Good evening, everybody. This
is Theology on Call, and my name is James Tippins. This is July
the 18th, 2021, episode 125 of season four. You know, we've
been going a pretty good time now with Theology on Call, and
even though I've had several delays and different types of
times we've had off. I mean, we've just had a lot
of good questions, a lot of interesting questions, a lot of controversial
questions, and so we're still around in order for us to answer
the questions that you have about the Bible, about doctrine, about
understanding the Christian life, life in general from a Christian
worldview. or whatever it is that you may have as a Christian,
a question about anything. So we'd love to hear from you.
We'd love to hear the questions that you have. So please go to
anchoringfaith.org or any of our social media platforms, our
YouTube channel, Facebook channels. And happily, we're happy to answer
the questions if you have them, if you just submit them. And
also during the live broadcast, if we have opportunity, you can
submit questions through the feed. And if we get time, we
can answer them there. If not, we will put them in future broadcast. But tonight we have several questions
relating to the scripture and some other things, and I probably
don't have, I've got about 14, 15 questions now. I'm probably
not going to have time to answer all of these, but please don't
let that cause you to not want to ask further questions or seek
clarification. We are happy to continue to talk
and exercise the ability to engage in biblical truth and doctrine
for the sake of the joy of God's people. So without further ado,
let us go now to our first question. We've had a very rough year and
a half as a culture, as a world. The pandemic, all the fears and
the fodder and everything else related to it, politics, good,
bad, and the ugly, but a lot of people have experienced a
lot of bad over the last year or so. And so I had several questions
on top of the fact that my seven-year-old asked me this week, you know,
how is it that when a baby dies it could be a good thing? And
I mentioned that this morning in part four of our Genesis 1
teaching, This Lord's Day, with Grace Truth Church. And, you
know, it's a very difficult thing to consider because we look at
the goodness of God and things being good in a way that, you
know, if that the world looks at it in a way that when we see
pain and suffering, it's easy for us to say, this isn't good.
And in a real sense, it's not good. It's not like pain is pleasant. It's not like suffering and agony
and loss are something we just look forward to, but it doesn't
mean that it's not for our good. And I think that that's one of
the things that we need to keep in mind. How can very bad things
actually be considered good? Well, it's not necessarily the
things in and of themselves that are good, but it's more the one
who is in charge of them, the one who is in control of all
of them. And so when we get down to the, you know, the meat and
the potatoes, the nuts and bolts of this issue, we come to the
realization that God is good. And because God is good, everything
that he does is good. And because he is sovereign over
all things, then all things turn out for the good. In Romans chapter
8, it teaches us this, that all things God causes, all things,
the good things, the bad things, the indifferent things, all things,
every second of time, every experience of life, all things, to work
out for good for those, for his people, for those who are called
according to his purpose. And so as a believer, as a child
of God, as someone who has been granted the gift of faith to
rest in the sufficiency of Christ in redemption, we also learn
and grow in our understanding of God's sovereignty so that
Christ as God is sovereign over all things and everything that
he's created and everything that he has decreed is for the purpose
of his glory and to reveal his goodness And we as his children,
we benefit in that. We come to the place in life
where we have to rest in the sufficiency of the promises of
God to know that while these things are painful, while experiences
are always not pleasant, they have a purpose. And that when
things are evil in the world and men and humanity do things
in an evil way, or just the consequences of our evil nature, like the
consequences of sin and the fall is sin and sickness and death
and destruction. When those things become real
in our lives, it's not that God has failed, nor is it that God
has left us to ourselves, but he has orchestrated and he will
orchestrate these things for his greater purpose. And in the
end of it all, we have eternal life. We have glory. We have
a world that is not of this. We have a life, a future, a hope,
excuse me, that is not of this world. We have a guarantee that
is outside this created order, if you will. And so we have to
look at things from that perspective. And Ultimately, one of the practices
and the disciplines that causes us to see this in a way that's
clearer and clearer is to focus on the gospel, and to talk about
the gospel, and to expose the gospel more to our hearts and
souls and our minds through the reading of scripture, through
the hearing of the teaching of the word, and interacting and serving
the saints so that we can be encouraged in the gospel. We're
not trying to figure the gospel out. We're not trying to dig
for deeper implications of the gospel. We are resting in the
sufficiency of God's good news concerning His Son, and in doing
so, our lives and our hearts and our minds begin to tune to
the glory of God, begin to tune to being fed and satisfied in
the things of Christ, rather than trying to fix or see how
we're going to be able to come through the hard times of life.
Because, beloved, some people have very, very hard times and
some people have light hard times. But as the Apostle Paul would
say in his ministry when he went through great suffering, he would
call this great suffering in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, he would
call this light momentary affliction. And in that light momentary affliction,
He says these words. He says this light momentary
affliction prepares us. Now I want you to listen to the
descriptives here. For an eternal, that means not temporary, not
worldly, not of this creation, but outside forever. An eternal
weight of glory beyond all comparison. So think about that for a minute.
