Amen. All right, we're in Acts
chapter 14. If you will, we're gonna continue
where we left off last time, establishing biblical leadership,
which is in verse 23. And when they had ordained elders
in every church and had prayed with fasting, they commended
them to the Lord on whom they believed. And we pressed home
at length last week, the biblical model of church government and
church leadership And I don't know if we worked it through
enough to satisfy some of us who may be wondering, does the
Bible actually have an explicit framework for church government
that is unquestionable or unassailable? And we would say, yes, like with
any kind of government, the church is God's representative on earth
and that government is made up largely of elders, as we saw
last week, and deacons, although the term elder carried with it
three connotations. And so we'll go back to that
briefly and deal with basically the challenge that you and I
have in a postmodern culture around leadership, period. Elders
and deacons. We saw that the characteristics
of both elders and deacons was fundamentally first that they
were what? Male. Male. That was the primary
thing that we looked at in 1 Timothy chapter 3. It would be in Titus
chapters 1 and 2 as well. 1 Timothy chapter 2, 2 Samuel
23, Exodus chapter 18, and a number of verses in the scriptures,
both old and new, that sets down the precedent of biblical leadership,
being exclusively particularly in the church male male that
the Bishop or The overseer we we looked at that term at first
Timothy 3 1 We saw that the term Bishop is the Greek term Episcopate
or Episcopal and Episcopate is the way we could break it down
in the English to scope or to see and or in another way is
to watch. And so what a bishop is, is an
overseer, someone who is called upon to watch the flock. And the other term is elder. That's what you have in the first
verse. Um, I think Noah's bishop for that it's elder in Titus
and in Peter and in our ex acts account elder is the word for
Presbyteria that you have in your English Bible. So a Presbyterian is an elder.
He can be a physical person of age. Generally in the first century,
you qualified in Israel to be an elder at about the age of
30. Anywhere from 30 to 35, you are qualified to be a Presbyterian
or an elder, one who was legitimately of age to be brought into either
the Sanhedrin, leadership, these were lawyers and scholars on
a theological level, or the priesthood. If you were to look in the Old
Testament in the book of Numbers, that the priests were to be brought
into the functional role of service, both the priest and the Levites
at 30 to 35 years of age. That pattern did not break when
our Lord came into ministry. He was about 30 years old when
the Lord, when his father called him into ministry. You can read
that for yourself in the Gospels. He technically was about 36 or
37 when we actually do the numbers and the math around the time
of his birth, because he was not born in the year zero nor
in the year 1 AD. He was born somewhere three to
seven years before the year zero. And so if he died in AD 33, which
is the old view, or AD 32, he would have been somewhere between
37 and 38 years old when he died. that puts him in the ballpark
of leadership. He couldn't have been younger
than that because the rabbis wouldn't have paid him much attention,
and that's why you read in 1 Timothy that the leadership cannot be
a novice, as you might state. Go with me to 1 Timothy 3 just
to reaffirm that. In the leadership, you cannot
have babies in the ministry. And I mean not only in the sense
of novices, those who are young and those who are not qualified
because Paul makes it very clear in 1st Timothy what will happen
if you bring someone in who is spiritually immature. Notice
what it says in verse 6. Not a novice, that's a newborn
in the faith, lest being lifted up with what? Pride, he fall
into the condemnation of the devil. So leadership has to be
someone who is chronologically old enough to have had enough
experience in life to actually bear the responsibilities of
spiritual guidance. But he also must be mature enough
in the faith to actually handle spiritual realities. He can't
be someone that you vote in because you like him or because he's
handsome. That's King Saul of the Old Testament,
head and shoulders above the rest. Everybody fell in love
with him the moment they saw him, even Samuel. They couldn't believe that he
was not God's man because he looked at like everyone's political
dream. But the text tells us that he
cannot be a novice less being lifted up with pride. He fall
into the condemnation of the devil. So what's the connection
between a mature person and an immature person and the area
or the concept of pride. What's the connection? The word
is experience. The connection between a poor,
a mature person and an immature person in relationship to pride
is the word experience. When you are young, you are too
ignorant to know that you don't know much and that you don't
have much by way of spiritual resources to actually fight the
battles of the Lord or to engage even in spiritual activities
that really require wisdom. As you get older, what you discover
are your weaknesses and your strengths and your failures and
your pitfalls. And when you walk honestly with
the Lord, you realize that you need his grace to help you in
everything that you do. That comes with experience and
experience only. so that the mature person is
not the person that's walking around with a multitude of accolades
or accomplishments or degrees. Those are not bad, but his confidence
lies in his maturity. He's learned some things about
life. And the person that's going to be in a position of leadership
has to be humble before God. He has to know that he is marked
out for the enemy's taunts accusations and assaults if he doesn't walk
humble enough to be able to Draw near to God so that he can do
his work. So he must not be a novice lest he fall into Into the pride
and condemnation of the devil. Remember the devil fell through
what? Don't even second-guess it. That's
Isaiah chapter 14 in your own time. It was through pride Here
the devil now is serving as an antithesis to are in juxtaposition
over to the leadership in the terrestrial realm, right? So
we would assume then that the devil had a very significant
place of leadership in heaven among the angels. A lot of people
build a lot of theology around the devil, but be very careful.
