I invite you to turn back in
your Bibles to the book of 2nd Timothy this morning. I'd like to read out of the 2nd
chapter here verse 15 and then we'll look over to the 3rd chapter
and read a little bit of that chapter as our text this morning. But look at verse 15 of the 2nd
chapter of 2nd Timothy. steady to show thyself approved
unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing
the word of truth." Now look at verse 10 of the third chapter. But thou hast fully known my
doctrine, these are the words of the Apostle Paul as he was
coming down to the end of his ministry, the end of his life. But thou hast fully known my
doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity,
patience, persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me in my ministry
and I endured these afflictions but he says out of them all the
Lord did finally deliver me and then I want us to look at verse
14 and read down through the end of the chapter verse 14 but
continue thou in the things which thou hast learned Deceivers will
wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived, but continue
thou in the things which thou hast learned, and hast been assured
of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them, and that from a
child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to
make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be mature,
thoroughly furnished unto all good works. I felt a burden in a certain
direction this morning and I hope that you'll bear with me. as
I attempt to speak to you today. I'd like to talk to you at the
outset this morning, using as a basis for my remark, verse
15, here in 2 Timothy chapter 2, or the second chapter, yes,
of 2 Timothy, verse 15. I want to use this verse as a
basis for my remarks at the opening here of our message, and then
we'll use the verses in the third chapter that we read in the latter
part of our message. But in verse 15, Paul the Apostle
writing to young Timothy the preacher, he says, you study
to show yourself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not
to be ashamed, rightly dividing or rightly partitioning off the
word of truth. Now this is an exhortation which
I'm sure many, many of the people of God have been challenged with
down through the centuries. And I hope today that I could
challenge your heart by some of the observations that I have
made, some of the things that I've learned, in over 40 years
in trying to preach the gospel. I'd like just to point out at
this time some of those things to you, and I hope today, and
I'm not here to in any way, shape, or form discourage anybody, I'm
not here to in any way, shape, or form in any way to make it
appear that I'm preaching down to you or I'm looking down on
you or anything of that kind. I'm here simply to challenge
and to exhort your heart this morning with the Word of God.
But there are some things that I have learned in my years of
preaching to the professed people of God, those that make up the
local churches that I have been privileged to preach to. And
the first thing that I have learned is that most of the people to
whom I have preached, most of the people that I have opened
the Word of God and have expounded the Word of God to, most of the
people that I've tried to get their ear in preaching the Word,
these people rarely, if ever, study their Bibles and seek the
Lord's guidance in the understanding of the Bible on their own. They
rarely do that. Now I'm sure here that we have
exceptions to that rule. I know that we do. I know we
have some here that read the Bible. There are people here
that read the Bible every day. There are people here that study
the Word of God. There are people here that's
tried to put themselves together a small library and they've tried
to get a few materials in which they could refer once in a while. They have their concordance and
they have some commentaries and they do read the Word of God
and search the Word of God. But beloved, most of the people
that listen today Now to me preach and to other sovereign grace
preachers very rarely study the Bible for themselves. Now we
place great emphasis here on this church, in this church here,
on the Bible being the infallible, the inerrant word of God. And
beloved, you ought to search the Scriptures and you ought
to study the Word of God so that you might be able to know the
certainty of those things which are being preached, those things
that are being preached to you. You ought to search the Scriptures
to see whether or not these things be so that you're hearing from
week to week. And Paul here in writing to Timothy,
he says, Timothy, I want you to study. I want you to study
the manuscripts. I want you to study what you
hear. I want you to study those things that men are proclaiming
that you hear. I want you to look at these things
and search out the truth of these things. I want you to be a good
workman, a workman that needs not be ashamed, but whenever
somebody asks you a reason for the hope that's within you that
you can explain to them and tell them what it is that you believe
and why it is that you believe that. I want you to be able to
do that. I want you to be a workman that
is able to rightly petition off the Word of God. I want you to
be able to turn in the Scriptures and to be able to tell somebody
what it is that the Word of God teaches about certain subjects. Now I passed out today some bulletin,
a little bulletin that I had printed up. I passed this out
to you folks. I have run across these articles.
I think they're very good articles. And I wish that everybody that
received one of these that you would study that bulletin and
you would look it over and look those articles over. And there
may be that some of you will say, well I just simply don't
understand what these old writers or these men of God, gospel preachers,
grace men, I don't understand what they're talking about. I'm
not able to understand what they're saying. Well beloved, if that
be the case, you look up One of the brothers of this church,
you look up this pastor, you look up some of the sisters of
this church, and we have some of the brothers and sisters here
that would be able to take you through those articles and would
be able to explain to you what it is that they're talking about.
