I'd like you to turn with me
this morning to 2 Timothy chapter 4. The apostles' letters to Timothy
and to Titus are recognized by most Bible scholars as the pastoral
epistles. The pastoral epistles were written
to set before the Lord's church the calling the duties and character
of gospel preachers. You want to know something about
preachers and their duties and so on, read the pastoral epistles. Secondly, they were written to
stir up God's preachers, God's ministers, to the faithful and
diligent discharge of the work which they're called to do. And they were written to warn
these men of false teachers and preachers and their ungodly doctrines,
and that they would, if tolerated, turn away people's ears from
the truth to listen to fables. Pastoral epistles. Now to all
those called to this holy vocation, Paul gives this solemn charge.
Preach the Word. Preach the Word. II Timothy 4.1. He said, I charge thee therefore. I just read to you the condition
of man. And the only thing that could
make any difference in his life is the Word of God, which is
able to make him wise unto salvation. And now, Considering those things,
he said, therefore, preach the Word. Preach the Word. I charge thee before God and
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead
at His appearing and His kingdom. Preach the Word. Be instant. In season. Out of season. Catches you totally off guard.
If you studied His Word, you'll have an answer. You'll have an
answer. You won't have to say, well,
I'll talk to you again sometime. No, you'll have an answer. Preach
the Word. Be instant in season, out of
season. Don't fear to reprove, rebuke,
or exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. Now, we're not charged before
God to preach ourselves. Men do that. They preach themselves,
their ideas, their experiences. No, we're charged before God
to preach ourselves, our ideas, our denominationalism, gifts,
or earthly accreditations. Go into the average church, into
the pastor's study, and the first thing that appears on the wall
is all his accreditation. graduated from Temple University. We're not charged before God
to preach our experiences, visions, private revelations, or personal
feelings. Nowhere in here are we charged
to do that. Peter said, I was on the Mount
of Transfiguration with the Lord. And I saw the Lord, and I saw
Elijah. And I saw Moses. Those two had
been dead forever. And there they were, and he recognized
them. I was on that mountain. I experienced
this. I saw this. And God spoke to
me. A voice came from heaven. This
is my beloved son. Hear ye him. Peter said, I experienced
this. But he said, we have a more sure
word of prophecy. And you do well to take heed
as unto a light that shineth in a dark place until the day
dawn and the day star arise in your heart. You pay attention
to the Word. You pay attention to the Word.
Timothy, preach the Word. Preach the Word. me to laugh at me, preach the
word. Why is it so important for a
man to preach the word and for you to hear it? Why is that so
important? Why can't I preach my experience? I had one. Why can't I preach
it? Peter had one. Why couldn't he
preach it? Paul gives us four reasons in the latter part of
chapter 3 and the first part of chapter 4 why we must preach
the Word. First of all, we are to preach
the Word or hear the Word because it is the only information given
to us by God concerning Himself and His Son and the salvation
of our souls. There is no other. I don't care.
Man says, I found a tablet out in the wilderness. Let God be
true and every man a liar. I don't have any other information.
When God gave this information to His prophets, He confirmed
it, that it was from Him, and He did it by miracles and signs
and wonders which He did by Him in our midst. He confirmed that
this was His Word. Look up here in chapter 3 and
verse 16. All Scripture, all of it, Genesis,
Exodus, all the way through Malachi, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, all
the way through the book of Revelation. All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God. You want to know what God has
to say? Open this book. This is the only book that I
can be sure that this is God speaking. You don't know if I
speak for God except by this book. All Scripture is given. And it's
profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in
righteousness. My friend, we have the Word of
God alone as to anything concerning the God of glory. Well, I just
feel. So do I, but that doesn't mean
anything. It doesn't mean anything. I felt certain about a lot of
things that just weren't so. Just weren't so. How did I know
that? By this book. By this book. Listen to this scripture, 2 Peter
1 verse 20. Knowing this first, that no prophecy
of the scripture is of any private interpretation, That is, no man
has the right or freedom to interpret the Word of God based on his
traditions, his nature, his experiences, or his visions. The Word of God,
as it was written by the old prophets, testified of Christ,
and this is plainly set before us by our Lord's apostles who
wrote the New Testament. We don't go back to the Old Testament