The Bible does not lead the saint into a large anthem of theology
around the devil. The Bible is clear that you and
I are to avoid him resist him, oppose him, and spend very little
time talking about him. Not to deny him, but to oppose
him and to not glorify him. So the Bible does not give you
so many pieces of the puzzle that you can build an anthem
of theology around the devil. Most of that that's done is piece
milling secular pagan ideas with scripture around how the devil
fell from the third loft out of the choir in heaven. He was
the lead worshipper in heaven. All of that kind of stuff is
purely pagan. How he actually ends up being
ruler over hell and having the keys of death, that's purely
pagan. It's not biblical. The devil
doesn't run hell. God does. You got that? The devil never has. The devil
never has been running anything but a host of fallen angels who
are condemned right along with himself. God has always controlled
hell. The limited powers that were
given to the devil were the consequence of the fall of mankind that would
advance the purpose of God in the area of redemption. But God
makes it clear, pride goeth before a what? Fall. And so this is
where we are in the biblical model of leadership. where we're
going to press home a few things. So I say primarily what we are
dealing with is male leadership. You don't find anywhere in the
New Testament where God gives qualifications for women to be
leaders in the church. You don't have any of that in
the scriptures. So when we are dealing with our present 21st
century postmodern progressive culture, which we're going to
be exercising a lot of our senses and the contrast between a biblical
model and a postmodern model in our women's theology class,
so that they might know how to answer the questions. When you're
dealing with a postmodern progressive culture like ours, what you're
dealing with is a continuum of change based upon cycles and
patterns that are inherent in the political structures of our
world. The political structures of our
world operate in what we call a cycle of patterns and change. that progress this world towards
its final demise. It's a pattern of change, a cycle. When you understand politics
correctly, you understand that politics is a pro-con dialectical
process, a thesis antithesis dialectical process of oppositions
operating and pitting themselves against each other with the objective
of actually producing a new cycle of conflicts. Did you guys get
that? That's what we call politics. The dialectical process is a
system that is rooted in an original paradigm and then a paradigm
that opposes the original paradigm. and the two go at war with each
other until the original paradigm succumbs to the new paradigm
and the two then create what we call a consensus or a synthesis. This cycle is inherent in what
you and I observably watch every day in our world in politics,
the battles that go on philosophically and ideologically as to what's
best for culture. The two sides are always at war,
whether it's the conservatives against the liberals, or the
Republicans against the Democrats, or the socialists against the
liberals, the progressives against the liberals. That's your next
cycle. Most of us have existed for the
last, some of you are babies, but many of us have been around
since the 60s, where the conservative and the liberal parties being
Republican and Democrat basically were the stage scenario of conflicts
in terms of ideologies around the world. People who were more
conservative economically and spiritually and practically would
identify largely, not exclusively, with conservative values because
conservative values held to old traditional norms that often
had their roots in scripture. Liberal views were constantly
challenging what we call the norms. but they were challenging
the norms because of extremes within the ranks of the conservative
traditional model. This is your antithesis battle. So what you discovered when you
were growing up is that there were things in the conservative
model that you agreed with, but there were also things in the
liberal model that you agreed with. Can I get a witness? But
you largely yielded one to another based upon several requisites,
your own personal temperament, See, your own temperament plays
a lot, plays a big role in what you choose to do and whom you
choose to associate with. Whether you know it or not, your
personality is a major player, a major sort of indicator of
the direction you're gonna go into in terms of how you're gonna
identify yourself with a certain group. And then your culture
is gonna play another role in it. If you grew up in a culture
that was highly conservative, let's say church-like, If you
grew up in the church, and the church was a conservative church,
Bible church, it believed in the fidelity of marriage, it
believed in hard work, it believed in maintaining sexual purity,
it believed in some of the basic principles of the Ten Commandments.
If you grew up in that culture, then when you heard the planks,
the ideological planks of the conservatives over against the
liberals, You were more inclined to lean toward the conservatives,
particularly on moral issues, because the liberals were always
knocking on the door of the old needs to dissipate. It needs
to fall away. It has too many strictures, too
many confinements, too many constraints on it. I was a liberal view because
after all inherent in the concept of liberalism is freedom. But
when you listen to what they wanted you to be free from, you
might have agreed with some of those fundamentals, depending
again on your cultural makeup, your temperament, your gender. If you were a female, you like
liberal views because liberals were extricating you from the
traditional paradigms of marriage and family and having babies.
So you didn't really mind hearing about libertarian ideas and doctrines
because it actually favored your inherent desire for freedom.
But once you really began to understand the larger plank and
platforms of liberalism, you saw that they were actually opening
the door to moral practices and ideas that you weren't comfortable
with because you grew up in a traditional value system. Are you following
me? This is what we call the dialectical process of taking
theories and throwing them in the pot and making them fight
it out with a determined outcome so that we can progress. Because
if two opposing views continue to hostilely oppose each other,
you get nowhere. Are you following me? So when
you're dealing with a thesis antithesis paradigm, it's assumed
that at some point you're going to stop fighting because we want
to move forward, right? Well, that's the way the world
works. And so today, The word that used
to be despicable, both in the eyes of liberals and conservatives
is the watchword that dominates our whole culture right now.
It's called socialism. It dominates the whole world
because once again, within a socialist play, there are many ideas in
it that you would agree with, but it's fundamental premise
is rooted in a total rebellion against the old as well. and
a full-fledged embracing of a new system that is untenable for
the Christian who actually believes the Bible. So how much of an
impact does politics make on a biblical worldview? This is
how it goes. This is why these issues matter.
If you actually hold to a biblical worldview, you are embracing
a model that is stative and fixed. It does not move. It does not
progress. It does not transform. It does
not modify. It does not reshape itself, at
least not within the core structures of its ontology. And this is
why, for women especially, We're going to have a good time in
our women's theology class because I'm going to exercise your senses
over against the godly women, how they dealt with a culture
that today would be completely unacceptable in this world. How
did they succeed in honoring God in a culture that was hyper-patriarchal
and monarchial in nature? That's something you and your
daughters and granddaughters need to know. Because you will
not be able to do biblical Christianity in the 21st century unless you
know how to do biblical Christianity in the face of the present system,
which is hostilely opposed to a biblical model. So now what
I share with you was called, was Hegel's, Friedrich Hegel's
dialectical process. It's a common philosophical construct
in terms of his phenomenology, his view of the world, how things
work. A lot of people know it. It's a design and paradigm used
in all your colleges. and all your businesses to create
change. It was used as a model in Rick
Warren's church growth paradigm many years ago when the church
has decided to really grow, they opened the doors to a compromise
of biblical truth just because they wanted numbers. So your
end game is really what's in view, not your premise, not your
theses, not your original design, it's the end game. And so if
you are a Christian professing to believe the Bible, You've
got challenges in front of you because the world is moving on.
So how do you live biblically in a world that's moving on when
the word of God says stand still? More than that, how do you live
a biblical worldview in a world that's moving on, which is also
saying we will destroy you if you choose to stand still. And
again, this is a matter for both sexes really. The man is on the
losing end right now and the woman is on the deceptive end.
Men are losing, women are being deceived. Because the big price
that they are paying for their freedom is freedom from God. Are you guys following what I'm
saying right now? The price they're paying is a loss of a relationship
with the biblical God. Now, if you actually can navigate
your way through scripture, you'll find that that was the original
assault by the devil on Eve in Genesis 3, verses 1 through 7.
That was the assault. That's where we are today. Now,
the reason I'm going in a roundabout way in dealing with our account
is because if you actually deal with theological principles in
a vacuum, people won't know what to do with them. And if a vacuum
is actually the canvas or the backdrop to your life where you
don't know how to contextualize scripture, you won't know what
to do with biblical precepts in the culture in which you live.
How does first Timothy three practically apply itself in a
culture where the majority of your women are the ones who are
getting degrees, finishing colleges and occupying all of the offices
today. And men are being relegated to
janitors by and large. And so you read your Bible and
you see this strong male precedent. Well, if you're a liberal progressive,
what you have to do is destroy the literal grammar of scripture,
take the male out, put a female in there. Isn't that true? At
that point, you're at war with God. But you got a way of solving
that. You know what that is? The Bible is written by men.