What these articles really mean. And I'll tell you, we ought to
take the initiative and study more the Word of God. One of
these days you will not be privileged, maybe. I hope that God will not
curse this town and curse this area, this area of the state
of Montana, by not allowing them to have a gospel witness. But
it may be that the day may come when you folks might have to
speak for yourselves and have the brethren get up one after
each other week after week and preach the word here. It may
be, it may have to be done. And I'm telling you, you need
to study the Word of God. We place great emphasis on the
fact that the Bible is God's Word. And we try to rightly divide
the Word of Truth. I try to preach so that the message
of the Bible can be easily understood by all, at least intellectually. I try to preach. I can only preach
simply. I don't have the ability to preach
any other way. I can only just preach right
out of my heart into yours. I have no ability to preach any
other way. But I do feel that you need to
study on your own. You will never make progress
unless you take the time daily, weekly, to study the Word of
God, to read it, to meditate upon it. Even if it's only a
verse or two a day, just read it and meditate upon it and ask
God to lead you and to guide you into the understanding of
what you're reading. Ask the Lord to lead you and
to guide you. Now the second thing that I've
learned, that the terms that we use in the pulpit which I
consider to be a very important and very basic terms such as
justification, sanctification, glorification, sin, depravity,
election, grace, gospel, regeneration, all of these terms that we use,
they're not often understood by those who hear us. Very, very
seldom is there anybody that can say, well I understand exactly
what that preacher's talking about when he's talking about
grace. I understand what he's talking
about when he's talking about sin. We have some people right
here this morning I'm satisfied that don't know what sin is. Sin is the breaking of God's
holy law. Sin is the breaking of God's
ten commandments. Sin is that which violates the
commandments of God. And we know that we're sinners
by the law of God. We've broken God's law. Now beloved, as I talk to you
this morning, I just wonder how many of you here know what the
word regeneration means? How many know what the word justification
means? What the word sanctification
means? Now I'm not, like I say, I'm
not here to preach down to you. I didn't know what those terms
meant when God saved me. You don't have to know what those
terms mean in order to be saved. But everybody that has been saved
for any length of time, anybody that's exposed to these terms
in a gospel church, anybody that hears these things expounded
upon and preached week after week, they ought to know what
these terms signify, what they mean. And you need to study the
word of God in order that you would understand these things.
Now I cannot take it for granted that anybody understands these
terms. But I must be very careful to
explain them, and sometimes this takes a lot of time, every time
that we use them. Every time we use these terms,
we must explain them because we cannot take for granted that
people understand them and that's the reason why and I'm sure that
there are times when people say well I know what that means won't
the preacher just go on well not everybody understands these
terms and so if if I do spend a little bit more time now and
then on these terms then my friend, don't get weary with me, just
understand that the person sitting just right up the aisle from
you or just across the way, they may not understand a thing the
preacher is talking about. Now the third thing is this,
that those who hear the sermons that I preach, those that have
heard me preach through the years, Those that have listened, and
I know this is not only true here, it's true everywhere. Those
people that hear the Word of God preached, they comprehend,
they absorb, they retain very little of what the preacher says.
Now I know that often times when a person, when the church service
is over, and within an hour, most people couldn't tell you
what that preacher talked about to save their life. They couldn't
tell you. And if you waited 24 hours, there's
just, there won't be, half of those that could have told you
after an hour wouldn't be able to tell you in 24 hours. And
then in a week, I don't know how many people here this morning
that could stand up and tell me what I preached on last Sunday
from this property here and could explain something about the thrust
of what I had to say a week ago today. I'd say that there wouldn't
be, I dare say that if you were all isolated and you didn't hear
what the other one said, I dare say there wouldn't be a half
a dozen people in this room that could tell you the text last
week that I preached from. I dare say that because I know
it to be the truth. I've talked to people and observed
through the years, people just don't absorb, they don't retain
what they hear from the pulpit. Now this means, then, that the
old truths of the Word of God must be preached over and over
and over by the preacher. Now the people who understand
the truths of God and listen and retain and absorb the Word
of God, they don't mind. They do not mind for the preacher
to keep on preaching over and over the old truths of God. And those who do not understand
will surely, we hope, will surely, we trust, pick up something as
we continue to repeat through repetition, surely somebody will
pick up a little something that they'll be able to take home
with them that will stand them instead in the hour of trial,
in the hour of trouble, or in the hour when their soul is longing
for comfort and longing for the mercy of God. Now the fourth
thing that I've learned is this, seeing that all of these things
that I've mentioned are true and I believe them to be true,
I've learned to depend entirely upon the Holy Spirit to make
the message effectual to those who hear me. I know that there
are some people that God gives ears to. I do know that there
are some words that God will bless to certain ears at certain
times. I do know that God has a purpose. I do know that God has a plan.
