Last fall I became very discouraged. I was reading a biography on Martin Luther when I had a watershed realization. Normally that would be a good thing, and it was good. But the discouraging part was that it took me so long in my Christian/theological/pastoral life to have this realization.

When we think about the 16th Century Protestant Reformation we think about biblical doctrine, which is right. There were some, maybe we should even say many, within the Catholic Church who recognized the serious problems within the church and who boldly spoke out about those problems. Erasmus was a reformer, a man with his eyes open to the many sins in the clergy. He wrote numerous books to point out “religious people” issues, including his Praise of Folly in which he runs the bus back and forth over priests like he’s rolling out papal pie crust.

The capital “R” Reformers started a rumpus when they started swinging an axe at the root. They observed the sinful fruit on the limbs, but they believed that it grew out of wrong doctrine.

Protestants reproached the clergy not so much for living badly as for believing badly, for teaching false and dangerous things. (Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559)

Luther wasn’t trying to get Catholics to live up to Catholic teachings as much as he was denying Catholic teachings.

So the solas are not extraneous. Doctrine cannot be downplayed in any attempt to explain what the Reformers were doing. And while sola Scriptura was logically necessary for sake of learning biblical doctrine, it was sola fide that became the most significant scythe cutting down the dry grass of error.

We’ve talked about sola fide a lot. Martin Luther upset continents, plural, by preaching sola fide. Whole streams of modern Evangelical churches have a different set of problems because they’ve believed sola fide for so long. We are saved by faith alone. There are no works we can do, no religious quests we can make, no payments sufficient to please God. The Son of God laid down His life and rose again on the third day. “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). Believe, alone.

Doctrine, theology, propositions, sentences and adjectives (like “sola”) of truth rent the Catholic Church asunder and this was all for the sake of the gospel. We do not have to do anything to earn acceptance from God, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to, which we didn’t. Doctrine, therefore, is our lifeblood. What we believe has consequences.

But this leads to the provocation of my discouragement. I believed that what we believe has consequences, so that we cannot remain knowingly in the Catholic Church, or in any church that teaches salvation by faith plus works. What we believe has consequences, so we must defend the faith once for all delivered to the saints. What we believe has consequences, so we must love the true church which is the pillar and support of truth.

And, as the doctrine of sola fide itself teaches, you do not have to believe in sola fide to be saved, you only have to believe in Christ. As the doctrine of sola fide implies, you are not more biblical or more spiritual or more Christlike if you read the Bible more or have a job in the church. As the doctrine of sola fide implies, you don’t have to be a monk or a missionary to please God, you can be a mom, or any other lawful occupation. We are justified by faith, not by the title on our business card.

The Reformation opened doors for all sorts of work not only to be allowable for men and women but also to be glorifying to God. The doctrine of sola fide is the greatest Reformation wrecking ball to smash the wall of dualism. This is what I’d missed. I don’t think I intended to undermine what I taught about sola fide as I urged others to study the Bible more seriously and even to learn how to teach the Bible, but reduce the extensive triumph of the doctrine is exactly what I did.

When we talk about occupations, we are talking about one’s work, one’s job, and sometimes it involves a paycheck. We’re talking about how one spends his or her time. A synonym is “vocation,” which comes from the Latin word voco meaning, “I call.” During and after the Reformation it was normal to talk about one’s “calling,” though most people today only use it in reference to a full-time ministry position, as in a pastor. But it used to be that everyone had a vocation; God called everyone to a work.

The dignity and appeal and virtue of many vocations were elevated during the Reformation. You did not have to be a monk or a nun, a priest or a cardinal, or some other official position within the church in order to be a faithful Christian. There were not two classes of Christian, even though some could be paid by the church and others not so. But it comes back to sola fide. Because our justification depends on faith alone, we are free to do good works in a variety of occupations that glorify our Father in heaven.

You do not need to be a pastor or a missionary, or married to one, in order to be a significant Christian. Your job is not what earns you God’s favor, though your job is a way to work for God’s honor.

Tonight’s message is to the ladies, with implications for the men. To the men, I would encourage you to take note so that you can learn some humility now before you have to learn it in front of your wife. It will be better this way if you have ears to hear. I myself have had opportunity to be humbled in the study of motherhood, and it has not been only from books.

The world we live in is a funny place, a difficult place, a sinful place. I will assume for now that you at least do not want to identify as something other than a woman. But even with that, our society has very little appreciation for what a woman is, let alone for a woman as wife and mother. Many of you are quite skilled, quite ambitious, and that’s quite a good thing. And also, according to the Bible, there is a great calling that most of you will have to motherhood.

If you desire to have a career other than mellifluus maternus, ([from fluere = flowing and mel = honey: ’flowing honey’]) that is, “sweet motherhood,” then something is missing, either seeing motherhood as a necessity but not sweet, or seeing so many other things as sweet instead of motherhood.

The Reformation, building from the implications of sola fide, has much to encourage mommas. I think a case can be made that each of the five solas provide immediate motivation for a mother’s calling. The solas do not exclusively apply to mom’s, but they do especially apply to mom’s.

This is true for men/husbands/fathers, too, but it is especially significant for women/wives/mothers in light of the dumb (Christian) guys who act like they are doing more important things.

Sola Scriptura means that God’s Word is the ultimate authority. Christians, whatever their gender, whatever their calling, must submit to the Word of God above any other word. God does reveal in the Bible that He has established other sources of authority, i.e., government, elders, husbands and fathers. But none of those sources can claim absolute right to be obeyed. Only Scripture has consummate authority.

Mothers, then, do not have to listen to their husbands alone. Mothers, then, do not have to listen to “church ladies” alone. Mothers, then, do not have to listen to social experts and Oprah and whatever the most recent outrage over gluten and sugar and lack of bike helmets on Facebook. Mothers always get to ask, “What does the Bible say?”

Of course, women who humbly submit to the wisdom of the Word will also listen to other wise women. But they do not have to follow them on social media.

