
back over the tenure of the time that I've been here, if you could
categorize my messages, does the majority of it come
up preaching the gospel, or does the majority of it come up preaching
other things? Well, I hope that it's been preaching
the gospel. I'm almost afraid to go back
and look now, now that I've made that comment. But what do we do? We continue
to preach the gospel because it saves us from false gospels. Why did the Galatians begin to
err and follow the Judaizers that wanted them to go back into
observing the law for keeping of salvation? Because they began
to listen and let the Judaizers in? How did the Corinthian church
begin to err? Because they didn't deal with
those who were perverting the gospel, those who were misappropriating or misusing
the gifts of the spirit, those who were in error. And that error, a little bit
by a little bit by a little bit, began to contaminate the whole.
And so whenever we preach the gospel and the doctrine of Christ,
it will have a sanitary or a cleansing effect within the church, and
thus the church is saved. We are saved by that. So this
salvation is not talking about eternal salvation. It says, by
which also ye are saved if ye keep in memory which I preached
unto you, unless ye believed in vain. Meaning that if you're
really not a believer and you're just making head knowledge of
this and it doesn't really hit you to the heart, it's not gonna
have any effect on you. He says, for I delivered unto
you first of all that which I also received. So again, he is reiterating
the fact that this gospel, this message, this doctrine, isn't
Paul's made up, thought up doctrine, that it came from Jesus Christ.
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received
how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according
to the Scriptures. And so here we see Paul has made
very clear that the gospel that he delivered unto them was how
Christ died according to the Scriptures, how Christ was buried,
and how He rose again according to the Scriptures. And I made
a comment last week It's vitally important that we understand
that phrase, according to the Scriptures, was put in there
by the Holy Spirit for a specific reason. It wasn't just willy-nilly
wrote down by Paul, who was just having a good time writing all
these great doctrinal letters. All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God. Not one jot, not one tittle of
those things which Paul wrote down He wrote down of his own
accord, because these scriptures are not of men, they are of God.
They are inspired of God. And so whenever he wrote that
down according to the scriptures, he was placing an emphasis on
the fact that we're not talking about the mere fact or historical
record of Christ dying, being buried in a tomb, and resurrecting
again. He's not saying that that is
the gospel. He's saying the gospel is how
Christ died according to the scriptures. And we took some
time last week to look at those. We looked at Psalms 22, where
it gives that full account of what Christ felt and what Christ
went through as he hung on the cross. And as we've seen towards
the end of Psalms 22, who was that for and who was the ones
declaring the glory of what happened in that? It was those who were
in the congregation. Those who are in the congregation.
Those who are those saved and died for by Christ. Who was the
one that Christ was dying for? Those in the congregation. We've
seen in Isaiah 53 that He was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised for our iniquities. That He had laid upon Him the
iniquity of us all. And who was the us all? Those
who He would justify. The many. As a matter of fact,
it said the many. It didn't say all. It said the
many. He has saved all of the many.
He has came for the all of the many, but it's only the many,
M-A-N-Y, many. And who were those? The ones
who was his seed. He shall see his seed. He shall
prolong his days. He shall see the travail of his
soul and be satisfied. And so we see that he died according
as the way God designed it. He would hang on a tree. The
iniquities of us all would be laid upon him. So he was dying
for our sins. Whose sins? The sins of the many,
the sins of the seed, the sins of the elect. And by his righteous servant,
many shall be justified. Boom, right there. His death
brought justification for everyone for whom he died. So if all we
say is, you know, we believe that Jesus died and was buried
and resurrected, well, the Armenians believe that. But yet they don't
believe that everyone for whom Christ died for, justification
has been laid to their account. Even before they believed. They don't believe that Jesus
only died for his people. They believe that there are going
to be Christians in hell, basically. Because they believe that redemption
is universal. Jesus redeemed them. And so they
believe that there are going to be people in hell that Jesus
died for. See, that's not how Jesus died
according to the scriptures. So to say that, oh, as long as
they believe the nutshell of the gospel that Jesus died for
them, and that only by his death they can be saved, and that he
resurrected for them, that they might be justified, that's not
the gospel. That's part of the gospel, that's
a very fine, minute part of the gospel, but that's not the gospel.
The gospel is that he died for his people, and his people only,
and that they, in that death, was completely, totally saved,
and there is nothing else that they need to do. There's nothing
that they need to do, period. But someone said, You're meaning
you're wanting them to hold to the five points of Calvinism.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying I want them to hold
to the doctrine of Christ. What did Christ teach? So let's
turn now to John. I tell you what, let's take a
break. We'll take a break right there and we'll come back. And
we'll start looking at what the doctrine that Christ actually
preached. And is the five points actually
found in the teaching of Christ? So we'll take a break and we'll
come back and jump in.