I do know that there are days when God takes his word and he
uses that word to break hardened hearts. God uses his word at
times to comfort broken hearts and to heal those that are wounded
and those that are afflicted. God does different things with
his word at different times and it will never return unto him
void, but we must upon him, because no amount of study, no amount
of reputation, no amount of speaking ability by the preacher can open
the heart and the understanding of the people he preaches to. And you must learn that. My friend,
you are dependent upon God to give you an understanding of
what the preacher is talking about. The preacher doesn't have
the ability or the power to give you that understanding. And so
you must wait before God as a preacher does, and depend upon God as
a preacher must, that God will give you an understanding of
His Word and of His truth. Now I've learned, next, that
the true message of the Bible is offensive to most people even
those who profess the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. There
are those here today that will tell you if you ask them in private
that they love the Lord Jesus Christ. I do think that we all
ought to be aware that if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Bible says, let him be anathema maranatha. If a man doesn't love
the Lord Jesus Christ, if a soul does not love the Lord Jesus
Christ, let him go to hell when the Lord comes, is what the scripture
says. Now most of you in private would
say I love the Lord Jesus Christ. But my friend when you come into
a group of people like this and you sit down and a preacher begins
to expound the word of God many times you are offended. You are offended at what he has
to say. And I know that it's the case.
I have heard reports that there are people went out of here at
different times who were offended at what we had to say in connection
with some of the doctrines of the Word of God. Now I expect
opposition, and we as a church ought to expect opposition as
we preach that God is absolutely sovereign in the seeking out
of his sheep, in the saving and in the granting of salvation
to sinners, while we must not be intimidated by the opposition
and by the fact that there are some people who will not say
amen. Some people won't agree. We must
not be intimidated. I believe in an absolute sovereign
God and I believe that that God is a dispenser of His grace. I believe that salvation, as
Paul put it in Romans chapter 9, that it's not of him that
willeth nor of him that runneth, but it's of God that showeth
mercy. Salvation is of God from the beginning to the end. I had
an interesting conversation the other day with the gentleman
that printed up these little papers. He looked at them and
he said, boy, that looks like interesting material. And he
went on to explain to me that he attended a certain church
here in Great Falls, and so we began to talk about some of the
things that was on that bulletin. And he said, well, I agree with
that. And he said, I agree with this, and I agree with that.
But he said, I'm not sure I agree with this, and I'm not sure I
agree with that. And of course we talked at length and come
to find out that he believes in depravity. He says he believes
in depravity, but he believes in free will. How can you believe
in both? It's impossible to believe in
free will and believe in depravity. If a man is dead in sin as the
Bible says he is, then that man is not capable. He cannot get
up from the dead. I told him that sinners are dead. Spiritually! And unless God wakes
them up, they'll never be awake. They'll never live before Him.
And he said, well, I just can't agree with that. I believe in
free will. Well, I said, well, you just
go ahead on and believe in your free will. But I'll tell you
this, the Bible don't teach it. The Bible teaches just the opposite
of free will. Every man's will is biased towards
sin, and if God leaves you alone and lets you go on and do as
you will, do as you please, as long as you live, you'll do just
that which is contrary to God, and you'll keep on going in sin
and unbelief, and you'll die and go to hell. And if God don't
cross your path and turn you around and bring you to himself,
you're going to be lost forever, and there's no hope for you.