This means that mothers are free to be theologians. Mothers are free to mediate on God’s Word day and night and be like a tree planted beside a stream of living water, whose leaves are always green and who bear fruit in due season. Mothers are free to let the Word of Christ dwell in them richly, teaching and admonishing their children (and others moms) with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Mothers ought to be educated to read, educated to think, educated to understand God’s Word. They do not take a back seat to any man, prophets included, because Scripture alone is the ultimate authority.

Rebekah Merkle ennobles the mother’s work in theology similar to what Paul described for servants in Titus 2:10, adorning doctrine. Take Christmas as an example.

We take one of the most difficult theological truths—the Incarnation—and attempt to show that truth through our celebrations. The men can talk about the Incarnation, church fathers can write important treatises about it, pastors can preach about it, theologians can parse and define it…but we women are the ones who make it taste like something. We make it smell good. How crazy is that? ‘And for my next trick, I will take Athanasius’ De Incarnatione and I will say it with cookies and wrapping paper and cinnamon and marshmallows and colored lights and tablecloths and shopping trips and frantically-last-minute-late-night-Amazon-orders and ham—and I will do it in such a way that my four-year-old will really get it, and it will send roots deep down into his soul where it will anchor his loves and his loyalties and shape his allegiances well into his nineties.’” (Eve in Exile, 175-76)

You must know the Word in order to adorn the doctrine. Be a theologian incarnate.

Before I light these fireworks, we’re saved by faith alone but the faith that saves is not alone. That means that living faith obeys. Those who are saved are filled with the Spirit, and one part of the Spirit’s fruit is self-control. Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 describe the fruitfulness of a woman’s labor, assuming that she is laboring. Laziness is a sin, and one that often leads ladies into other sins, such as gossip and slander and primping.

However, sola fide strikes at the heart of selfish comparison, which is always unhelpful and just the worst. It is not typically the case that a mother reads the Bible and gets convicted about the size of the pile of laundry. She gets convicted because she saw a friend’s Pinterest picture–a friend perhaps not even in a similar household setup–and gets jealous or starts to feel guilty for not having a picture-ready laundry room. Or she starts to feel inadequate because her kids aren’t wearing a certain brand of shoes or skirts, or because they don’t eat enough of the “in” food. Or she’s ashamed that she doesn’t spend enough time reading her Bible every day; she’s feeding and clothing and educating and medicating and transporting souls around all day, so she listens to the Bible on her phone, but for some reason still feels like less.

A Reformed mom, as in, a mom who lives in light of the truths of the Reformation such as sola fide, does not need to become a nun in order to make sacrifices to please the Lord. Instead, she makes sacrifices because she already has the Lord’s pleasure and believes that by following her Lord’s example, as a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, she will bear much fruit (John 12). She dies to bring life to her husband and kids and others because of her justification, not in order to earn it.

Sola gratia means that we are saved by “grace alone.” There is no merit in us, nothing righteous in us that God sees and rewards. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ.

Because grace is undeserved it cannot be claimed by one person more than another, and it certainly cannot be bottlenecked through one profession or procedure. The Roman Catholic doctrine stated that the Church extended grace only through the priest and through the sacraments. One had to go through the church to get forgiveness. But this is not true.

One of the most difficult parts of motherhood is that mothers are around sinners all day. She interacts with little sinners who impatiently and angrily scream because they can’t speak, they are toddler tantrum-throwing sinners who egomaniacally want everything they want, or they are teenage know-it-all sinners who can’t bother to be instructed by someone else. There are other varieties as well. It includes sibling sinners who know the button location to produce instant hissy fit.

What can a mom do in that situation? When she is tired, when she is not done, when she sees the sin and is trying to love the sinner? She has grace! She is being given grace as one of God’s daughters, and she is free to extend that grace to those around her. She can hold the standard with gentle firmness, and she can initiate the process of confession and restoration between members. She does not have to wait for a priest, or her husband, or the rapture.

Wives, and by application mothers, are “co-heirs of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). Wield grace.

The “first commandment with a promise” for children is that they must “obey their parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1-2). Who is the first example of what obedience looks like that a child should see?

I’m tempted to say that it should be dad, dad who obeys his authorities, i.e., government, employer. But the first visible example will probably be mom.

Paul told wives, “submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). The example is, “as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands” (5:24). But, this is hard.

The truth of solus Christus means that you are saved by Christ alone and saved for Christ. One of the things Christ has called you to is to provide a great example of submission. Your children learn what submission to their heavenly Father is like by watching you.

When it comes to obeying your husband, remember that you are obeying Christ in doing so. And in obedience, the relationship changes. When Jane and the Director are talking in That Hideous Strength, and she was talking about her “case” of not loving her husband Mark. She thought that maybe there was excuse for their marriage, but the Director said, “you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience” (145).

Soli Deo gloria means “to the glory of God alone.” This is why Reformed mothers do what they do: God’s glory, not their own.

Paul told the servants in Colosse to do their work heartily as for the Lord, not for the sake of being seen by men, but for the sake of being seen by God (Colossians 3:22-24). This is true for all who work.

One of my favorite blog posts ever, Rachel Jankovic described a scene when she growing up and listening to a fruit tree outside her bedroom window (“Heavy Branches”).

It is something I love about fruit bearing trees and bushes – that God told them to make something, and they do it enthusiastically. They don’t care about what happens to the fruit. They do not measure their efforts, or fuss when no one appreciates it. (“Heavy Branches”)

It reminds me of the line we sing from “Blessed the Man That Fears Jehovah”:

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

It’s not about having more kids per se, it’s about what you do with those kids and for your family.

There are all sorts of examples of godliness among women in the New Testament. 1 Timothy 5:9-15 describes women who brought up children, showed hospitality, were not idle, did not gossip, and were devoted to every good work.

God does not tell us to necessarily be strategic with our fruit. We do not need to know what will happen to the fruit. Will someone check on it every day, harvest the best to make a pie? (“Heavy Branches”)

There was a sign on Ronald Reagan’s desk: “There is no limit to what a man can accomplish if he doesn’t care who gets the credit.” Soli Deo glori frees women from the bitterness of not being appreciated.