It's not really God's word. So we can change it, modify it
to make it work. Now the Bible is a bunch of wax
dough to shape and form just like every other book. You guys
follow what I'm getting at. So why I am taking the time to
actually talk about the work of the gospel, strengthening
and confirming the church and the context of establishing biblical
leadership is because probably in the next 10 to 20 years, Most
people in the world are going to be laughing at anyone who
would think that the Bible teaches male leadership Governing the
church at all Because the world is not going to look like anything
that the Bible models That brings us back to the actual original
purpose for which God establishes the manifestation of his kingdom
in the world Why does God establish the manifestation of his kingdom
in the world? whether it was a patriarchal
period in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or the theocratic
period of the days of Moses all the way up to Samuel, the theocratic
kingdom, where the world had to look at this crazy looking
tent. And there were 12 tribes surrounding this tent. And that
tent was the center of worship and identity for these people
whom God had taken from Egypt and put in the land of Canaan
and told them that they would be the priests of the world.
So the whole world gets to look at this kingdom manifestation
called the theocracy of God in national Israel. And then it
moves to a monarchial system, as you and I know, which is going
to be the basic framework for our women's theology class. And
the monarchial system now is head on with all of the other
monarchial kingdoms in the world. So Israel is right there in the
pocket with the rest of the world's systems. 1500 years before Christ, a thousand
years rather before Christ. It's a kingdom like every other
kingdom in the world. And how does it operate looking
like all the other kingdoms of the world when it's supposed
to be God's kingdom? And then Jesus comes along, the
Lord Jesus, and he starts the church. I will build my church
and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And once
the church is started, what does the church look like? It looks
like a system that is fundamentally counter-cultural. It looks like
a system that is fundamentally counter-cultural. What do you
mean? Well, this is the beginning of the government of the church,
what you're looking at in Acts 15. When Paul goes back to these
little fellowships that are organically developed around men and women
who simply hear the gospel and start little fellowships in their
home, they don't have leadership. Everybody's sitting around talking
and maybe there might be one or two individuals that know
a little bit more about their Bibles than the rest and so they
have to come along and Establish leadership so that the church
can actually continue to form into the image that it was designed
to form into so the Holy Spirit said set up elders and deacons
to govern the body and Now you are hearing within this framework
of Christianity that leadership must be male, that leadership
must be male and married, that leadership must be male married
and actually able to govern their children or else they can't lead
the house of God. Isn't that what we read? Is that
what we read last week, ladies and gentlemen? Okay, so what
we are dealing with is the final covenant model, like I said last
week. You guys know the three models,
father, son, king, servant. What's the last one? Right. So that husband wife model is
what the kingdom of God is supposed to be exalting represented by
the church. The church is supposed to be
representing to the world what it's like to be a man and a woman
who is fully committed to the purposes of God in a culture
that's going contrary to it. So that when the world looks
at the church, what it sees is people who have all of the necessary
resources, commonwealth, benefits, and blessings, instructions,
and covenant, and promises of God, that it can be a people
of itself, self-contained, without any need from the world, so that
it can actually form into the image that God wants it to, i.e.,
man and wife and family. It's called the family of God.
So that model is going to be something different than the
world, isn't it? Theoretically speaking. Theoretically
speaking, the kingdom of God is supposed to be different than
the world. By the way, when was the church,
whether it's a local church or a denomination, takes up a biblical
worldview, a biblical model of government, it now knows it's
at open war with the world. A biblical model is at open war
with the world. It now will see if the true and
the living God is able to keep her in the midst of all of the
hostilities that will come at the church from the world, wanting
to destroy this testimony of the Neo Noah's Ark in the midst
of a culture that's about to be deluged, not with water, but
fire, right? That's what the church ostensibly
is supposed to be. So when people come inside from outside, being
immersed in, born and conceived and grown up in the culture and
the soil of a liberal progressive ideology, which for them is all
they know, and then they come into a church that actually believes
and preaches the Bible, literally, historically, grammatically,
theologically, and redemptively, and call us to a heterosexual
binary sexual paradigm, against the whole span of free sex identity
that's going on in our world, you have to ask the question,
so who am I going to identify with? Right? You have to ask
that question because whatever side you choose, you're going
to war against the other side because you're part of the dialectical
process now. What do you mean, pastor? God's
thesis is the biblical church. The world's thesis is an anti-biblical
church model. That's the system of Satan who
sets up either a pseudo church that basically looks like the
world or an anti-church that basically persecutes the church.
That's the book of Revelation, by the way. You guys know that,
right? The two beasts, politics and religion going after the
church to destroy it through either seduction infiltration
into the church to transform it into its own image or External
persecution to kill it and extinguish it because it's standing for
the testimony of God As a there's a time coming shortly here where
the idea that there's only two genders will probably probably
be outlawed There will come a time where you will have to pay for
saying that person is a male His DNA betrays him Not what
he looks like or how many body parts they swapped when they
took him to the hospital because he wanted to have a sex change.
Right? When, when, once you start actually
dealing with original design, you're dealing with now God being
the author of creation and you're going to be opposing this, this
synthetic system that the devil is building up. What's fascinating
about what I'm talking about is that this same hostility goes
on in your world right now. This is why I say there's some
complexities, because there are a lot of things about social
progressives that I actually appreciate. The moral platform
is completely corrupt, but what I do appreciate about them is
their antithesis and their hostility towards a corruption in the present
system, i.e., let's just take food as an example. Our world
is so corrupt today that before long, almost all of the food
that you and I will be eating will be synthetic and designer
food that will fundamentally only be worth consumption by
virtue of taste, but have no nutritional value at all in it.
And the net effect will be sickness, disease, cancer, and death. But
that's all the devil can do is reproduce an image, but not the
substance. He has the power to take away,
but not to give. Are you guys following the logic? And so liberal progressives have
argued against the corrupt elements in capitalism that are largely
supported by your conservatives and some of your liberals who
compromise. Hillary Clinton might end up
winning. She's a liberal conservative, whether you know it or not. She's
a liberal conservative. She is far from a progressive.
She got way too much money to be a progressive. I actually
like Bernie Sanders better than I like Hillary Clinton, although
I'm not voting for either one of them. I just want y'all to
know that now. Bernie Sanders is as corrupt as can be morally
as well. but he actually has chosen to,
in this dialectical process, oppose the corruption in the
system of the conservative slash liberal culture, which has been
compromised by big banking, big money, big industry. You guys follow what I'm saying.
I'm saying that these models of government, which cycle our
life, are things with which, if the church doesn't understand
their basic underpinnings, you will put more stock into it than
you ought to and find yourself compromising the gospel. Because
the basic philosophy of this world system is in your educational
system and it's in your jobs and it's in your government,
it's everywhere. And unless you know how to identify it and actually
deal with it in terms of knowing your identity, knowing your God
and knowing your mission. This again is why I'm looking
forward to this seven or eight, I think it's about eight classes
we'll have. And I'm going to really be pressing on my sisters,
do you know who you are? Do you know who you are? Because if you don't, somebody
else is going to define you. And if you don't know who you
are because of our natural propensity of our genetic makeup, our predispositions,
our cultural conditioning, you're going to identify with a group
that you best sentimentally affiliate with. even if it's unbiblical
until you come to know who you are. Here's a good question to
be thinking about as we work this through. What does it mean
to be a woman? What does that mean for you ladies? I bet you right now, some of
you are duped. I mean, I bet you don't really know where to
start with that question in terms of how to begin to answer it. Would you be able to thoroughly
answer what it means to be a woman of God, for God and why? Would you, anybody raise your
hand? See, that's what I'm saying. One or two maybe, okay. You'll
have your challenge. But you guys see what I'm getting
at? Here you are a woman, you've been a woman all your life. And
no one has really asked you, what does it mean to be a woman?
because you have simply been subjected to the cultural model
of change and you've gone with that culture and where it benefited
you, you, you, you yielded and where it didn't, you got off.