I'm telling you that God is a sovereign, and when we preach these truths,
it's going to offend people. Even people that say, I love
Jesus. It's going to offend them. It's going to disturb them. It's
going to bother them. Now I know that the only message
that God will use, that will be used of God and blessed by
God and blessed by the Holy Spirit to bring salvation to sinners
from their just condemnation by God the Holy One is the message
of grace, grace, grace, and more grace. I know that's the message
God will own. I know it is. And if we ever
get to believe in it and ever get to preaching it faithfully
as we ought, maybe God will give us a revival in our time. Maybe He will. Maybe God will
stir up somebody in our time, stir up some young hearts, some
young people that will believe these truths and stand for them
in the days to come. Now I've learned another thing,
and that is that the majority of people in religious circles
The people that we come in contact with out here in the religious
world, I have learned that they would rather be entertained than
instructed in the word of God. Instructed in the gospel of God's
grace. They'd rather be entertained.
They'd rather have a big sing-along than they would to have somebody
preach. We don't need anybody to preach.
We'd like to be entertained. We'd like to have somebody come
along that can kind of keep us, you know, we just, we like entertainment. We like it. We like to be amused.
This means that the true preacher of the grace of God that he must
die to pride and he must die forever to any dream of fame. He must die to it. You got to
give it up. You can't preach the grace of
God and people ever really, not in our day and time, there was
a day when a man could get a crowd. Oh, could he get a crowd when
he preached the free grace of God. Old Spurgeon could, but
men a hundred years ago or so better than that could. But I've
lived to see, and there's others that have lived to see, the day
come when, as old Barnard said, you couldn't get a corporal's
guard to come to listen to the preaching of the grace of God.
And this little crowd right here, while we're nothing much, and
there's not very many of us, still, this is one of the groups
today that would be looked upon by the preachers of our time
as being just a little bit above average of the most of the congregations
that exist around the country. There's some that are whopping
big compared to this one, but there's a whole lot of them that's
smaller than this group, too, in the country today. Now then,
listen to me. I'm convinced that some of God's
choiceless servants are virtually unknown to the religious community. Some of those that preach most
faithfully, thus saith the Lord, and stick to the word of God
and the truth of God are virtually unknown in the religious world. never heard somebody said would
you ever hear of this old boy here? Well I never heard of him.
I never heard of him. Did you ever hear him preach?
I never heard of him. Now I'm not a very good preacher.
I never laid claim to being a good preacher. Never in my life did
I ever even entertain for an hour that I was a good preacher.
But I'll tell you this. If the people of God in Great
Falls, if the Lord's people in the state of Montana could hear
the messages that come forth out of this pulpit right here.
Let me tell you something, there'd be some of them whose souls are
starved that would say, that's something I never heard before.
That is from God. That's the Word of God. That's
what I've been looking for. I want to hear that. And that's
why there are people here that drive all the distance that they
drive. because they're hearing something.
They're hearing the word of God. And I'll tell you this, many,
many people don't know anything about what's going on in this
building right here on Sunday morning. They don't know. They
don't know what God's saying to the people. They're being
overshadowed, these preachers are. These servants of God are
being overshadowed by the comics and by the sensationalists and
the entertainers who occupy most of the pulpits of our day. They
are being overshadowed by what's going on in the religious world.
And all of the entertainment that's going on out there. And
people think that is it. But that's not it. That's not
it. The true preacher is in the heart business. Is that true?
He's in the heart business. He's preaching to men and women's
hearts. He's not concerned whether they're comfortable or not. Fact
is, it's his business to make them as uncomfortable as he can
as he's preaching the Word of God to them. And you don't come
here to leave and say, oh, I just feel so good. Listen, when you
leave here, if you're not in, listen to me, if you're not in
Christ, if your sins are not under the blood. I mean if you
don't have hope for eternity, and you're living in this world,
this mixed up, this messed up, this sinful, this wicked world,
and if you've ever read the book of Ecclesiastes, and if you just,
if you don't know anything about hope, And you don't know anything
about life in Christ, and you don't know anything about what's
coming, what's coming down the road for the Lord's people. Let
me tell you something, you'll be miserable. You'll be just
as miserable as you can be. Let me tell you this, let me
tell you, and I don't want to get involved too far in this,
but I'll tell you this, life under the sun, as we know it,
as we've experienced it, life under the sun, a park, from any
hope in eternity. I'll tell you what, it's very
amusing, I'll tell you that. It's not very amusing. And I'll
tell you what I really believe. I really believe that God has
fixed things like they are so that we would just get downright,
downright mad and miserable in ourselves about this world. Do
you know? Do you know? that you were put
here in this world by God and that you live in this world and
the scripture says all is vanity and vexation of spirit and you
grow up and you just find that things are empty, empty, empty
and nothing really ever really satisfies and you find yourself
so miserable, so miserable in this world and then you look
down the road just a little bit And you begin to feel all of
these strange sensations and you begin to feel this weakness
coming on and your eyes get dim and you got to get you some glasses
and your knees get weak, your legs get weak and you get to
huffing and puffing and you feel like there's something going,
your hair's gone. First thing you know, you say, well, what's
happening anyway? Well, I'm telling you what's
happening. You're dying. That's what's happening. You're dying. And it won't be
long before man will go to his long home and the mourners be
going about the street. Do you know they'll have your
funeral one of these days? That's what's going to happen.