and try to prove a doctrine. We take the New Testament, which
is God's interpretation of the Old Testament, and that's how
we learn what the Old Testament says. That's why he had apostles. They took that Old Testament
and applied it to Christ and declared it to the churches. We do just the opposite of what
men try to do. And listen to this. This is also
here in Peter. For the prophecy came not in
old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Word of God alone is the
foundation of faith and practice. The Word of God alone. Nothing
else. Nothing else. The Word of God
alone. We're built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. In James 1.18,
the apostle said, Of His own will begat He us with the word
of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. God did that. God determined
that. And the God who will not change
determined that. Wherefore, my beloved brethren,
let every man be swift to hear, Slow to speak and slow to wrath. For the wrath of man worketh
not the righteousness of God. Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness
and superfluity of naughtiness. That is, that surge of malice
that swells up in you when you hear something that's contrary
to what you think. And receive with meekness the
engrafted word which is able to save your soul. Man's first
reaction to the truth is one of shock and anger by which he
rejects it because it's contrary to what he thinks and knows. Contrary to everything he ever
heard. But here we're instructed to
bow and submit to the word of truth. Maybe God will allow it
to take root. Maybe He will. So first of all,
he says, preach the Word because we don't have any other source
of information concerning the true and living God. If I'm ever
going to convince you of the truth, if the Holy Spirit will
bless what I have to say, I'm going to have to preach His Word because He doesn't empower anything
else. I don't have any other source
of information concerning the true and living God and His purpose
and His will to save sinners through His Son. All right. Here's
the second reason why I'm charged to preach the Word and you're
charged to hear it. Because this is the reason why
it was written. That's why God inspired these
men to write the Scriptures and confirm their writings and preserve
the Word of God unto this day. Do you know that the whole popish
community, the whole thing of Roman Catholicism tried to destroy
the Word of God at one time? Banned them from anybody in the
church. Piled them up and burned them
by the pile. But this is the very reason why
God wrote this book. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God. Now watch this. And it's profitable. Don't you ever let anybody tell
you something in here is not profitable. It's all profitable. It's all profitable. Oh, don't
read them old scriptures that talk about man and his sinfulness. It's profitable. Don't delve
into that predestination stuff. Oh, that's hidden. No, it ain't.
If it was hidden, it wouldn't be in this book. It's not hidden. It's profitable. What's it profitable
for? Doctrine. Reproof. Correction. Instruction in righteousness. That. That is, in order that. The man of God may be complete,
truly furnished unto all good works. So the Word of God alone
is sufficient for establishing doctrine. Now let me see if I
can illustrate this point. The Word of God says, every good
gift and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from
the Father of lights, with whom is no bearableness, neither shadow
of turning. Now this verse, along with Malachi
3.6, I'm the Lord, I change not. Hebrews 13.8, all of these things
together establish the doctrine of the immutability of God. In
other words, God changes not. He cannot change. He will not
change. He's not going to change. They're
not even a shadow of bearableness with God. We change all the time,
but He don't. He said, I'm the same yesterday,
today, and forever. I'm the Lord. I change not. God
cannot and will not change. The Scripture says that in Christ
we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated according
to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel
of His own will. And this verse, along with James
118, Acts 2.23, Acts 4, 27 and 28 and Romans
9, 21 through 24 establish the sovereign will of God in salvation. It establishes. It's established
in the Word of God. The Scripture plainly declares
God's eternal election of His saints in Ephesians 1, 4 2 Thessalonians
2.13, 2 Timothy 1.9, 1 Peter 1.2, and Romans 11.5-6, John
6.37. You can go on and on. Establishes
the doctrine of God's eternal election of His saints. The Scriptures
plainly declare the total depravity of man. Romans 3.9-18, Romans
5.12, Romans 7.14-8, Ephesians 2, 1, and 3. The Scriptures plainly declare
that salvation from start to finish is all of God and all
by grace. You can find that in Psalm 3,
verse 8, 1 Thessalonians 5, 9, and Titus 2, 11. So why did you tell us all that,
Preacher? Well, if any man preaches salvation by work, salvation
by the will of man, salvation born in time, he's a liar. That's
why I said it. And that's why God wrote it.