And, uh, or, you know, you may have done a good job of committing
yourself to the Lord, but not really making your identity as
a woman, your primary theses. Are you hearing me? Not making
your identity as a woman your primary thesis sets you up to
either be a chameleon You know what I mean by that many different
colors depending on what side of the tree you're on and which
way the sun is shining Because you don't know your identity
And even which once you know your identity The next question
is what is your mission? right Cause you may have your
identity, but if you don't know what your mission is, you're
still miffed because you don't know whose team to get on because
you don't know your mission. And that's why knowing the word
of God in all these matters are so critical. And I'm, again,
I'm only doing this because as I move away from, uh, the, uh,
the, the, the objective of the apostles to establish biblical
leadership in the churches, it's called strengthening the churches.
I don't want to leave certain minds unsatisfied. Because if
we don't actually address certain issues, you will know in the
back of your mind, you got some troubles around the whole concept
of male leadership. You don't know how to actually
answer that. It's not enough to just say, well, I believe
because the Bible says so. You actually got to do a little
better than that. You do know that, right? You have to be able
to go, I believe because the Bible says so. And here's why
the Bible says so. And the same thing with men.
Men have the same problem. What does it mean to be a man?
It's got to be more than being a male, right? There's got to be more than that
same thing with men. They have a struggle with their
identity. And because the devil has been able to separate us
from our God given biblically informed identities, he's been
able to wreak havoc in our cultures, men and women individually and
collectively. The war of the sexes has been
going on since the fall. And this is why our homes are
so jacked up now because we don't know our identities. And we're
not operating in our callings. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? And this is why marriage in a moment, if the devil has
his way, the last covenant paradigm will disappear. If he has his
way, Christ will not have a church in the world, which is his bride
submitted to his, to his headship. And so under point number two,
establishing biblical leadership, men are only called to be pastors,
elders, and deacons. They should be married. That's
the husband and wife covenant model. And the home should demonstrate
a kingdom rule. And why is that, pastor? Why
is that? Because I've seen so many pastors who have violated
these rules in my 30 years in the church. And even today, pastors
will come to me And there are all sorts of things going on
wrong in their churches. And then when we get to the subject
of their own relationship with their spouse and children, it's
crashed. If it's not altogether violated
by infidelity, second and third marriages and dysfunctional relationships
with the kids. Now, if the scripture is correct,
When it says in first Timothy chapter three, that he should
be married and able to rule his own household well, verse five,
for if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall
he take care of the church of God? Do you guys see that? These are the parallelisms between
how God views the church as a family and those he is calling to leadership
to take care of the family. You guys see that? So you see
then that there are real costs to ignoring biblical models for
leadership and then placing in single men, placing in single
women, or placing in women, or placing in homosexuals, or placing
in children. Have you heard these silly churches
over the decades who call 12-year-old boys and 10-year-old boys to
the pastor? I would burn the whole church
down. Just burn it down. Like five minutes when they all
drive just burn the whole thing down Because it's such a mockery
against god And the ignorance of the people Has them on the
borderline of being reprobate To think that god is honored
by them sitting up watching a little boy prance around the pulpit
pretending to preach or a little girl Like I said a few weeks
I'm supposed to be dealing with a debate. I don't know if it'll
happen But as I was perusing through my topic, I inadvertently
ran across a little girl that was on the internet. She's about
two years old. She was leading worship. And
she led him in prayer, and then she led him in speaking in tongues.
Yeah, you know, tu-tu-ta-ta, tu-tu-ta-ta, tu-tu-ta-ta, ta-ta-tu-tu-ta-ta,
hallelujah, tu-tu-ta-ta, ta-ta-tu-tu-ta-ta, hallelujah, tu-tu-ta-ta. And
the women was having fits. Women falling all out, right? Give me an apple. Let me just
throw it through the screen. Because you see how the scripture
warns about reprobate minds being given over to these kinds of
foolish things and think it's all right. And this happens when
you play fast and loose with scripture. Once you remove the
boundaries, you're going to be bitten by the serpent as Ecclesiastes
puts it. And now silliness is going to
govern our women. Weakness will govern our men.
This is what the Word of God says pastor where? Isaiah chapter
3 read it for yourself 2nd Timothy chapter 3 read it for yourself
Ecclesiastes chapters 3 through 12 read it for yourself Whosoever
breaks the hedge will be bitten by the serpent break God's boundaries
you get bit. That's what the devil wants you
to do That's what he's always wanted you to break the boundaries.
You won't die. God said you'll die. I First Isaiah chapter three
is very clear. When God is angry with his people,
he takes away wise men. He takes away prudent men. He
takes away mighty men. He gives you over to children
and women and they rule. This is the paradigm shift that
we're dealing with in our culture and our world today. Am I telling
the truth? Of course I'm telling the truth. That's why dealing
with this matter is so critical. And if you have like a knee-jerk
reaction of opposition to males, I understand because males have
been just idiots and brutes, ruffians and stupid for millennia. They have. If some of you sisters
feel good about that, that's OK. You get five minutes to do
that. But that's not going to keep you out of hell. I just
want you to know. Feeling good about the stupidity
of your brothers ain't going to keep you out of hell. I've
always said when I teach, two wrongs don't make a right. Is
that true? Two wrongs will make a right.