What is your glory. What are you made for? “[Women], as God’s creatures, are designed by him to fulfill a particular role. How many women are out there living frustrated, impossible lives because they are trying to be a can opener when God actually made them to be a knife?” (Merkle, 98).

God is the one who has not gotten tired of making mothers. He has not stopped giving maternal gifts.

Be honorable. Love life. Don’t be bored (as Robert Capon wrote, boredom is the “fertilizing principle of unloveliness”). Learn to eat, to cook, and to exercise. Decapitate a chicken. Balance a checkbook. Listen to music that you think will be around in a hundred years, and some that you think won’t be around but is fun for now. Investigate what wine goes with what food, try some. Throw a party. Be content. You will never be able to raise happy kids if you aren’t. Bear fruit now, wherever you are.

I suspect that most of the ladies here are not enslaved to church dogma, desperate to have the approval of the church. But I do suspect that many are captive to the cultural dogma, and seek justification in the eyes of the society. The doctrines of the Reformation work for this, too! You have reformed roots from which to bear great fruit.

On the night Jesus was betrayed,

he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. (Luke 22:19–20)

The same event is described in Matthew 26:26-28 and Mark 14:22-25, but only Luke used the specific word new (καινὴ) to describe the covenant. Jesus instituted the first observance of the Lord's Supper as a new covenant remembrance, and Paul quoted this narrative in 1 Corinthians 11:25 about how “this cup is the new covenant in [Christ’s] blood” as he instructed the church in Corinth about celebrating the Lord's Supper.

There are more mentions of the New Covenant in the New Testament as well. Paul described his work as a minister of a new covenant (2 Corinthians 3:6). The author of Hebrews says that Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant (Hebrews 9:15; 12:24) and the coming of the New Covenant makes the first one, the old one obsolete (Hebrews 8:13).

So, for us who read the apostles and who believe in Christ, we're a part of this New Covenant, right? Well, it depends.

Last Lord’s Day I began to introduce what we believe about the end times. In particular I described our understanding as that of a Dispensationalist, then I gave a few “indispensabilities” of Dispensationalism. They aren’t necessarily things that only Dispensationalists would say, but you can’t be a Dispensationalist without saying them. Those non-negotiable principles include reading the Old Testament like someone in the Old Testament would, that is, we read the OT by itself first. While we not only acknowledge, we appreciate that the NT sheds much light on the OT, we do not believe that the NT ever overrides what the OT audience could have known. When we read like this, from left to right, we see God’s distinction between His chosen people: the nation of Israel, as well as His chosen people: believing Jews and Gentiles in the church. There are two ways to be elect, and in some places there is overlap between the two.

Most specifically of all, “a Dispensationalist believes that a future generation of Israelites will be saved and that Israel as a nation will be restored during Christ’s kingdom on earth.” That is, we believe that Christ will return to rule from His throne in Jerusalem for 1,000 years before the new heavens and the new earth.

Why do we think this? Is the nation of Israel really that important? The Messiah came, the Jews rejected Him en masse, now the gospel has gone out to the whole world. Even Paul said, “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek” (Romans 10:12). What does it matter?

Those are the sorts of questions I want to answer this morning and again next Lord’s Day. As I’ve mentioned previously in this series, this is a Bible reading project. We want to read rightly, to cut straight in all the parts of the Word. God is always true and faithful to His Word, so we want to know and believe it.

Perhaps there is no greater promise than what comes in the new promise, the new covenant. As we already saw, Jesus’ blood is the purchase of the new covenant, and there is no blood more precious (1 Peter 1:19). But as with all covenants and contracts, there are terms of the deal. Before we start making plans perhaps we should read the contract.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

Thus says the LORD,

Thus says the LORD:

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. And the measuring line shall go out farther, straight to the hill Gareb, and shall then turn to Goah. The whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be sacred to the LORD. It shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever.” (Jeremiah 31:31–40)

This really is an amazing covenant and there are at least four questions that we should ask about the text.

The paragraph itself identifies the two “parties” of the contract, multiple times, and the context of the entire chapter and book leave no doubt.

Jeremiah prophesied about both the destruction and rebuilding of Jerusalem. Chapter 31 comes after fourteen messages of condemnation on Judah’s idolatry, apostasy, and moral decay. Jeremiah’s people, the Jews, had been rebelling against God, and God is predicting two things for them: judgment and then salvation. The two parties are, therefore, 1) the LORD and 2) Israel.

Verse 31: “the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” The nation was divided at this point in their history into the northern and southern kingdoms. Yet Israel and Judah were still “family.” They are the ones descended from “their fathers.” Which fathers? The ones that the LORD brought out of the land of Egypt, the sons of Jacob—the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

To that growing group the LORD gave laws, also called the Mosaic covenant, summarized in the Ten Commandments. In the desert, and also once they began to occupy parts of the Promised Land, Israel disobeyed those laws. Would God move on to another people? No. “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel” (verse 33). They did not obey, their hearts were hard against Him, and this covenant promises to get to the root of the problem. The LORD said, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts” (verse 33).

After He finished making the promise, the LORD made a comparison about what it would take for these promises not to take place. We’ll look at those specifics in a moment, but verses 35-37 repeat the parties: “Thus says the LORD,” “the LORD of hosts” (v.35), “declares the LORD,” “the offspring of Israel being a nation,” (v.36), and again, “says the LORD,” “all the offspring of Israel,” “declares the LORD” (v.37).

The parallel passage in Ezekiel 36 is just as clear, and perhaps even more so as it distinguishes the “house of Israel“ (verses 22, 32, 37) from “among the nations” (verses 22, 23, 24, 30, and 36). There are three groups: the LORD, His chosen nation Israel, and all the other nations. The new covenant that the LORD made is not with any other nation than Israel.

It makes a Bible-reader wonder, as just one example, about the following note in the ESV Study Bible: “Do the terms in Jer. 31:27, 31, 36-37 focus the prophecy on ethnic Israel or on a redefined Israel (the Jewish-Gentile church)?” (1431, emphasis mine). Where is the warrant to redefine “Israel”? Would an Israelite accept such redefinition?