So you could know the difference. Doctrine is established in the
Word of God. It's not what men feel or what
men think or what the whole world as a whole has voted on to accept. It's the Word of God alone. Well, that's your interpretation,
preacher. No, you don't have to interpret that. Read it. Come
on. The only one two-syllable word
in the whole thing. Any man preaches anything else,
he's a liar, he's a heretic, and he's trying to establish
a hope on something other than the Word of God. The Word of
God was given and inspired by God that the man of God, be he
preacher or hearer, may be complete and throughly furnished unto
all good works. Thirdly, why must I preach the
Word? Because God Himself has commanded
it to be done. That's why. Listen to this. He said, I charge thee before
God and before the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick
and the dead, preach the Word. Preach the Word. Turn with me
over to Romans chapter 16. You might think what I'm talking
about here today is trivial and unimportant. That's exactly what
Satan would have you to believe. He'd have you believe that everything
concerning Christ and His church is just something trivial. Swatting
at a gnat, that's all He's doing. Just trivial things, unimportant
things. And Satan has upon this premise
filled this world with deceived men, with untold millions of
followers clinging to a hope built on feelings, decisions,
experiences, and lies. Now that's just the truth. Romans
16, 25. Now to him that is of power to
establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus
Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept
secret since the world began, but now is made manifest and
by the Scriptures of the prophets Now listen, according to the
commandment of the everlasting God made known to all nations
for the obedience of faith. That's pretty clear, isn't it?
Preach the Word. Why? Because it's the commandment
of God. It's the commandment. Oh, but
the church would have me preach. No. Church ain't in charge. I've had churches, false churches,
told me back in my religious days, if you don't preach this,
you can't preach here. And I said, well, that settles
that. I won't be preaching here. I won't be preaching here. God
commands his word to be preached, not the church. And let me tell
you something you may not know. When a preacher brings the gospel
to you by the Word of God and nails down his doctrines, nails
them down in the Word of God, just like I read to you there
in Romans 16, nailing down what I had to say. When that preacher
brings the gospel to you by the Word of God and nails down his
doctrines in the Word and you reject his message, you're not
rejecting him. You're rejecting the message
of God. Our Lord put it this way. He
that heareth you, heareth Me. Because you're not going to preach
yourself, you're going to preach Me. Listen to this. Here's how
John put it. He that believeth not God hath made him a liar,
because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son. The coming of antichrist religion,
whose coming, Paul said, is after the working of Satan with all
signs and lying wonders, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness
in them that perish. Now watch this. Because they
receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And
for this cause, God shall send them strong delusion to believe
a lie and to be damned for believing it. And before I leave this point,
I want you to turn with me to Hebrews chapter 2. Let me show
you something over there. Hebrews chapter 2. We're under
divine command to preach his word. And if we preach his word,
not my experiences and not my ideas and not my interpretations,
but if I preach his word and you reject it, you rejected God. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 1. Therefore,
we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard,
lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken
by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience
received a just recompensive reward, as it did in Sodom and
in other areas where God sent angels, How shall we escape if
we neglect so great salvation which at the first began to be
spoken by the Lord and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him,
God also bearing them witness with signs, wonders, and diverse
miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to His own will? If we neglect this Word, how
are we going to escape? How are we going to escape? To
reject the Word of God is to make God a liar and to turn our
back on the very means which God has ordained to minister
faith to our souls. Hebrews 10.26 puts it this way,
if we sin willfully after that we have received the knowledge
of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. His
Word declares the only sacrifice there is for sin. If you reject
that, then there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. We've
rejected the Word of God, the testimony of God concerning His
Son, and we've put our trust in ourselves or in the lives
of others, and nothing now remains but a certain fearful looking
for of judgment and fiery indignation. And I'll tell you this, when
Paul over there in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, when he talked about
this gospel he preached to them, he said Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures. According to the Scriptures.
Well, that's not what the Baptists believe. Let God be true and every man
a liar. Be Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal or whatever. Cast that aside and there remaineth
nothing for you but a certain fearful looking for of judgment
and fiery indignation. Preach the Word because it's
the commandment of God. And then fourthly, preach the
Word because the time has come when men will not endure sound
doctrine. 2 Timothy 4, verse 3. The time
will come. And it has. This was written
2017 years ago. The time has come. He spoke of
it as a future thing, but we speak of it as a present thing.
The time has come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but
after their own lusts, that is, things which appeal to the flesh,
the fleshly mind, fleshly reason. Fleshly affections. After their own lusts, fleshly
desires, shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.
What are they going to tell them? Whatever they want to hear. I can tell you what most of them
tell them because I grew up in them. They'll take a Sunday and
they'll call all the mothers up. And they'll recognize the
oldest mother and the youngest mother. The one with the most
kids and the one with the least kids. And then on Father's Day,
they'll do the same thing. They'll recognize the fathers.
And they'll talk about the home. And they'll talk about morality
by the law. And they'll talk about all these
things. And when they're done, they haven't said one thing worth
anything concerning the salvation of your soul. What they did is
leave you hoping on your works. And that's why they're so miserable. They're so miserable. Nobody
has any assurance because they keep looking inside. They keep
looking inside. They keep looking at their own
works, and it's never enough. I don't pray enough. I don't
give enough. I don't say enough. I don't do enough. I don't attend
enough. And you never will. Our hope's not in those things.