If everything that we have in this life that is good and pleasing
to us and everything that is unpleasant or hard or difficult
or painful is also good because of God's purposes in it, what
in the world are we to look forward to? It is beyond comparison,
Paul says. So in other words, there's no
way to compare it. So the greatest good that we could ever imagine
in this temporal life, the greatest experiences, the greatest feeling,
the greatest joy, the greatest love, the greatest fleshly experiences, anything,
are nothing in comparison. So the goodness that we can experience
in this life, even the reality of the gospel and the granting
of faith, is still nothing in comparison to the weight of glory
that awaits us. So that the greatest moments,
these small little fleeting moments of great joy that we feel, and
that we experience and that we know and we understand in Christ
are still nothing in comparison to the greatness of the glory
that awaits us. So that is how we are to look
at this life that we live. That is how we're supposed to
get through day after day of understanding the pain and the
suffering. That is how we're supposed to
encourage one another in life. And that is how we're supposed
to thank God in the midst of all things, the good and the
bad things. This is a fantastic question,
and it deserves a whole lot more time. But for today's purposes,
we'll call that sufficient, and then we'll talk about it more.
Feel free also to leave your comments and questions related
to this, some things that God has shown and taught you in relation
to your suffering. What is required for a person
to be a formal member of a church? Now, there's some things that
I wanna talk about here in relation to the word church. The word
church is a transliterated, that means it's not a translation,
but it's a new word created after the sound of another word. So
transliteration is it sounds like another word, the word kirk,
which is an older word of antiquity, which means institution. So the
word church, And our vernacular means institution, but the word
church is not found in the New Testament scripture. Now we use
that as a translated word for the term or for the word ecclesia
and all of its variants. And that word means assembly,
and it was used for any assembly of persons. It's not a special
word that's relegated to just spiritual things, Christianity.
If it's a sporting event, it was an assembly. you know, a
charitable event, it was an assembly. If it was a family gathering,
it was an assembly. If it was a, you know, a civic place for
a court or trials or, you know, some type of governing assembly,
it was called an assembly, ecclesia. But when we find it as a noun
and when it is illustrated in the New Testament as the assembly
of the believers, and then we see the New Testament. That is
what we mean when we say church. So it's a family, it's a spiritual
family, a spiritual gathering of people who on the surface
agree and are gathering for the purpose of saying they believe
and have been granted faith by the Spirit to believe in the
finished work of Christ for their redemption. They understand their
righteousness is imputed to them, that it is alien, it is Christ's
righteousness on our account. This is the you know, the foundation
of the gospel message and that the scriptures would teach us
all that we are the elect of God and therefore have been granted
eyes to see the truth of the gospel and so on and so forth. And then the New Testament apostles,
the messengers of Christ, they write letters known as epistles.
It's a transliteration word for letter. They write letters that
instruct the New Testament gathering, the New Testament church, on
how they should operate, on how they should be governed, on how
they should learn and grow, and how they should minister, how
they should deal with reconciliation, how they should deal with conflict,
how they should deal with correction and or love, which is also known
as discipline. Loving correction is discipline.
and everything else. Everything that's needed for
life and godliness is granted to us by the divine power of
God, and the divine power of God is revealed to us through
the written pages of the apostles, and the apostles' writing has
been preserved by God throughout antiquity for our good, and for
our joy, and for our instruction, and our training, and everything
else, 2 Timothy 3, so that the Word of God is sufficient for
the elders and the man of God that oversee the joy and the
foundational function of the body together, the assembly or
the church, is profitable and successful in all of its ways
in oversight and instruction, etc. So that's what a church
really is. A church is not something you
join institutionally. A church is a people that you
covenant with intimately. I'll say that again. A church
is not a thing that you join institutionally. The church,
according to the New Testament, you know, instruction of the
church, is a people whom you covenant with intimately. Join
institutionally, covenant intimately. It's two different things. So
when we think about formal inclusion, so to be a member means that
you are accepted and included, so that the family goes, we'll
accept you. We will include you in our care.
We will include you because you have made a promise and the rest
of the body has, the rest of the family has made a promise.
Just like marriage, which is temporary, marriage will cease.
The assembly of the saints will never cease. So the assembly
of the saints is the ultimate outcome of the microscopic, tiny,
teensy shadow of marriage. So you think about the intimacy
of marriage and all of its purposes behind the gospel, according
to Colossians 3 and Ephesians 5 and others. in Genesis 1, and
then you look at the assembly of the saints as instructed in
the New Testament, the parallel is not just, I mean, it is by
definition uncanny because the ultimate end is the eternal intimacy
of the saints with Jesus Christ, which the marriage looks to so
that the bride and the groom are not separated or ripped apart
and the bride is not ripped apart into pieces either. They are
at intimacy with one another because we are within intimacy
with Jesus Christ himself. So that means to be included. It is a formal thing. It's not
something that's just flippantly. Oh yeah, come on, let's be buddies.