The new covenant is something new and Jeremiah explicitly stated that it is “not like the covenant” the LORD “made with their fathers” coming out of Egypt. This is not just an agreement with requirements and benefits, this is an agreement wherein God gives the additional benefit of causing Israel to fulfill the requirements for sake of receiving the other benefits.

Instead of stone tablets, “I will put my law within then, and I will write it on their hearts” (Jeremiah 31:33). Ezekiel described it as, “I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). This is exactly what they could not do on their own. They could not give themselves new hearts. This is what we label regeneration, spiritual life, and the in-dwelling of the third Person of the Trinity. This is salvation.

The covenant includes forgiveness: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). The covenant includes righteousness: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you” (Ezekiel 36:25, 29, 33).

The fulfillment of these promises does not depend on Israel’s repentance, the promise is that God will grant Israel repentance. There is no condition for Israel to meet, the entire point of the new covenant is that God will do everything necessary to save Israel because they have not obeyed what He said previously.

These are not the only parts of the new covenant, however. Connected to this covenant is that “the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD” (Jeremiah 31:38), with specific place names mentioned (“from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate”) to leave no doubt that the LORD means Jerusalem, and even how big Jerusalem will be. In verse 40 God includes the valley and fields outside of the city that “shall be sacred to the LORD” (verse 40).

Ezekiel is just as specific. Immediately following the promise to “cause you to...be careful to obey my rules,” the LORD says, “You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers” (verse 28). Then, “I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you” (verse 29, also verse 30). Then “says the LORD God: On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. And the land that was desolate shall be tilled” (verse 33). “They will say, ‘This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden, and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are not fortified and inhabited’” (verse 35). The New Covenant promises new hearts that will desire to obey God’s laws as well as all the material/earthly blessings promised by the LORD to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: land, a city, fields, grain in abundance.

I have heard it argued that the “land of their fathers” just represents that God’s people—all believers both Jew and Gentiles—will inhabit the whole earth. It’s said that a Jew who heard the new covenant promises would have understood the promise of grain and no famine as symbolic of having plenty, not has having anything specific to do with where such fruitfulness came from. It could be in China, or Alaska, and a believing Israelite would have been fine with that. I cannot imagine that, and the New Testament does not allow it.

Covenants are often distinguished between those that are conditional, “If you do this, then I’ll do this,” and those that are unconditional, “I will do this no matter what.” God’s covenant with Abram in Genesis 15, when God put Abram to sleep and walked between the dead animal halves alone, showed God’s commitment to act for Himself. It is the same sort of language in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.

The guarantee of these promises is the word of the LORD. He has said it, and He has said it for His own sake. He has also confirmed the likelihood of His completing the promises by comparing them to “this fixed order.”

The new hearts and the fruitful land for the house of Israel are as certain as planets in orbit and the ocean tide. “If this fixed order departs from me, declares the LORD, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever” (Jeremiah 31:35-36). The LORD adds also that if the heavens can be measured and the center of the earth found, so will Israel be done (verse 37).

Ezekiel also makes it clear. “It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name” (Ezekiel 36:22). “I will vindicate the holiness of my great name” (verse 23), “I will vindicate my holiness” (verse 24). “It is not for your sake that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you” (verse 32). “I am the LORD; I have spoken, and I will do it” (verse 36).

This is a one-sided promise made by God, kept by God, and for God.

We will need to address this next question specifically next week, but, has God changed His mind about these promises to act for His own name among the house of Israel? If it does not depend on them, if the whole point of this covenant is in fact that it depends on God, then when Israel rejected Jesus as their Messiah on the whole, how could that change the covenant? They hadn’t obeyed the 10 Commandments either. All the Israelites ever offered was hard-hearts. What makes this promise great is that it will be effectual in the Israelites as the LORD’s doing.

The question is somewhat misleading. If you’ve been tracking so far with what we’ve read from Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36, then you know that the answer is: the New Covenant has not been fulfilled yet in its entirety.

Jesus told His disciples that “this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). As with every covenant, sacrifice was required, and this time Jesus Himself provided the sacrifice rather than grain or goats or bulls. The apostles certainly understood that the Holy Spirit not only was moving, but was indwelling believers after Pentecost. The covenant was purchased and it appeared that it was time for the covenant to be completed.

After His resurrection and before Pentecost Jesus spoke about the kingdom of God to His disciples. They asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6), as in, Is now the time for the Spirit and the land and our King? Jesus said No. They would be His witnesses, but they did not get to know “the times or the seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7). But Jesus also did not say, “Actually, guys, now that you mentioned it, it’s going to be different than you’re thinking….”

The death of Jesus started to bear new covenant sort of fruit in Acts, and we continue to be fruit of His promise as well as declare His saving work among the Gentiles. There is an element of “mystery” in this as Gentiles share in some of the benefits of the promise. But the promise was not made to us—Gentiles, we—the Church—do not inherit the land of Israel, and the house of Israel must still be part of His plan or else the word of His promises cannot be trusted.

In answering these questions we’ve also answered the Who, What, Where, and Why questions of the new covenant. We’re missing the When, and some of the means to the How.

Dispies believe that these all promises to Israel—the nation—will be fulfilled when Christ reigns on earth for a thousand years before Gog and Magog and the ends of the earth come to battle and lose. Then the devil and the beast and false prophet will be thrown into the lake of fire and the great white throne judgement will take place (Revelation 20). Then comes a new heaven and a new earth (Revelation 21). That is the general When. In a couple weeks I’ll try to show how we are part of God’s means to the How.

My point for this morning is not to describe in what ways we as non-Jews partake of the new covenant. We do partake of it in Christ, we do partake of it by faith, we are grafted in like branches as Paul wrote in Romans 11. God has granted repentance to the Gentiles (Acts 11L18). But God’s grace to extend the saving blood of Christ among the Gentiles does not nullify His guarantee to apply it to the house of Israel. Except for a remnant, their hearts are still hard and they are currently still rejecting their Messiah. This must change in the future, or else God has redefined the “house of Israel.” And if God has redefined that, what else has He redefined?