Our hope's in Christ. He attended constantly, didn't
he? Huh? He went about doing good everywhere
he went. Oh, he prayed like I could never
pray. My hope's not built on me. It's
built on Him. Built on Him. Preach the Word
because the time has come when men will not endure sound doctrine. Now, men don't have, when I'm
talking about these men being, we studied there in Revelation
chapter 2, he talked about where Satan's seed is. They don't have
a pitchfork and horns. They appear as ministers of righteousness. That's what he tells us over
in 2 Corinthians. They appear as ministers of righteousness. They're transformed as ministers
of light. They don't have pitchforks and
horns. But false teachers are under the influence and power
of Satan, and those who will give them an ear are going to
suffer the consequences. Peter said they very quietly,
unnoticed. Bring in damnable heresies, even
denying the Lord at bottom, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious
ways, these deadly, destructive ways." You know, he said over in the
Proverbs, he says it more than once, there's a way that seemeth
right unto a man, but the end thereof is destruction and death. There's a way that seems right. Because of these evil and destructive
preaching, the truth shall be evil spoken of. Predestination,
oh, what a glorious doctrine. He has determined from all eternity
to have a people just like His Son. And everything it takes
to accomplish that, He's already put into place. He has predestinated
what a beautiful, comforting doctrine this is. But it's evil
spoken of in the world. Isn't it? Eternal election. My soul, if
He hadn't chosen me, I'd have never chosen Him. That's what He told His disciples.
You haven't chosen me, I chose you. Particular redemption. I don't understand why people
rejoice in universal redemption. I'll never understand that as
long as I live. Thousands then for whom Christ
died wind up in hell. What kind of sacrifice was that?
Particular redemption says nobody for whom I died is going to wind
up in hell. Which one are you going to hope
in? I'm going to hope in the one that saved my soul. But it's going to be evil spoken
of. The grace of God in salvation shall be evil spoken of because
these heretics set them before men in a bad light or just flat
out deny them altogether. Preach the word because men are
ignorant of it. They need to hear it. and are
heavily influenced by those who will not endure sound doctrine.
Preach the Word. Just keep on preaching the Word.
By their testimonies, experiences, and ignorance of the truth, they
turn men and women's ears from the truth to listen to fables. I listened. I won't even tell
you where it was, but I was visiting a small group and preaching there
in a Bible conference. And I listened one evening around,
they had a fellowship after the meeting, same as we do here,
and they had these big old round tables. Maybe eight or ten chairs
went around these big tables. And I was sitting there at the
table one night and this fellow came over and sat down, an older
man, probably in his late 70s. And he sat there and he's very
quiet because I preached on this very thing. And he sat there,
and pretty soon this one sat down, this one, that one, and
this one, and filled up all the chairs around the table. And
this man began to give his testimony of how God saved him. And he
wept, and big tears rolled down his face, and every word, I was
careful to listen to every word that man said, was contrary to
the Word of God. But before he was done in that
three or four minutes, he convinced everybody around that table to
agree with him because of these tears. I'm telling you, trust the word. Preach the word. Don't listen
to men. Satan is a master of deception,
and he can deceive a man so that he'll think he does God a service
when he takes you out and hangs you. Those Jews thought they
were doing God a service when they went out and took them big
rocks and bashed believers' brains in. They thought they were doing
God a service. Satan moves in his ministers
to make their ministers appealing to the flesh. And they're as
dangerous as vipers. I read somewhere that the heathen
idolaters in ancient times worshipped this God who was made out of
bronze and they'd build a fire in Him. He was like a big coal
stove, but in the image of their God. And they'd take their babies
thinking they were doing God a service and lay them in those
hot arms of that God. And I'm going to tell you something.
People are doing the same thing when they take their babies down
there to hear this garbage that's preached. Damnable heresies.
You're doing the same thing. Exactly the same thing. Preach
the Word, he said. Well, I don't know about you,
But I think we ought to follow His advice. Preach the Word. Believe the Word. Seek understanding
from God concerning His Word. And let all these other things
go. Listen to this. Prove all things. 1 Thessalonians 5.21. He exhorts
the church. And He said, Prove all things. How are you going to do that?
In the Word of God. Now watch this. Hold fast that
which is good. That which is proven, hold it
fast. Don't turn it loose. And you
can hold it fast because God said it.