So our men have been stupid and idiotic and foolish and shamefully
abusive in their authority. But according to the Bible, that's
not a godly man. So you can just X those persons
out of being God's man. Because God's man actually operates
with God's characteristics. Am I making some sense? It's
very important to know that because the enemy will lift up the abuses
of mankind in our world. And our world has been highly
misogynistic and presently still is in many countries as if all
men are that way. And you guys know better than
to buy into an absolute model anytime, right? It's never all
men are all women, but these are the things we're fighting
against. And this is where, when you read in the scriptures, these
kinds of statements, You wonder what this is about. It's not
just about culture because your liberal progressive hermeneutic
will tell you that all we're dealing with here in 1st Timothy
3 and Titus chapter 1 and 2 and Acts chapter 15 is a Cultural
trend that has to give way to new cultures. You guys understand
that's the argument, right? That was cultural No, it wasn't
It was just as liberal in Paul's day as it is today. I You had
Amazonian women in those days that threw their bras away and
started using bow and arrows and jumping on horses, riding
through the woods and fighting men. They were fighting men back
in that day too. Cutting their hair off and putting
on tattoos and running government. And the Roman Empire was ranked
with the very homosexual, bisexual, pedophilia, pederasty that's
going on in our world today, was it not? So the church at
that time was counter-cultural over against the very paganism
that's dominating our society. Yes, it is. It was just as counter-cultural,
just as counter-cultural as what we're dealing with today. So
I say to you that please be careful to actually assess whether or
not you're gonna be a biblical Christian or a person that's
gonna give way to the pressures of the culture. So now let's
move on. Not only are we dealing with
him establishing, the apostles establishing biblical leadership
under point number two, but now let's go to point number three,
returning to the launch site of Antioch. Going back to Acts
chapter 15, I'll open the floor maybe in about 20 minutes for
some comments or questions if you have them. I love to take
them. It's very important that we make sure that we air our
struggles and our questions so that we can at least be prepared
to be biblical in our approach to these things. But if you notice
what it says in verse number 23 through 26, it says, verse
24, and after they had passed through Pisidia, they came to
Pamphylia and when they had preached the word, In Perga, they went
down to Atiliah, and thence they sailed to Antioch from whence
they had been. Now, this is the Antioch in Israel,
whence they had been recommended to the grace of God for the work
which they fulfilled. And I want you to mark verse
26 and 27, because this is gonna get into the ethical part of
the work of the apostles, and its application will be to you
and me too. So they sailed to Antioch from whence they had
been recommended to the grace of God for the work which they
fulfill. They sail back to Antioch. Antioch
where? Acts chapter 11 verse 27. Keep
your hand here. Look at Acts chapter 11 verse
27. And mark what it says. And then
verse 13 as well. Acts chapter 11. This is where
they took off from. In verse 27. And these days came
prophets from Jerusalem unto where? And there stood up one
of them named Agabus, signifying by the spirit that there should
be great dearth in the land, he prophesied. Verse 29, then
the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to
send relief unto the brethren which were in Judea, which also
they did. And then they sent the elders
by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. So Barnabas and Saul are identified
with the church that is in Antioch here. And as they're making their
missionary journey, that's what chapters 12 and 13 are about,
they're supposed to do relief. in Jerusalem because of the poverty
that's there. Now they return. They return
back to the same spot, Antioch. And notice what we are to discover
here in their return. Chapter 14, verse 27. And when
they were coming and gathered the church together, they rehearsed
all that God had done with them. See that? And how he had opened
the door of faith to the Gentiles. And there they abode long time
with the disciples. Just a couple points. I want
to call your attention to now So when the lord calls people
to serve And then he sends them out in service He knows where
he is sending them their sending is neither Autonomous and independent
and it's a consequence of their own doing nor their return In
other words, the work of God is never something that an individual
is free to choose to do of themselves. The whole securitist journey
of the apostles and those that were with them was a collaboration
between the church and those sent. Meaning, you don't send
yourself, you don't go yourself. This is an interesting point,
and I just want to highlight it and bring it to your attention,
because you're going to always find in your churches this willy
nilly mentality of an individual feeling like they've been called. I really think the Lord is calling
me to ministry. And then when you begin to examine
that, you ask the question, well, how do you know? Well, I don't
know. I just get this. I got this feeling, OK? What,
what is he calling you to do? Well, I think he's calling me
to preach. Okay. Well, how do you know? I don't
know. I just get this feeling and it goes back and forth. It's
very subjective. Now I don't want to spend the time because
it would take some time to get into determining a legitimate
and authentic call from God and what the prerequisites are necessary
for that call to be substantiated as well as then validated by
the execution of that call. Suffice it to say this, no one's
called truly of God apart from the church. No one's called to
serve God where they don't have to first start at the church
and in the church. So the model goes like this,
just as a example, why they came back to Antioch is because they
were accountable. They came back because they were
accountable. Because the kingdom of God is a kingdom of relationships
that's based upon accountability. It's one of the things I'm teaching
us right now, am I not? That accountability is the point
of connection between two parties in relationship. At that point
of connection, our relationship is identified. Whatever the identity
of that relationship is, that the accountability factors are
based right there. The structures of accountability
are established based upon the kind of relationship you have.
If you have a relationship with a man where you are married to
him, well, the accountability is inherent in that relationship
around what it means to be married. If you work for someone on a
job, your accountability structures are inherent in the nature of
that job. If you are working for the church
in leadership or some other aspect of ministry, your accountability
is based upon that aspect of your relationship with the church.
If you're a child of God in general, if you actually are a healthy,
biblically-based child of God, you ought to want to be affirmed
in your calling by a sense of accountability somewhere. There's
nowhere in the Bible where anyone that God has chosen to use that
he didn't establish a basis of accountability for them. Let's
deal with some radical ones right now. Let's deal with, um, let's
deal with, um, Noah. Let's just start with Noah. That's
radical. God's getting ready to blow the world up. He looks
out. He sees none who actually want
to do the will of God. None. You guys read your Bible,
right? None. He says, okay. And he regretfully,
relentlessly, relentingly, Remorsefully says it grieves me that I've
made men on the earth You know what? He says his heart is so
grieved at the evil Intrinsic and pervasive in the land that
he sees none that even begin to call upon God So what does
he do? He take a handful of people called Noah his wife his three
sons his three daughters-in-law And he seals them with his spirit
He seals them Because he's gonna start the human race all over
again not with the government, but with a family. And then he
gives them a mission to build the ark as a testimony to the
whole world that the kingdom of God is at hand and judgment
is on its way. It's a paradigm and model of
the church that we are in. So we would be like Noah's family.
And we are building the ark as we share the gospel all around
the world, telling men and women that if you don't get in the
ark that is in Christ, you're going to perish under the wrath
of God. Now you don't hear that message today because the church
doesn't believe in an ark theology. You guys follow what I'm saying?
And the sad thing is the ark was wide open for anyone to get
involved for 120 years. No one got involved. No one picked
up a hammer. No one picked up a nail. No one
carried the pitch. No one shaved the boards. No
one said, Noah, can I help? Just Noah and his family. It's a picture of God's elect. Those whom God has chosen, he
has called, he has qualified. They serve him. They're his sheep.
They're his people. They're his servants. They're
his family. They're his bride. Are you guys hearing me? The
last paradigm in your bible our women are going to learn this
again If they don't already know it is in revelation chapter 22
17 and the spirit and the bride say come And let him who is a thirst come
Drink of the water of life freely Because the day is coming when
we won't be saying come anymore That's the obedient bride with
the resident lord jesus In the presence of the spirit of God
calling sinners to come into the ark You want to know what
noah was preaching while he was building the ark come According
to christ none came But his family went in To whom there was no
accountable to three parties. I want you to get this Accountability
is critical. We're going to learn this on
sunday and rewards class. He was accountable to god first
Secondly, he was accountable to his family. If he doesn't
know how to govern his own family, how can he govern the house of
God? He was accountable to his family. He had to be so close
to God as to engage in a ministry that no one would come to and
have his family still down for him. If that was me, my wife would
have said, now, Jess, after about 10 years, ain't nobody coming
to church, man. We got eight kids. Ain't nobody
coming to church. You got to get a third job, brother. This gives us some insight into
Miss Noah. Bless her heart. Was she a ride
or die sister? Was she down with her man? This brother had a crazy ministry.