Maybe you’ve heard it said before that the Millennium is one-thousand years of peace that Christians like to fight about. There are certainly other doctrines that provoke fierce debates among believers. Arminians and Calvinists have been arguing since before the foundation of the world, at least in the eternal counsels of the Trinity. But eschatology has been a ground for conflict for at least a few centuries, and will probably continue to be so, until it’s all over.

Eschatology is the doctrine of the eschatos = the end things. It is the study of what will happen in the “last days,” or it starts with determining when the last days were, or are, or will be. The study of the end times is a study involving prophecy and it is especially difficult, compared to other biblical doctrines, because everyone agrees that at least some things have yet to take place. Eschatological hindsight is 20/20, and many have more hind than sight.

Eschatology and confusion go together like water and electricity; water will conduct the energy but it’s hard to control. The genre of apocalypse is full of jolting imagery and it shocks the imagination. It also taxes the exegetical effort. One of the more important charges Paul gave Timothy was to:

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15).

There is one word for “rightly handling” in Greek, orthotomounta. You can hear “ortho” at the beginning, the word for “straight.” It referred to cutting a path in a straight direction, perhaps cutting a linear piece of leather for a tent, a practice with which Paul was familiar. The NAS translates it as “accurately handling,” which is also okay. Back in the KJV it has “rightly dividing,” and this is especially interesting for a couple reasons.

First is that Dispensationalists, a category for those who believe certain things about the end times, are usually the ones who most maintain that they are the straight cutters. I agree, for reasons that will be stated later. It is why I’ve emphasized the irony over the past few weeks of those who claim to be the best Bible-readers missing other key parts of the Bible. Dispensationalists, though, can get a little scissor happy. They parse the prophets with a razor’s edge and cut their Kuyperian throat in the process. This is no good, though I’d maintain this is a failure to carry the reading principles all the way through, not a failure of the reading principles from the beginning. A Kuyperian can’t be a Darwinian, a Deist, or a Dualist, but he can (we’d say should) be a Dispensationalist.

The second reason why “rightly dividing” is an interesting phrase is because one of the largest flame-books against Dispensationalism is called Wrongly Dividing the Word of Truth by John Gerstner. He argues not only against the Dispensational reading, he makes up straw men and torches them.

Even in the context of 2 Timothy, Paul is urging Timothy to study the Word because of quarreling about words “which does no good, but only ruins the hearers” (verse 14). There is “irreverent babble” that leads people “into more and more ungodliness, and their talk will spread like gangrene” (verse 16), “upsetting the faith of some” (verse 17). Paul was not thinking about “last things.” And this is not to say that anyone who disagrees over eschatology is necessarily behaving in such an ungodly way, but there certainly are too many discussions that uglify the doctrine rather than adorn it.

Why not just avoid the subject altogether? We should be concerned with eschatology because we should be concerned with God’s promises, those fulfilled and those yet to be fulfilled. He is the God of promise and we are His people. We should be concerned with eschatology because God has revealed things about the end. He gives us His Word for us to understand. And we should be concerned about eschatology because it is a catalyst for our current behavior. What we believe will happen affects what we we believe we’re working for.

I think that we are ready for this. We believe in the sovereignty of God. We’ve practiced reading and interpreting the Old Testament. We have also practiced repentance and learning how to be kind to those with whom we disagree.

For our purposes there are two sides of a spectrum for us to consider: Dispensational theology and Covenant theology. One side sees greater continuity and overlap between the Old Testament and New Testament, the other side acknowledges some key distinctions. Perhaps the groups are similar to Republicans and Democrats, those who have a certain approach to reading the Constitution and laws. Dispensationalists and Covenantalists are less like the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. There are extreme edges on both sides, and there are, as expected with a spectrum, parts in the middle. I’m not sure that there is an exact middle; besides, fence straddling is bound to tear a theologians pants.

Both ways, at least in terms of their labels, of defining the Bible’s teaching are new-ish in the theology of church history. Covenantalists love to point out that Dispensationalism was a system first designated in the 19th century. “How could it be any good? It’s too young! What about the previous 18 centuries?” But what they often don’t say is that Covenantalism as a system of end-times explanation was made popular only in the 17th century. Don’t let anyone tell you that Paul was a Covenantalist, let alone Augustine or Calvin.

The early church was focused on identifying the canon of Scripture—and not being martyred—then on the person of Christ and an understanding of the Trinity. By the time of the Reformation the gospel itself was in the dark and the Reformers shined Scriptural light back on justification by faith alone. Only then, and still a hundred years or more afterward, was there concentrated effort to organize and define the “last things.”

All the TEC elders are Pre-tribulational, Pre-millennial, Reformed and still reforming Dispensationalists. What does that mean? And what does that effect? And how do we understand what will happen in the future? We are trying to read the word of truth right, to rightly divide it. The goal is to define what a Dispensationalist is over the next few weeks and then get to why a Kuyperian Dispensationalist is the best yet (even if there is only one out there).

There are a couple blatant errors about Dispensational theology cast into the wind like dandelion seeds. They won’t actually sprout, but they do stick onto things and can be hard to get off.

It is untrue that a Dispensationalist believes in two ways of salvation. When working through the relationship between the Old and New Testament, between the Law and Gospel, there are questions about the relationship between them. But a Dispensationalist does not believe that someone before Jesus was saved in any other way than by faith in God. Old Testament saints looked forward by faith to the coming Messiah. After Christ’s coming we look back by faith. But salvation is, and always has been, by faith alone. There was one note in the Scofield Study Bible (1909) that some misread, uncharitably, that was revised in the next edition to make it clear.