Let's go fishing together. because there is a testing period. There's a testing period to test
to see if others are in the faith and willing to be subject to
the rule of God for the New Testament Church, which are the apostles. The apostles are the rulers of
the New Testament Church in instruction, which ultimately they speak for
Christ. So Christ is the head of the church, you see. That's
how the apostles teach it. And we have a serious void in
the world today of pastors who don't even understand this. So
how are you shepherding and you don't understand what the assembly
is and what it's supposed to be? So we have philosophical
things and humanistic things and cultural things and historical
things that have taken precedent over the clear teaching of scripture.
And the scripture shows that a formal inclusion in covenant
intimacy is something that the church should not take lightly,
and that the body of Christ should not take lightly, and that the
individual believer should not take lightly. But once that has
been made, it is a promise. And you can't just say, well,
I've changed my mind. It's not going the way I want it. I don't
like it. You can't do that and say you insisted. That's the
person who says, yeah, I know I said I was going to marry you
till death do us part, but things aren't going the way I thought
they would, and I'm done with you. It's just ridiculously sinful. It's a wicked ideology. And then
some people say, well, it wasn't really a church. Listen, if there
are believers there and the elders preach the gospel, the true gospel,
no matter what else comes into that assembly, it is the true
body of Christ. So do not spurn the Son of God
by spitting in the face of Christ, by shunning those whom he has
purchased with his own blood because of an ideology. that
is unbiblical or extra biblical. So what is required for a person
to be a former member of the church? The person here, with
all that said, here's the simple answer. The person must confess
the gospel clearly, and they must say that they believe it.
And after that, they must be in covenant relationship with
the rest of the believers. then they must be in covenant
relationship with the scripture, according to the teaching of
the apostles, relating to how they're not the important one.
The body is the important one. The whole assembly is the important
one. No individual person in the assembly is more important
than the assembly itself. That's the mind of Christ, okay?
That's why we grow the way we do in intimacy. When we put ourselves
first, our feelings first, our ideas first, our fears first,
we are sinful, and that cannot be. It has to be corrected. That's
why elders, plurally, are able to say, okay, this is causing
issues. Let's correct these things. Let's work patiently through
these things. Let's seek reconciliation in these things. But if someone
is not willing to be part of the intimate promise that they
made in a marriage, intimate promise, what does Paul say?
If the unbeliever leaves, let them go. You're free. You are
free. You're free. If we're not brothers in Christ,
there is no intimacy. And in that, So when we find
someone to be a formal, intimate member of the assembly, if they
don't profess the gospel, then they're not intimately in the
assembly. But what do you say? What happens if they profess
the gospel, then they change their mind? We lovingly correct it. That's called
discipline. And if that discipline is unfruitful, then we excommunicate. We formally shun until that person
comes back of their own accord by conviction of Christ to seek
restoration to the intimate covenant with the body of Christ. See,
that love doesn't come back and get its own way. If you do this,
then there's no conditional expressions of reconciliation by a believer
who is being led by the Spirit. That's not how it works. So for
a person to become a former member of the church, they confess the
true gospel, they make covenant Intimacy a paramount, a covenant
in the context of public. That's what it means, a covenant,
it's intimate. Everybody knows this person agrees that the Bible
is authoritative and they're willing to submit to the loving
correction and the intimacy and to serve in ministry of the local
assembly. And that doesn't mean serving
in a program now or doing, I'm talking about serving the body
as the need comes up, not the need that fits our profile, the
needs that arise. That's what's required to be
a former member of the church, and when anything stands in the way
of that, an excommunication takes place. That person is formally
shunned until that person comes back to the realization by the
Spirit of God that they want to now be included. But unfortunately,
we live in a fallen world, and some believers refuse that type
of reality. They refuse it, so they don't
recognize that there's any type of there's any type of, you know,
agreement with the Bible on what it means to be a member of the
local family of Christ. So that's, in a nutshell, a lot
of you may have more questions now than you do answers, but
that's a thoroughly biblical answer with the whole New Testament
in view there. So if you have things or if you
think I've misspoken, feel free to push back on that. I've heard
you say recently that the pulpit is for correction and instruction.
Yeah, I said that three weeks ago. I disagree. I think pastors
should only commentate on the text and leave it to the Lord.
Can you defend your position? I don't have to defend that position.
Number one, elders don't have to defend their positions based
on how they see the purposes of God explained in Scripture
and the commands of Christ in that context. But I'll explain
my position. So there's a difference. And
I left the defend there so that you can see the tournament. And
I know that's not what you meant. I'm not making judgment, but I want
to make that clear for the rest of our audience because, you
know, elders don't have to defend themselves. No Christian has
to defend their positions. we can explain our positions,
and love believes all things. So, yes, the pulpit is for correction. The pulpit is for discipline.
The pulpit is for instruction. The pulpit is for encouragement.