I ain't going to stay here too long. I can go, I can go into
it. I can go, I can paint the picture because I know what happened.
Vandalism and theft. And his boys had to go hunt people
down and beat them down. No. Get them, get their boards
back. Set up watch. Boulders at the
top of the arc that dropped down on their thieves head. Traps
and jins and snares and nets. but you see what kind of faith
it took for the family to endure that whole century of working. The world wasn't just indifferent.
It had to be hostile towards that work. Am I making some sense? All right, let's move to the
next brother. Let's move to, um, Moses, because you can see
Abraham, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They are a trifecta in
themselves. Accountability is all structured
in them as a family paradigm. But Moses, Moses is informed
in his traditional context while living in Egypt, that God is
coming back pretty soon and he's going to deliver his people.
Moses thought it was somewhere around the year 1520 BC so Moses
decides after finishing college in Egypt and being next in Next
in position for the throne. He decided to identify himself
with his Hebrew people. That's called a conversion You
were an Egyptian now, you're gonna own your original identity
and in owning your identity You're gonna separate from your old
people now and start embracing your new people Problem is the
new people didn't quite care for Moses because he still looked
like an Egyptian And he actually acted like one Because in his
love for his new brethren, he saw one of them getting beat
down by an Egyptian and Moses got on his case Got a little
hot tilt the man Right. That's a good way to show you're
calling you converted you kill somebody. This is how much I
love you I'll kill somebody for you Now, everybody said this
dude went straight crazy. He then left the throne, left
the kingdom. He then killed an Egyptian. Why
on earth would we as slaves, Hebrew people, even remotely
want to identify with a dude that then just killed an Egyptian? Do we want to get killed right
along with him? So they reject him, right? And he has to do
40 years on the backside of the mountain for God to teach him
that The wrath of man does not work the righteousness of God.
Is that true? And so after 40 years of being
humbled, this is biblical leadership. God says, let's go. Moses says,
I'm not qualified. This is what we mean by maturity.
God says, I'm with you. Moses says, I really don't want
to do it. I mean, you know, I messed up 40 years ago and they don't
forget that stuff real quick. Did you know they write stuff
on rocks that stayed up forever? You know, I think you see Moses right there.
Traitor, images, traitor. Anybody that finds Moses over
the next thousand years, you get a reward. Moses wasn't ready
to go back. Plus he found him a fine chick
in the wilderness and had him a family. He had him a small
little business going on. He was cool. Then the Lord calls
him. And what does the Lord do? Give
him his brother. An accountability structure right
there. Immediately. Aaron now is co-joined to Moses
under God's calling, so that out of the mouth of two or three
witnesses, let every word be established. Moses is not a maverick. Are you guys following me? Government
is established. God first is accountable party.
Moses now is accountable to Aaron, Aaron to Moses, and they now
are accountable to two other categories. The children of Israel
to whom they have to bear record and to the people of Egypt. Going
back to Noah, Noah is accountable to God, accountable to his family,
and then accountable to the world. He got to build that ark, right?
Like he couldn't alone the way of building the ark, turn it
into a nightclub, a hockey joint, a gym, you know, a cruise ship. You know, we got about three
years before the Lord could let's turn this into a cruise ship.
He couldn't do that. That's what we do in church.
We turn the church into all that kind of stuff. He was accountable
to God, accountable to his family, accountable to the ungodly. You
and I are accountable to the ungodly. We're going to learn
it on Sunday. As Christians, you are accountable to bear record
to them of the truth of Christ so that their conscious now is
now weighted down with the reality of people who are changed. You
got to follow what I'm getting at. And all the way then through
the theocratic and monarchical system is a chain of secessions
that lead all the way up to the Lord Jesus. And what does the
Lord Jesus do? The moment that he comes up out of the water
of baptism and is anointed by the Holy Ghost, what does he
do? He calls 12 men to be accountable to him, him to them, them to
him. Didn't he? 12 men. He didn't do that work
by himself. He had to have them there to
bear record that his father had actually sent him. And then they
were accountable to him, to God, and then to the people of Israel.
So Israel had that witness. And once the church was started,
that same model continues to the present hour. That's why
you have, at least in your local churches that are healthy to
elders. We believe in what is called
the plurality of elders. In other words, you shouldn't
be part of a church where there's just one man running the church.
Ooh. Ooh. And he don't have anybody. He got to check in with none. You got a lot of little mom and
pop stores like that, which is one man running a thing, doing
whatever you want. And those churches, while they may exist,
can never thrive because they did not attain to the model.
Are you hearing me? The first thing you're supposed
to do, and we did this years ago when we started, and as we're
planting churches all over the place, same model I do is the
model that I've always done, is we make sure that we establish
a plurality of elders in a local church when that local church
reaches those qualifications, so that that local church can
continue to grow in the balance of eldership being accountable
to one another, along with deacons and so forth. And that's why
you have in the scriptures here what Paul and them did was to
ordain elders, plural, in every church. And you can see how that
fleshes itself out in 1 Timothy, Titus, and so forth. Now, under our third point, let's
just look at it briefly and understand three things here. The apostles
came back and rehearsed what had gone on. And in verse 27,
when they came together, they rehearsed all that God had done
with them. Now watch this. And how that
he had opened the door of faith unto whom? Right. So we capture
the words there because those words there are very insightful
theologically. Who is it that opens doors? That's right. Now I can tell
you if you want to, you can kick doors open, but you're going
to suffer the consequences if you do. So I just want you to
know that right now just in case some of you, you know are mavericks
a little bit You know you're testy. Let me help you. God will
let you kick some doors in He'll let you kick doors in and
let you go in and once you're in there you'll wish you had
never went It's not that he's not sovereign
But he's gonna always prove himself, right There's a difference between
a door being open for you and one you kick in yourself by manipulation
and distortion and coercion and basically unethical practices.
Can I get a witness? So if the house was full, a whole
bunch of people will be raising their hands because they got
my message last Sunday. Moses, I mean, not Moses, but
David is struggling with an event that occurred where in he had
made choices to do certain things. with the objective of taking
care of his people end up losing his whole family. The struggle
of choices, the tension between choices, a choice that seems
ostensibly okay, but it has consequences that fall out that become real
problematic. What happens when you have multiple
choices that you're dealing with and you really don't think through
the implications of those choices? but because your impulse to be
somewhere or in some situation drives you to do what is necessary
to go through door number one. Am I making some sense? Right. If you go through that door,
violating the rules of getting there, God will let you have
a time there. But what you'll discover is that
you're trapped and you'll discover not only that you're trapped,
but that all of your virtues have to be left at the door.
that you won't be able to actually operate as a child of God because
you didn't, you didn't go in as a child of God. And now you
got a smart port until your time is up and God's not going to
let you out until your time is up. How many of you guys know
what I'm talking about? Just give me a cool man. All
those hands went up. Whoa. Whoa. I thought it might've
been 50%. I got 85% of the hands went up. And you go, what in the world
am I doing here? You did that. Yeah, you go, God, why did you
put me in this situation? God, I didn't put you there.