It is untrue that a Dispensationalist believes in grace without obedience. In other words, Dispensationalists are not antinomian, that is, those who don’t believe that Christians should obey God’s law or submit to Jesus as Lord. It is true that a couple Dispensationalists taught that, for example, the Sermon on the Mount is only meant to apply to the Kingdom of God and therefore has no application for believers today. The same sort of group might say that the Old Testament law has no application for New Testament believers. But this is hyperdispensationalism, this is overcutting, not cutting straight. It is not what we mean at all.

Not everything is rosy in the Dispensational camp. I would not put the fact that Dispensationalism is only 150 years old into the unpleasant truths category, but it is a truth, and some try to make it seem really unpleasant.

It is truly unpleasant to consider who some of the groups are that claim allegiance to Dispensationalism. Not only among Baptists, but there are multiple Pentecostal and Charismatic groups that refer to themselves as such, and even a variety of cults. But “a distinction needs to be made between what certain dispensationalists believe and what is inherent to the system” (Vlach, 48). We are perhaps most famous, these days, for the Left Behind series. Ha. But as John MacArthur observed, Covies have a different sort of fiction about what happened AD 70.

It is also truly unpleasant that there are hyper-dispensationalists. Every group has soup to nuts, and Dispies have their fair share of nuts. I mentioned some of them before as those who claim that some parts of the Bible aren’t for us in any way.

It is also truly unpleasant that mosts Dispies are just unpleasant to be around. Some of their end-times charts are nice, but not all of them are nice. They tend to be divisive, both in terms of exegesis and fellowship. They make too big a deal about their understanding, and sometimes look silly. It definitely makes them look red-in-the-face fussy.

Perhaps the worst part, as far as I’m concerned, about most Dispensationalists is that they are dualists. This is what I’ve been attacking for the last couple weeks in this series, and it’s why we think the Kuyperian adjective is such a needed corrective. For those who claim to be reading the Bible well, they need to keep reading it. For making good points about God’s plan for Israel, past and future, they miss God’s revelation about our present responsibilities, both Jews and Gentiles.

Taking a step back, dualism may be prevalent among Dispies but it is not in tune with the teaching. Dualism is actually more consistent with the roots of Covenant Theology, since Covies must take the physical promises given to the nation of Israel in the OT and see a spiritual fulfillment in the church. Dispies, who take all the physical and temporal promises as legit, should at root be not dualists. Historically both groups have been inconsistent. It’s another example of how everyone can be wrong about something.

I recognize that I have not really defined what a Dispensationalist is yet. That’s fine. Now is the time.

As far as we’re concerned, a Dispensationalist does not necessarily believe in seven dispensations, that is divisions, of how God interacts with man. It doesn’t require believing in three or four instead of seven or eight; the number is not the most important piece. Most people would agree, Covenantalists included, that things were different before and after Adam’s fall, that things were different before and after God gave the Law to Israel, that things were different before and after Christ’s coming and death and resurrection, and that things are different now than they will be in the future, whether or not you expect the 1,000 year reign of Christ on earth or you expect to go directly into the eternal state. There are, then, different dispensations or ways of ordering history. All believers should be little “d” dispensationalists at least.

The key things we believe are not-negotiable for a capital “D” Dispensationalist are as follows.

This is why Dispensationalism is a Bible-reading project. This is not to say that Covenantalists do not read their Bible. It is to say that there are different directions to read the Bible, and we think we should start at the beginning, in Genesis, not start from the back and work toward the front. The title for the message is “Straight to the End.” We believe in starting in the front and reading the story until the finish.

It is a principle of Covenantal Theology to give priority to the New Testament over the Old. Is this a good thing? It depends on what we mean by “priority.” The New Testament surely explains things that were unknown in the Old. Isaiah did not know the name of the suffering servant, Matthew does. The angels longed to look into the person and timing of the Christ, and Peter was able to tell his readers straight out.

The New Testament may, with progressive revelation, shine light on Old Testament passages, offer commentary, or add additional implications or referents, but the New Testament never overrides the original intent of the Old Testament writers. (Vlach, Dispensationalism, 18-19)

When the NT is given priority over the OT in such a way as to “spiritualize” promises about offspring and land, going all the way back through David and to Abraham, we get close to accusing God of deceiving His people. Mystery exposed at a later time is one thing. Promises with small print not provided until centuries later is another.

John MacArthur is an interesting example, and he’s probably the Dispensationalist I’m most familiar with. I would put him in the Evangelical Epistolary club, a club that I believe needs to get out more. But he loves the New Testament and has clearly made it the focus of his teaching. Yet even though he gives the NT priority for sake of teaching he doesn’t think that the NT has priority over the OT for sake of interpretation.

Much more needs to be said about this and the third point in the coming weeks, applying the reading principles mentioned in the first point. But one of the things that defines a Dispensationalist is that he is careful to preserve whatever revealed distinctions there are in Scripture, including distinctions between God’s chosen peoples, namely, the nation of Israel and the Church filled with Jews and Gentiles.

Recognizing where there is overlap and where there is difference is key for sake of understanding progressive revelation, it is key for sake of interpreting the book of Acts, it is key for interpreting our work on earth now, and it is key for our hope in what God has purposed to do.

This is a more specific application of the previous point, but one that defines a Dispensationalist. There are some, interestingly enough more these days, Covenantal teachers who have backed off of replacement theology, backed off of there being no distinctions whatever between the church and Israel. They would concede that Romans 11:25 says that “all Israel will be saved,” and so they make room for that, which is good, because it says it in the verse.

But a Dispensationalist is not only waiting for a generation of Jews to be saved, he is waiting for the fulfillment of Jesus reigning from the throne of David in Jerusalem, over the nations, as they submit to Him and bring Him their tribute. We believe this will happen before the new heavens and the new earth on the timeline of the end things.

I cannot recommend too highly a sixty-page book titled, Dispensationalism: Essential Beliefs and Common Myths by Michael Vlach. It is not overly technical, and my only complaint is that it is too short (which may make it more desirable for others). I would be eager for Vlach to say even more, which he does in other works. It is a great explanation of Dispensationalism and, whether you consider yourself one or not, it is a helpful affirmation, or at least a helpful corrective to some common, easy errors taught about the doctrine.