The pulpit is for instruction of righteousness. The pulpit
is for administration. The pulpit is for the use of
the Word of God as it was written so that the people of God can
live in a manner worthy of the calling, so that they can live
in intimacy, that God is only glorified when they adhere to
the teaching and to the obedience and to the commands that they
are to obey in the New Testament relating to their intimacy with
Christ and their intimacy with one another. So to express or
defend this position, the New Testament letters. I can't preach
the New Testament letters if I don't use it for correction
because the New Testament letters were written for correction.
The New Testament letters were written for instruction. Preaching
is not about a commentary on the same subject every week,
because the Bible isn't written like that. Yes, the subject of
the Bible is the redemption of God's elect people in Christ
Jesus, but there are many things in the Bible that are taught
at length. There are many things in the Bible that are taught
in the context of behavior. And you can't go through the
book of Ephesians and Galatians and not deal with behavior. You
can't go through the book of James and 1st and 2nd and 3rd John
and not deal with behavior. These are not theological books.
These are behavior books. These are practical instructions
given to the church. These are the imperatives. These
are the things that must take place for the church to give
glory to Christ. The Romans 12, 1 and 2 type thing. So that's
what the pulpit's for. And I've said this for many,
many years, y'all, to many people. Many people love to hear good
sermonizing, doctrinal things and commentary, but they don't
want to be shepherded. They don't want to hear the therefores
of scripture. And beloved, anybody who dismisses
the therefores of scripture is literally dismissing Christ himself
because he has commanded the apostles to teach these things.
So we are going to receive the full counsel of the Word of God,
which even means in the manner in which we listen, learn, and
apply the Word of God to our lives. But, you know, you got
to be careful because you don't want to hear somebody say, well,
you need to do what the Bible says or you're going to go to hell.
Or if you don't do what the Bible says, you're probably not a believer.
If you believe in the gospel, you're a believer, period. God
has granted you that faith to rest, no matter how easily or
with what level of difficulty you deal with trying to explain
it. If God has given you rest in the finished work of Jesus
Christ for His people, then you have, according to your profession,
You have been saved. You have been born again. You
have been regenerated. You are a child of God because
of what Christ has done. That's your hope. But when we
start to look and point to the other areas of doing and being
and speaking, We are becoming legalistic and every human being
is that way. We can become legalist in doctrinal
issues. We can become legalist in behavior issues. We can become
a legalist in the context of what are purity issues. We can
become, you know, what is that? Somebody asked a question that
I don't think I'm going to have time to. What does that mean?
What's the lust of the flesh? What is the lust of the eyes
and the flesh? And we can get real nitpicky on that. Some people
say, well, you shouldn't have a television, you shouldn't have
a computer, you shouldn't have this. These are not things that we deal with.
Don't touch, don't eat, don't taste. But at the same time,
we don't use freedom from the law and freedom from condemnation
as a way to satisfy the flesh. James says it best that anything
that's not done in faith is sin. So we put all this together and
the shepherds of the church carefully and tenderly orchestrate this
teaching and put it in a place where the church can can digest
it. The more mature believers may
get it and see it easier and be able to be more free and have
freedom and then try to help instruct others because we're
supposed to the younger men of the church is supposed to be
quiet and listen to the older men of the church. The younger women
of the church is supposed to be quiet and listen to the younger
men of the younger women of the church, the older women of the
church. and vice versa, or as it goes down. So everybody has
that responsibility, but we're always looking upward to the
seasoned elders of our life, whether they're in the office
of elder or not, man or woman, older than us in the faith, we're
to be subject to their teaching instruction in these matters.
in these matters. And so that is, back to the original
question, that is why we teach the way we do. That is what exposition
is. That is what expository preaching
does, is it takes the letter in its fullness, and it applies
not only the theological things, but it answers the question,
now what? So what? What difference does it make?
This is the difference that it makes, because every New Testament letter
teaches some things and then says, this is why I'm teaching
this, because this is what I want from you. And to say that we're
not subject to those things is to truly tell God he's a liar.
And that is a serious issue. We don't want to tell God he's
a liar. So a very, very good question. Very good question.
All right. Next question is, why did John
the Baptist die? Well, we see that in Mark chapter
6 and in Matthew chapter 14. where John the Baptist is killed.
And a lot of folks are like, well, why did he have to die?
Let's see if I can get this up here, right here. Oh, wrong one. You can't read that, I'm sure.
Here we go. So, I can take my face off here. All right, in this, the scripture
teaches about John the Baptist and teaches about what he, you
know, what he was. Let me see. I might be in the
wrong text. Just a minute. Anyway, John the Baptist. Oh,
let me go to John. Why am I here? Let me go to John, and then that
way we can just go there. John the Baptist, let me go back
to this. John the Baptist, of course we
know, Zechariah and Elizabeth's son, cousin to Mary, the mother
of Jesus, and John the Baptist is the pre-forerunner. He is
the one in the spirit of Elijah. This is not Elijah reincarnated.