I let you go there. I didn't put you there. It will fundamentally be a Jonah
experience. You got that? You going where
you want to go, but the ride is rough and it's getting rougher
and rougher. And until something died, you
won't get back on the right track. It's true. Very true. So when
we are looking at this language, they rehearsed all that God had
done with them. The first thing you notice is
that they are conscious of they were actually working together
with God. You notice that? This is what
we call Coram Dale language. And it's a vertical view. of
our life. Quorum Deo means to be in the
presence of God. It's a vertical view of our life. And Christians
often fail to frame their words where they talk about God as
the basic backdrop and foundation and premise to what they're doing.
But what the apostles did not do was start talking about how
they managed their journey and how they went here and how they
did this and how they did that. They first said very plainly,
giving honor to God, what God had done, not for them, But what? Now that's very important too.
Because again, in our churches around theology, we can get things
distorted. And I've told us this before.
The prepositions are very important. There are things God does for
us. There are things that God does to us. There are things
that God does in us. There are things that God does
with us. There are things that God does
through us. You understand that? And all
those prepositions are different and important. Here, God is working
together with them because that's how he stated the mission before
he sent them out. Go ye into all the world and
preach the gospel and I will be with you. Isn't that what
he said? Now, and think about this as
the apostles are rehearsing it. They don't have inflated heads
around their success. for two reasons. One is God was
so vividly manifested in the work that you just, again, you'd
have to be a thief and a robber not to acknowledge that God was
opening doors, leading and guiding. And the second thing is they
got beat up so bad in this journey, beat down so bad that they knew
it was the grace of God that got them back home. And they
saw the outcome of their suffering for the cause of the gospel was
that several local churches had gotten started. And they were
willing to give God the glory for it. You guys see that? And
then he uses this next language, which is in the construct of
your outline, the door of faith opened by God.
That's our fourth point. The door of faith opened by God.
The language is God opened the door to the Gentiles. And under
that fourth point, there are three things. So under that previous
point, returning to the launch side of Antioch, I just want
to get this clear, just in case you have your outline there,
and it says the relationship of... You guys see that? Y'all see
that? The relationship of what? Accountability. Accountability,
just in case you were sleeping. Write down the word accountability.
It's the relationship of accountability. So when the disciples, when Paul
and the other... Apostles and prophets and servants
came back to Antioch. They were doing what was modeled
by Jesus in the 70 in Luke 10. Remember when Jesus sent them
out two by two? They had to come back and give a report of what
they did. That's called a relationship of accountability. A relationship
of accountability. You don't go on your own. And
when you come back, you got to answer to somebody. This is how
the kingdom is regulated and kept from going off course. And
then as you see under that previous point, the return to the launch
site, the affirmation of the Lord's work with them. Now we're
dealing with the door of faith opened by God. There's three
things here briefly that I just want to call your attention to
quickly. And in our church, this is the way we preach and teach.
To me, it's sad that the language dynamic in the church is the
consequence and effect of our culture and not the consequence
and effect of a rich biblical sensitivity to scripture terminology. The language in our churches
accommodates our culture and our world, and it's not shaped
around scripture. This is a philosophy also that
entered into the church over the last 50 to 60 years. Let
me see if I can help you. At some point, Our churches thought
in order to reach the people of the world, you have to talk
like them and you have to use language that actually resonates
with them. That's only half true. It's only half true. Whatever
language we use to build a bridge between us and them can never
be language that's constructed that throws away biblical truth
as the primary purveyor by which we are trying to dialogue with
people. In other words, we don't want to shape our language to
remove the offense of the gospel just because we might perceive
that people don't like us talking about God. Are you guys hearing
me? Right. So now when you do that,
and many churches do, what you don't know that you just did
was get rid of the power. You just lost your power. You
just lost your power. You just gave your scepter of
authority over the dark kingdom to someone else. And now your dialogue is just
as secular as theirs. And there's no power in human
speech. Are you guys hearing what I'm
saying? There's no power in simply learning how to actually connect
with people based upon culture and genre and contemporary fads
and things of that nature where the language doesn't actually
connect to the true and the living God in a way that rightly represents
him. In other words, your challenge
in mind is to always be biblical in how we say it. Even if what we say we have adduced
that we haven't been able to quite frame our words so as to
honor God and connect with them. If the choices between, watch
this now, connecting and honoring God You honor God. Now, when you make that choice,
here's what you are doing. You are believing that God is
actually the cause of all legitimate connection. Did you hear what
I just said? When you choose to use biblical
language, I'm not talking religious language. I'm talking biblical
language. We get some folks can use so
much religious language is it amounts to speaking in tongues
that's what it amounts to speaking in tongues and don't nobody get
nothing out of speaking in tongues so you know you don't want to
be trapped by faulty superficial synthetic Methods of communicating
in the king james version the old king james hitherto therefore
prevents wherefores And all of that language that none of that
is the point It's extracting from the truth the essential
meaning of it in a way that still tells the truth about god And
connects with people where possible for instance The way that they
have stated God was working with us is a simple factual terminology
that fundamentally cannot be watered down where you can't
use the term God if you actually want to give God credit for getting
you through a task. Are you guys hearing what I just
said? So when they say, girl, how'd you do that? Let me see
how I'm going to say, God helped me. How can I reconstruct God
helped me? Well, you already working with
just three words. You got a problem. What you going
to do with three words to say the same thing without saying
those three words, really, you're not going to do anything, but
determine whether or not you're going to believe God for honoring
you because you honored him. Did you hear what I just said?
Are you going to believe that the God who made the tongue,
And may the mind of all mankind can also cause them to understand
what you mean when you say, God helped me. That's all you're
saying is God helped me. Are you hearing what I'm saying?
God helped me. Well, what do you mean? God helped me. That's
all I'm saying. And I'm trying to get into a
big old long theological debate. God helped me. And some environments
are intolerant of even those simple propositions, aren't they?
but that's the world you live in, that's the opportunity to
bear record to the God that you're connected to. Is that true? And
so this is what they're doing. So the door of faith being opened
tells us three things that what they had an opportunity to do
was to what? Preach the gospel. That's all
that means in the first sense. We say that because we believe
that faith does not originate in mankind. That even though
our present culture which holds to what we call a man-centered
humanistic ideology As a premise for existence its thesis is that
the universe revolves around man particularly this this this
um this world and so Largely the way we entertain ourselves
and interact is in what we call a man-centered ideology It would
make sense to that person to whom you said, God help me, is
for you to say, man, I really worked hard. Oh, I got that. I do too. That statement, however,
would assert an idea that we would say does not comport with
biblical truth. And that's this. You don't have
any strength in yourself to get anything done apart from the
grace of God. Are you following? Now, I might
as well say this because I'm actually enjoying this. It's
fascinating to me. I'm going to stop here in a moment
and open the floor for some questions. I used to didn't really care
in sports for guys to give props to God when they win something.