An accurate definition of Dispyness doesn’t require reforming Dispy doctrine, though the teaching does require reforming Dispy praxis. Fearful, fussy, fighty Dispies are no fun at eschatology parties.

The plan is, over the next couple weeks, to look at the New Covenant directly in order to understand how it relates to the original hearers as well as to all those who believe in Christ and eat and drink it at the Lord’s Supper.

Then we must consider Romans 9-11, not just some of the individual verses within the chapters, but why those chapters were necessary at all and why they are where they are in the epistle. It would be easy to go from the end of Romans 8 to the beginning of Romans 12 without anything in between. The intervening chapters demand a Dispensational approach or else our hope in the gospel is embarrassed.

Then once we’ve examined those two big pieces, and potentially answered other objections along the way, we’ll look at why the fruit of Kuyperian discipleship is the key to unlock the Dispensational door.

We are trying to cut it straight, and read straight to the end. We are very optimistic about how it’s going to turn out.

The confession of the Christian life is: Jesus is Lord. Paul wrote to the Romans:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9)

What better summary of what we believe that that? He is Lord. Jesus reigns. “God has made Him both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), Messiah and Master. As we considered last Lord’s Day, there is not one thumb’s width in all of creation that Christ doesn’t claim as His own. This is what we confess, what we celebrate, and also a large part of what motivates us as His disciples. Where can we go from His Spirit? Where can we go from His concerns?

It is, however, not only possible, but also confirmed, that in some circles, Christians agree with teaching about the Lordship of Jesus who nevertheless limit the implications of His Lordship to spiritual matters alone (as defined in ironically worldly ways). Jesus cares about our beliefs, that they be biblical, and He cares about our conduct, that we be obedient, and about our worship, that we be loving. But it is still possible to define our Christian lives in unbiblical categories.

For example, in no verse in the Bible does God say that a good Christian must have quiet times with the Lord or follow a Bible reading program. I think this was mostly because copies of God’s Word were not available for most people throughout most of Church history. We take our access to Scriptures for granted, and such saturation is a good problem to have. But “somehow” the disciples honored the Lord without a New Testament. David spent time with the Lord, Jesus spent time alone with His Father, and I don’t know where I’d be apart from some private time with the Lord each day. But minutes in prayer is not the measure of one’s godliness any more than gas in the tank is the measure of how far you’ve driven.

For that matter, it has often been the case that in churches where the Bible is loved, which is a good thing, that the mark of having arrived at spiritual growth and maturity is teaching a Bible study or a Sunday School class. On one hand, Colossians 3:16 says that the word of Christ should dwell in all of us richly (though again, that is not necessarily reading it) so that we will be naturally “teaching and admonishing one another.” This is one-another encouragement from the “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” because lyrics would be memorable, easier to pull out in a conversation with a brother.

This is a different sort of teaching than the more formal teaching position that many ministries push people toward. Yet James explicitly says, “Let not many of you be teachers”! This is due to the difficulty of not sinning with one’s tongue; it’s hard. But in the name of teaching the Bible how have we Bible people so blatantly disobeyed the Bible? And if most people are NOT to be teachers, how are the actual teachers supposed to teach in such a way as to help the non-teachers become “complete in Christ”? This means that there must be a lot of ways to be like Christ.

This is why the adjective “Kuyperian” can be so helpful. It intends to take intentionally and seriously the Bible’s teaching that God is interested in His image-bearers being interested in a universe worth of things. Yes, we are not God, so our capacity for interests will be finite. But we ought to purposefully seek to increase our capacities and also to maximize our interests for His sake. That’s one of the ways we become more “complete in Christ.” Abraham Kuyper was a guy who worked to apply this truth and to spread it into the corners.

God is sovereign in salvation: Calvinism. God is sovereign everywhere: Kuyperian Calvinism. John Calvin started with the truth of God’s control in the universe, Kuyper just continued to roll out what that means.

[T]he persuasion that the whole of a man's life is to be lived in the Divine Presence has become the fundamental thought of Calvinism. By this decisive idea, or rather by this mighty fact, it has allowed itself to be controlled in every department of its entire domain. It is from this mother-thought that the all-embracing life system of Calvinism sprang. (Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 25-26)

Seeing the cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28, human beings, and especially redeemed human beings who know and follow the Lord, have stewardship responsibilities in all their daily work. What happens in the theology department must not stay in the theology department.

In the final chapter of Lectures on Calvinism Kuyper makes a distinction between the world’s understanding of (natural) selection (survival of the fittest) and the Calvinist’s understanding of (divine) election (sovereignty of the Father). It’s a one letter difference, but a worldview apart.

When we look around, why are things different? “There is no life without differentiation, and no differentiation without inequality. … Whence are those differences?”

Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem, solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honoring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of the existence of all things to be created, of what is to be camellia or buttercup, nightingale or crow, hart or swine, and, equally among men, the determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our entire existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all-embracing predestination, the Calvinist places, not in the hand of man, and still less in the hand of a blind natural force, but in the hand of Almighty God, Sovereign Creator and Possessor of heaven and earth; and it is in the figure of the potter and the clay that Scripture has from the time of the Prophets expounded to us this all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature. (Lectures on Calvinism, 189)

We believe that the world is filled with givens, things that the Lord chose things to be one way and not another. We can, and should, receive the givens with thanks, and then respond accordingly to what God has chosen.

Gender is a given, not a cultural idea or social contract. Marriage is a given, not a pragmatic agreement among citizens. God chose how things work. His sovereign concerns are not limited to spiritual things, salvific issues, or church relations alone. His sovereignty extends out of our private places and into the public square. To be a disciple of the Lord is to seek to obey Him in a lot more places that we’ve previously acknowledged.

A Kuyperian acknowledges Jesus as Lord in all the wide wide world. A Kuyperian does his work as to the Lord because he thinks that the Lord actually cares about it, and it involves honesty and more.