This is not Elijah the prophet coming back to earth. In other
words, in the same manner in which Elijah preached, so now
John the Baptist has preached. And in the day of Elijah, we
saw Queen Jezebel hated him. and had him killed. Why? Because
he preached the truth of God. He preached the righteousness
of God. He preached the justice and the wrath and the judgment
of God. And she didn't want to be told what to do. Human problem,
isn't it? It's a human nature problem.
And so in the function and the feature of a prophet, She had
him put to death. Well, the same thing is true
of John the Baptist. He came as a forerunner to Christ. In John chapter 1,
it says that he was not the light, but he came to bear witness about
the light. Here we go. I can get it now.
He came to bear witness about the light. There was a man, verse six, his
name was John. He came to witness, as a witness
to bear witness about the light that all might believe through
him. The true light, which is Jesus Christ, we see that. And
the testimony of John, verse 19, it says that, you know, they
came, they asked him who he is. He confessed and did not deny,
but confessed, I am not Messiah. I'm not the Christ. And they
said, are you Elijah? No, I am not. Are you the prophet?
He said, no. So they said to him, then who
are you? We need to answer those who sent us. What do you say
about yourself? And this is what he says. He says, I am the voice
of the one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the
way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said. So now we see the
Pharisees are thinking, well, now if you're baptizing and you're
neither Christ nor Elijah or the prophet, why are you doing
this? He says, I baptize with water,
but the one who stands among you, who you do not know, Even
he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I'm not worthy
to loosen. These things took place in Bethany
where John was baptizing. He saw Jesus, he says, the Lamb
of God, look, who takes away the sins of the world. This is
he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me because
he was before me. I myself did not know him, but
for this purpose I came baptizing him with water that he might
be revealed to Israel. And John bore witness, and at the baptism
of Jesus, we see the Trinitarian, reality of God the Father the
Spirit and the Son together and the Spirit in presence and the
Father speaking at the baptism of John. I got my face up there
twice. You definitely don't need two of me. So John the Baptist
then had an issue with Herod. Herod was the puppet king of
the Hellenizers, basically, you know, Greekized Jews. and in
a way of trying to keep some type of formality with Israel
as their own sovereign nation, the Roman people put Herod in
place as a puppet king. And Herod's new wife, which was
also his cousin, I think, or his niece, John the Baptist had
a problem with that because it was sinful, and he kept calling
Herod out. But Herod was enamored by John
and by John's teaching. And so, Long story short, and
of course the question is, you know, why did John the Baptist
die? Why did he have to die? And the
long story short is this, is that Herod's wife tricked him,
said, you give me anything I want, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And then he says, absolutely. I'm a man of my word, whatever,
in front of everyone. And she says, I want John the
Baptist's head on a splatter. Okay. So he did, he chopped his
head off. Now, a lot of folks go, why did
that have to happen? Well, first of all, it happened because God
is sovereign over John the Baptist. John the Baptist's purpose was
to be the forerunner pointing to Messiah, and his job was over. Secondly, John even knew this. He said, he must increase. I
must decrease." See, John's disciples, the people who followed John's
teaching, which was about Jesus, were getting upset, as we see
in John's narrative and John the evangelist's narrative, the
apostle's narrative of his gospel, where they said, you know, look,
our people are going over to John. And he said, the bridegroom
gets the bride. You know, we're just the messenger.
We're just the herald. We're just the preacher. So John had
to die because it was the will of the Lord. It was the will
of the Lord for him to skip the rest of this and to get straight
to the glory. And, you know, it's the purpose
of God. Not that John would have taken
away from Christ. I mean, Jesus is not in competition
with anybody. But for the pure sake of his
work being finished, there's a sense in which the scripture
teaches that John was to die. It was the will of the Lord for
him to die. And so that's why he died. And I think it goes
back to our first question. How is it that we can look at
everything? How can every bad thing be considered good? Well,
the death of John the Baptist was good. and the death of Jesus
was good, even though they were two very bad things. They were
bad in and of themselves and the fact that they were murder,
both of them, but you know John was worthy of death because John
was a sinful man. Jesus was not worthy of death
and so they murdered him, but why? Because it was the will
of the Lord to crush him. It was through the death of Christ
that life comes. It was through the death of Christ
that wrath is satisfied. It's through the death of Christ
that justification is true, and God is righteous in His forgiving
of sinners, His elect people's sin, because Christ paid for
their sin. And then Christ's righteousness is credited to
their account. There's a lot I could say there. I could go
back and do a lot of different things and just specifically
teach, just out of my own passion, the life of John the Baptist.
If you want to see in Matthew's Gospel or in Luke's Gospel, you
can see the birth of John the Baptist. What is the peace of
Christ or the peace of God that surpasses all understanding? Well, beloved, there are a lot
of that. That's found in Philippians chapter four, verse six. And
in John 14, 27, Jesus says, my peace, I live with you. I leave
with you, not I live with you. Uh, my peace, I leave with you. And when let's look here. And Philippians, let's go here
to Philippians. In Philippians, it says this.
Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and
my crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. He says,
I entreat Euodia and Synthica to agree in the Lord. Yes, I
ask you also, true companion, help these women. They were having
some problems. He said, you know, let them have agreement. Encourage them, shepherd them
into agreement. Rejoice in the Lord always. And
again, I say rejoice. Verse five, let your reasonableness be known
to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be
anxious about everything. All right, about anything, do
not be anxious. But instead, in everything, by
prayer and supplication, that means praying for other people,
praying for other things, with thanksgiving, let your requests
be known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts. Will guard your hearts. I don't
know what has just happened here. Oh, it's trying to give me a
note. That's not what I need, is it? Nope. Here we go. There. It will guard your hearts. Then
finally, look at this. And your mind's in Jesus Christ.
Brothers, whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable,
excellent, worthy of praise. Put your minds on this. Put your
minds on this. This is what God is teaching
us as his children to do. Practice what you see me do,
Paul says, and think about things that are lovely and pleasant.
But what do we do in our humanity? We're always at odds because
we're always focusing on the negative or the negation, the
opposite of what is good and lovely. We'd rather fuss and
talk about the problems rather than rejoice in Christ. And so
the peace of God that surpasses all understanding is literally
focusing on the gospel of Christ, focusing on that which is counterintuitive
to our flesh, which is excellence, which is glory, which is perfection,
and all these things, and focusing then instead on, you know, the
bad stuff, or the stress, or the pain, or the anxiety. So
when we think about it and we get down to the nitty gritty,
we think, oh, we can solve our problems emotionally, psychologically,
physically, financially, relationally. We can work together to come
to these things. We can sit down and make all
this work out. We can come to the table of negotiations
and compromise and come to a place of understanding what needs to
be done in the world and get world peace. The scripture says
world peace is a sham. It's fake news. It's not going
to happen. There's no such thing as world peace. There's no such
thing as world peace. What there is, is the peace of
Christ. The peace that Christ gives us and leaves with us.
Not the world's ways, but His ways. Christ made peace with
God the Father for us. by dying. Does that sound reasonable,
logical, rational? No, it doesn't sound rational.
Can't we just come to some peace terms? Can't we just make a treaty?
There's no treaty in the context of holiness. There's no treaty
in the context of righteousness. There's a covenant that God made
with himself before the world began eternally, and he put that
covenant into play through the death of Jesus in time, because
that's why he created the world, to redeem his people. So the
peace that surpasses all understanding means it's beyond what the mind
can comprehend, so that there is a supernatural and divine
work of God to give us rest, to know, you know, all is at
peace. We are at peace. There is nothing
else left for us but peace. So that is what it means. the
peace that surpasses all understanding. And there's so much more. I mean,
we could go through and talk about all the different roles
in which the scripture teaches us about peace. We can talk about
the different ways in which, you know, Christ in John 14 and
in John 17, how he prays and the power of God to really resolve
in our hearts and minds to truly be at peace and to be in our
hearts and minds at one with Christ and his gospel. So very,
very good question. Next question. How is the scripture
our sole source of revelation? And how is it the knowledge of
the truth? In 2 Peter 1, verse 20. I'm going to try to pull
that up this time without tearing up the computer screen here.
And I'm going to 1 Peter for some reason. 2 Peter 1. I just actually quoted this. Here
we go. Let's look at it for a second. It says, His divine power has
granted us everything, all things that pertain to life and godliness
through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory
and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and
very great promises. Now, let's stop right there.
Where are the promises found? Where are the promises found?
The promises are found in the very writing of Scripture. So
His divine power through the writing of Scripture has granted
us all things needed for life and godliness. This isn't some
ethereal type stuff floating around the atmosphere that we
just have to find or tap into. This is not some kind of spiritual,
you know, engagement that we have to come to the right term
or the right place of, you know, of purity. And then all of a
sudden we connect with God. God connects with us by grace. He bends down and condescends
to us because of his love for his people. And in doing this,
he became a human being to pay for the sins of his people, to
live as a human being under the law, yet he sinned not. Therefore, he did not deserve
the death, but that death then was payment for the sins of the
people. that for whom he died and this
is found in the scripture through which the spirit of God through
the natural means of writing and reading and hearing the supernatural
work of God establishes in the hearts of his people faith and
so these great promises are found the Bible so that through them
you may become partakers of the divine nature so you have escaped
from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire
for this very reason and then this is not really what I want
to get here but now we get this what we have we have doctrine
we have doctrinal teaching we that's redundant doc we have
teaching and the scripture from the Apostle Peter And then we
all of a sudden see that it is found in the scripture, and one
thing leads to another, and we realize that everything that
God has equipped us with is found in scripture. Everything that
God has promised us is found in scripture. Everything that
God has revealed to us is found in scripture. And so now the
instructions of the therefores, because of this, now for this
very reason, now we get some instruction which is found in
scripture. And I'm getting to the answer to the question, I promise.