Because sometimes it just comes off so dorky and so Silly and
so foolish. Yeah, like like when uh, when
Terrell Owens Y'all know what I'm talking about the football
player As much as he was clowning. He's gonna give props to God
boy, please And some of the others but what what I what I began
to discover was over time was even some of those simpletons
understood having been under enough truth is that they better
give glory to God and Cause this is about the only place they
going to do it. Cause they getting ready to go out and act a fool.
And God knows how to actually enter into these spaces and show
up through the words of his servants to let people know I'm here too.
Right? Right. So I'm just sharing with
you the redeemable elements of a bold statement like that. Even
though you're not trying to be gaudy or cocky or religious,
The other thing is along these lines is that we say in the biblical
community that faith is a gift. If you tell people you have faith
and you don't qualify that by saying, if you do have it, God
gave it to you. You're still man-centered in
your theology because not all men have faith. Do you guys understand
that? Faith is a gift from God. prior
to God giving you faith, you are an unbeliever. So you can't
call an unbeliever a person of faith. That's an oxymoron. You got that child just have
faith. Now, if the unbeliever is honest,
what he would ask you and you should have known better is where
do I get that from? You telling me to have something
I don't have, right? So when we say that the apostles
are laying down a biblically God glorifying rehearsal of what
went down, we are saying that when he says that God opened
the door of faith is that he opened the door for the gospel
to be preached because faith comes by what? And hearing by
what? That's right. So the preaching of the gospel
is critical to faith. As we saw in chapter 14, the
lame man that was laying from his feet, when Paul preached,
Paul perceived that the man had faith to be healed. But why did
he have faith? Because the gospel was preached
and evidently he believed the gospel. And because he believed
the gospel, healing was available to him at that moment to affirm
the apostolic calling. But Paul would have never known
whether he had faith or not had he not preached the gospel. You
guys understand what I'm getting at? So you're in your practical
situations with people and you're not having a theological conversation
with them. You can never know whether or
not they have faith. What you can know is they can't have faith
if you're not talking about the things of God amongst them. So
the sharing of the gospel allows for the discovery of faith in
a person or the impartation of faith. Y'all got that? So sometimes you'll be working
with somebody on a job site and you don't know whether they're
a believer or not. In fact, you weren't even thinking, believing
the gospel or nothing. And then you inadvertently slip
into A God-glorifying way of talking. Boom, you discovered
that they have faith. Whoa, I didn't know that. Now
you know because faith comes by what? And hearing by the word
of God. And so that faith that was in
that heart sprung up in you. Now they betrayed themselves. Now we can talk this thing through
and keep glorifying God because we now have discovered that we
have faith. Right, secondly, faith is a consequence
of the power of the gospel to believe. We looked at that last
week in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13. Pull that up one more time.
1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, just so people can see it. For
this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when
you received the word of God, which you heard of us, there
it is, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is
in truth, the word of God, which worketh effectually also in you
that, what? right so paul always understood
that the the commodity by which faith is born and manifested
is the word of god where there's no word there can be no faith
faith is a consequence of the seed of the word of god being
sown in the heart right right so then let's deal with our last
one and i'll open the floor for a few questions before we go
So not only is the door of faith opened, that is the door is the
gospel preached, faith is the power of the gospel to believe,
but God is the author of our faith, is he not? God's the author. So Hebrews chapter 12, verse
one and two. I'll talk about that just a little
bit, then we can open the floor or we can go home, it doesn't
matter. Hebrews 12, one, wherefore seeing we also are compassed
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every
weight and the sin which so easily besets us. And let us run with
patience the race that is set before us. Verse two, looking
unto Jesus, the author and finisher of what? That's right. He's the
author and finisher of our faith. Now the Hebrew writer is closing
out on chapter 11, opening up chapter 12, telling you and me
that the life of the believer is a life of faith. He closes
out chapter 11, with the litany of believers from Abraham to
all those who were persecuted and die. And he closes out chapter
11 saying they have not been perfected. Their perfection will
come when we all together are perfected together. And then
he opens up chapter 12 by saying, wherefore, let us run this race
with patience. Let us lay aside every weight
that hinders us and the sin that besets us and run our race. So you have a race to run. and
I do. It's called the race of faith.
What verse 12, what verse one of chapter 12 says is God is
the author of your faith race. You got that? God is the one
that actually puts you in the race. He's the author. He's the captain.
He's the originator of your faith race. If you have faith, you're
running a race today. Now he's giving your instructions.
You ought to run it with patience. You ought to run it wisely. You're
not to be trapped by sin because you can't run if you're trapped.
And in order to not be trapped so that you can run wisely, you
got to keep your eyes on Christ. Child of God, have you found
that that really is the task? Isn't that really the task? keeping your eyes on Christ is
the task. You want to know how to stay in your lane and stop
rubbernecking and sliding out of your lane
into somebody else's lane, bumping into people, running into somebody
else. You keep your eyes on Christ.
You want to know how not to stumble? You keep your eyes on Christ. That's a very simple and terse
term, but it's filled with complexity, isn't it? Because I can hear
my sister. I got a sister. She used to come
to me frequently and say, well, what do you mean by keep your
eyes on Christ? Would you explain yourself? Sometimes
the simplest terms are the most difficult to grasp, aren't they?
Right. Well, to keep your eyes on Christ
is to have a theology where Christ is at the heart of everything. to keep your eyes on Christ is
to have a theology where Christ is all. Where Christ is your
Alpha and your Omega. Where He is your beginning and
your end. Where Christ is your way, your truth, and your life. Where Christ for you is all of
the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Where Christ for you is the Word
of God made flesh, where He is your wisdom, He's your righteousness,
He's your sanctification, He's your redemption, where Christ
is all in all for you, so that whatever you're dealing with,
you bring it into captivity to the knowledge of Christ, 2 Corinthians
chapter 10, 5. The man or the woman that's going
to run this race successfully is not going to leave Jesus out
of the equation of all of these contours and dips and corners
that they get into running thinking they can handle it on their own.
Listen, Jesus ran that race before you did. Don't you think he knows
how to run that course with you? And in fact, the key to winning
is to be able to see him at the finish line, waiting there for
you, telling you, I got you. Just keep coming. I got you.
I'm here. I got you. That's how you do
it. Am I making some sense? All right,
let's pray. Father, thank you for this time.
Thank you for the word. We're getting ready to go home.
Give us traveling mercies. Prepare us to worship you on
Sunday as you ought to be worshiped. You are glorious, and we adore
you, and we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.