They're going to have your funeral. That's exactly what's going to
happen. And then do you know what they're
going to do? They're going to take you out and they're going
to bury your body in the ground. That's what they're going to
do to every one of us. That's coming. It's coming to
every one of us. And then do you know what's going
to happen? Let me tell you what's going to happen. And you people
that don't have anything. You people that don't have Christ.
You don't know Christ. You don't have anything in your
soul. You don't have a thing. I'm talking about a heart work.
A hard work. You don't have anything in your
heart. Listen to me. I'm telling you what's going
to happen. They're going to put some flowers on your grave. They're
going to put some real ones on your grave. The day they bury
you, they're going to pile them up on your grave. A year or so
later, somebody may come along and put some plastic flowers
on your grave. And then, in a year or two, they
won't put any on your grave, maybe. And then, let me tell
you this, let me tell you what's going to happen. One of these
days, they're going to forget you altogether. They're going
to forget you. That's what's going to happen.
They're not even going to think about you. They're going to forget
you. Forget you. You know those places? I can go back and I recently
did. Down in southern Indiana. to where some of my relatives
on my dad's side used to live. And one place they tore down
where my great uncle Marion used to live, they tore down his place.
Oh, several years ago, bulldozed it out. My dad, when he was a
young man, when he was just growing up, he lived with his uncle,
Uncle Marion. And his big old stone house with
fireplaces on both ends and openings on the side of it where they
could drag a log up to the side here and run a chain clear through
the house. They had an opening over here,
big old stone house, and hook onto that log through the house
and drag with a horse, drag that big log in and roll it into the
fireplaces on the ends of that house. And my dad told me all
about that. But anyway, you can go there
now, knock on that door. You know who used to live here?
Well, I don't know anything about who used to live here. Well,
Marion Mitchell used to live right here. Well, I never heard
tell of Marion Mitchell. Who's he? I don't know anything
about him. And you could go and you could
go to other places and you'd see that nobody would remember.
Nobody would remember. You can ask, say, who built this
building? Somebody standing out in front of a building. And who
built this building? Well, I don't know who built
this building. Nice building. But I don't know who built it.
I don't know. People forget. And that's what they're going
to do about with you. They're going to forget you. They're going to forget
you. And I'll tell you this. If you don't have the hope of
the gospel in your soul, you are miserable this morning. You
are unhappy. You've got to be unhappy. There
ain't no other way for you to be except unhappy if you don't
have the hope of the gospel in your soul today. And you better
thank God that there's some preacher that's interested in your heart,
interested in your soul, what it is that's going on in here.
Somebody that's trying to point you away from this life to the
one to come. I'll tell you this, there is
great hope in Christ. There's great hope in the gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, the time has pretty well
gotten away. And I think what I'll do is I'll just quit right
here. I'll just quit and I'll go ahead
on next week and finish up this message and try to get to it.
Because I could never finish it now because there's too many
things. I just felt impressed of the Lord to deal with that. The true preacher of the gospel
is dealing with hearts, not with entertaining somebody's head.
He's interested in your heart. And the scripture says, my son,
you give me your heart. God says, you give me your heart.
And you need to be interested in what's coming, what's coming
down the road for you. Well, thank God there is a wonderful
hope in the gospel. And this hope of the gospel,
it's an anchor of the soul. And it'll stand you in steadfast
when this tent's coming down and all these things that's described
there in the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes is coming to
pass. It'll stand you in stead and
you'll be able to deal with and to endure all of the afflictions
and tests and trials of life and to be able to press on in
the way of the Lord and press on with some degree of hope in
your soul. Father, in the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ, We beg that you will own this message today and
that you will bless it to the encouragement and to the challenging
Lord of those that have heard it. I do pray for those that
are lost here today. I pray that they shall be led
to Jesus, led to Jesus by the Holy Spirit today, and that nothing,
nothing our Father will keep them from finding