So here we go. Make every effort to supplement
your faith. That doesn't mean that your faith needs strengthening
or needs supplement in order for its efficacy, but it's with
your faith. You see, you believe, you believe
because God has given you the gift of faith, and he's given
you the gift of faith. He's also going to give you the
gift of understanding as we grow in our knowledge of grace. He's
going to give you clarity. He's going to give you precision.
He's going to give you intimacy. He's going to give you love.
He's going to give you maturity. He's going to give you all sorts
of things as we grow together, and our flesh is still going
to fight, our mind is still going to fight, and that's why we gauge
and judge everything by the gospel alone, no other way, so that
we can be in line with God's revelation of how we are to make
these judgments and how we are to understand, you know, that
the Bible alone is sufficient for our understanding. Period. So all of this brother affection
with love. And if we do these things, look
at verse eight. These qualities of yours in a
Christian, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ, because you can have the knowledge of
the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, you can understand, God can give
you faith to know his redemptive work, but it's fruitless if it's
not being put to work. This is what James is talking
about, which we'll be talking about not this Wend Week, but
next Wend Week, I'll pick back up in James. So, you know, we
wanna be effective, we wanna be fruitful, And if we lack these
qualities, verse 9, we're so nearsighted that we're almost
blind because it's almost like we've forgotten that we were
cleansed by the grace of God through Christ Jesus of our former
sins. So what does James say? He said, faith without works
is dead. He said, man, what are you doing? You need to be doing something.
You look in the Bible and then you forget what it says. It's
like looking in the mirror and forgetting what you look like. Have you
ever looked in the mirror and not know who you were? No, you know
who you are. That's the absurdity of that illustration. So, he
says, Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to conferring
your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities, you'll
never fail, never fall. For in this way, there will be
richly provided you an entrance to the eternal kingdom of heaven,
the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Therefore, I intend, look at
verse 12. I could have used this as a question
about why, you know, why I say, why the scripture, why God says
that shepherds of the church, of the intimate body, are supposed
to use the Bible for instruction. Because it says right there,
I intend always to remind you of these qualities. So if Peter
reminds the Jewish believers of his day of the qualities,
and the Bible is sufficient for the teaching of the scripture,
as it says to 2 Timothy 3, by Paul for the elder of the Gentile
church, then surely Peter's writing to the Jewish church is also
going to be sufficient for the teaching of the Gentile church.
today as it was 2,000 years ago. So we are to be reminded of these
qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth
that you have. I think it is right, as long as I'm in my body,
to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting
off my body will be soon, as the Lord Jesus made clear to me.
Now, and I will make every effort so that after my departure, you
may be able to recall these things. All right, now think about this
for a second. All right, here we are. in the midst of all this,
and the question, of course, on the table is this. The question on the table is
this. How is the Scripture the sole source of revelation and
knowledge of the truth? So the reason I'm going here and I went
here is to get to verse 16, because verse 16, if you look at this
text, says something, doesn't it? It says four. Look at that. So here's the gospel at play,
and now all these instructions coming from the Word of God being
called the divine power of God, like the gospel is the power
of God, or the gospel is written in the Bible, and the Bible and
everything else that's written in it for the instruction of
the saints is sufficient for our joy, for our growth, for
our intimacy, for everything that God has desires for us.
And now Peter is reminding his readers, listen, remember, What
I'm writing to you now is just as authoritative and just as
effective by the power of God as what the prophets wrote and
said that you're very well familiar with. We didn't follow these
myths. We made known to you the power of the coming of the Lord
Jesus, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received
honor and glory from God the Father and the voice was born
to him by the majestic glory, this is my beloved son with whom
I am well pleased. We ourselves heard this very
voice. Look at that. Very voice. The
one that I just read about John the Baptist. And we follow him
on this. And we have verse 19, the point
I'm getting to. The prophetic word more fully confirmed to
which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining
in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises
in your hearts. Knowing first, this first of all, that no prophecy
of scripture comes from one's own personal or private interpretation. but we have received it from
the Lord. So what we write is as authoritative as anything
that's ever been written by Moses or any other prophet that's ever
written anything down. No prophecy was produced by the
will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along
by the Holy Spirit. And then he gets into the reality,
into the ditch of the fact that there are going to be false prophets. So that's why the scripture is
the sole source of revelation and knowledge of the truth. And
that's why the scripture is the sole source of the work of God
for his people. So we need to pay close attention
to that. We need to pay close attention
to that. Next question. What is a reprobate and how can
we tell? All right. I've had this question in the
queue for about four weeks, about a month. As a matter of fact,
there were several questions about reprobation. And I've had this
conversation with a couple of brothers. I've had this conversation
with a couple of people around town and some of you online.
You know, we've been talking about this. And I thought, well,
let me put all these together and just discuss very plainly
what reprobation is. So in Romans chapter 9, let's
see if I can pull that up for us. In Romans chapter 9, everybody
goes, oh, Romans 9, here we go, Romans 9. But Romans 9 talks
about the failure of God. Paul answers the accusation that
God is not just. I'm sorry, I keep messing this
up. And it's just not the way it
is. He says the Word of God has not
failed and on down verse, oh goodness, I'm going to have to
go all the way down to verse 19. So there's no injustice on God's
part. I'll have mercy right here, verse 14, 15. I will have mercy
on whom I have mercy, as God has said to Moses. And I will
have compassion on whom I have compassion. So it does not depend
then on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the scripture says, for this
very purpose, I've raised you up. Now think about this for
a second. God raised Pharaoh up and gave him prominence, power,
wealth, Prestige Pharaoh lived an incredibly human wise an amazing
life But he did God did this so that he could destroy him
for this very purpose that I might show my power On you and that
my name might be proclaimed in all the earth So then it had
he has mercy on whomever he wills and he hardens Whomever he wills
and the question in verse 19 says this then who's gonna say?
Why does he still find fault who can resist his will and In
verse 20, and I'm going to talk about this actual text next week
in Genesis on the Lord's Day. Who are you, O man, to answer
back to God? Well, what is molded? Say to the molder, why have you
made me like this? Has the potter not wrought over the clay to
make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable and the other for
dishonorable use? What if God, verse 22 is the key, this is
where I wanted to get, desiring to show His wrath and to make
known His power, has endured with much patience, we don't
mistake the patience of God with loving kindness, we just take
it for what it says in the Bible, patience. What if God has endured,
in order to show His wrath and make His power known, with much
patience, vessels of wrath, who have been created for destruction?
in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy,
which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has
called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles."
So now we see that there is this teaching of the scripture that
God has prepared a people for destruction. and has prepared
a people for glory, for salvation. We can go to Jeremiah 6, and
we can see stuff like that, where God has resisted others and hated
others, and Proverbs 16, and some other places. But ultimately,
the answer to this question is very simple, and it is this.
We do not know who the reprobate are, and we cannot tell in present
life. The scripture does not give us
that knowledge. The scripture is never going
to reveal to us that which belongs to God. God alone knows the heart
of man, and just because someone is an unbeliever doesn't make
them reprobate. So to say that we can know is
of the devil. Okay? And I know I say that very
hardly in a hard way, but I have to because if I don't say it
that harshly, people are going to assume that maybe there's
a possibility. Folks, there's no possibility
for any human being on this side of eternity to know who reprobate
people are. Well, my brother John, he lived a life and never
did this, and I never heard him confess Christ. Well, that's
not, you're still not God. You don't know what God has done
in the hearts and the lives of his elect. So yeah, I mean, could
we say, well, we can say we've never known a profession. We
can say it seemed as though this person died in unbelief. And
if that's true, then they were reprobate. But we cannot say
we know who the reprobate are living among us today. And that's
something that we're not called to do. There's no warrant in
scripture, no prescription, no command, no instruction whatsoever
to be worried about who are reprobate and who are not. As a matter
of fact, there's a nature of God and His essence, the nature
of God and His essence, His qualities. He doesn't even give us anything
as how He relates in any way to the reprobate except in judgment.
And so the fact that he will produce wrath forever in whatever
form he has determined in judgment is what we know. And we know
that he will not give them faith. He will not give them faith.
He will not grant them repentance, which is faith. Granting repentance
is faith. So to believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ. But, um, so that's, uh, that's a difficult one. It's,
it's one of those things where, you know, people like to try
to pick in, dig beneath the surface and pick on, uh, the doctrine
a little bit deeper and go, well, how about this? And it's a lot
of hypotheticals. And for those of you who know me, you know, I
can't stand hypotheticals because they always lead us into places
that the Bible does not clearly teach. And then we get bogged
down in the, in the peripherals and the philosophy and. the rational
inference rather than the clear teaching. Let's get the clear
teaching of scripture down. Everything else will start making
sense. I think we need to spend more time in that. Speculation,
assumption, all those things just, they're from the flesh.
They're not from the spirit of God. God does not give assumption
and speculation and fear and paranoia and suspicion to his
people. That is the flesh being fed by
the temptation of the enemy. And it is still in the sovereignty
of God. So we as the church together, For those of you who want to
know what the church is, go back to my first question, second question tonight. We know that we are together
for the purposes of the Lord growing us and maturing us and
we all have an integral part to play and none of us are more
important than the other. So now I've got several more
questions, but unfortunately with the time I have left, I
want to try to keep this below an hour each time for some administrative
reasons and for some technical and logistical reasons. But I've
got five or six more questions and I'll just push them off the
next week. Those of you have been commenting, I have not had a
chance to even look at the comments, please continue to send messages
and post them there. I will look at them tonight or
tomorrow and will respond accordingly. If you have a question that's
more of a sensitive nature or that you need prayer about some
things, just let us know through message or through private message
or through email. You can go to anchoringfaith.org
and send us a message there. And we just are so glad that
you spend your Sunday nights with us. And I look forward to
seeing you guys this Lord's Day next week. And then also the
week after that, we'll see you on midweek. But until then, Lord
bless. I love each and every one of you. Bye bye.