Kuyperians take their work outside the theology department and the Sunday School class. The elders started reading Empires of Dirt a while ago, and here is a helpful summary of our options:

When a Christian says that Christians ought not to insist that Jesus be recognized as Lord in the public square, he is either saying that we shouldn’t do this because Jesus doesn’t want us to, or we shouldn’t do this because Jesus doesn’t care, making it OK for us to go along with the secular flow.

Jesus definitely never says that He does not care. Even if He didn’t say He cared, did He say we should not? But we don’t actually need to guess.

Ascribe to the LORD, O families of the peoples,

Paul wrote to the Romans about the apostleship given to him “to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ’s] name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5). The final chapter of Romans includes the same phrase with the purpose of God included: the gospel “has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith” (Romans 16:26).

What does this “obedience of faith” look like? What does it do? In other words, what is our salvation unto? And how does it affect the “nations”?

Ask it still another way? What is a light for? It is not to hide under a bushel basket. And Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). Light shines; it can’t help it. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

So due to Christ’s sovereignty over and interest in the cosmos, what cannot be consecrated in the obedience of faith for His name’s sake? Consider how many things are dealt a death blow by a Kuyperian understanding.

A Kuyperian cannot be a Darwinian. We believe that Christ created all things, that He chose what they would be, what they could become, and what they could not become.

A Kuyperian cannot be a Deist. We believe that Christ sustains all things, that they all hold together in Him moment by moment. He did not create the world and then leave us to our own devices like a watch-maker.

A Kuyperian cannot be a Dualist. We believe that Christ created and sustains what He cares about, which includes invisible and visible things. As a subset of this, a Kuyperian cannot be an asceticist, one who gives up all things. This is not even of true spiritual value, and it defines spirituality in worldly terms (see Colossians 2:20-23). It goes against the positive that Paul described to Timothy (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5, which Jonathan preached last October).

A Kuyperian cannot be indifferent. Our apathy, our boredom, our unthankfulness is a failure to honor Christ.

Whether you use the adjective “Kuyperian” or not, it is intended to give us some common language about the sort of Calvinists we are. We believe that “our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.” He calls the nations to worship Him. The gospel is the power of God to salvation for the Jew first, and also for the Gentiles. Saved men are commissioned to use their thumb’s for Christ, and for more than flipping the pages of their Bibles.

This is public theology, not because it is decided by the people, but because it is for the people.

In Christ the cosmos has order and meaning everywhere. It’s all for His glory, including anthropology, sociology, science and technology, medicine, agriculture, gender and marriage and sex and parenting, education, economics, government, art, and hygiene. Among other things, Kuyper himself helped to start a daily newspaper, a university, and a political party. You can get the “Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (12 vols)”.

[N]ot only the church, but also the world belongs to God and in both has to be investigated the masterpiece of the supreme Architect and Artificer. A Calvinist who seeks God, does not for a moment think of limiting himself to theology and contemplation, leaving the other sciences, as of a lower character, in the hands of unbelievers; but on the contrary, looking upon it as his task to know God in all his works, he is conscious of having been called to fathom with all the energy of his intellect, things terrestrial as well as things celestial. (Lectures, 125)

A Kuyperian is a Christian who worships with the church and then works outside the church. The church is not the boss, but Christians can be. Kuyperianism is concerned for everything outside of the institutional church. The ends of the theology department are hard to see from here, but some of us have never even noticed the door.

It’s a false choice to be a spiritual disciple or a Kuyperian disciple.

In Colossians 3 Paul said “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2) But “things of earth” Paul says not to think about are defined in the next paragraph. “What is earthly in you” are the sinful things (see verses 3-11).

When you are filled with the word as it says in Colossians 3:16, go on to Colossians 3:18-4:6. When you are filled with the Spirit as it says in Ephesians 5:18, go on to Ephesians 5:22-6:9. Spouses and kids and salty speech are things of earth in a different way, and they are things that must be different because of being indwelt by God’s Word. Working hard is a thing to do because of the Bible, not by definition in competition with it.

So, “whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:17).

As a disciple of Christ I must constantly ask, What does Christ’s lordship look like wherever I am going? I have been excited about the meaning of discipleship on earth for a while, at least since first working through Genesis. Then it has been corroborated in a hundred other places, reading history and literature in Omnibus or reading about education and culture and family. It all points to the fact that it all matters to God. It is part of our very nature to be interested in things and make things and work and be social. We do not have to feel guilty, we do not have to hide, we do not have to limit our “faithfulness” to church defined activities.

There are, as it turns out, many professing Christians who don’t want to hear about it, and some who would go so far as to be critical of this mindset.

There are a least a couple reasons for this. One is fear, agitation, distress, the “willies.” If everything matters to God, then I will have to think about everything, and care about everything, and answer for everything. It is more comfortable to be lazy, or to be inconsistent. We might even try to convince ourselves that it is better just to live with some level of guilt for pursuing all the things we’ve decided to define as not mattering. The Kuyperian worldview is relieving, even exciting, until realizing that the standard was just raised, and raised significantly. Thinking about our own work, all of it, as mattering to God is an almost unbearable glory. But it is glory. It is also biblical, and it is the worst to squirrel ourselves away under the pretense of loving Scripture.

Another reason for rejecting this Kuyperian mindset may masquerade under the banner of faithfulness, but is really just pride, perhaps we could call it “Christian narcissism,” which cannot be redeemed by the adjective. Men are always looking to justify themselves and some also desire a sort of power or control over others. Christian men are no different. It is easier to measure your likeness to Christ by how many chapters of the Bible you read today. And it is easier to claim power over someone if you can convince them that their soul depends on doing what you say is right. But there are so many things outside of the theology department that, in order to manipulate with any hope of success, you have to narrow it down to something manageable, like spiritual disciplines and church-run events. Our inner-Pharisee gets super excited about the law. Pastors, even in the Protestant tradition, have been the worst.

So we must repent. We must read all of the verses and not just the ones that other people aren’t doing. We must also let God be God and let Him call different men to different things that we don’t control, nor do we judge.

Not only is this worldview not a retreat, it shows our position on top of the hill. We, with Christ, assume the center. We should think and talk downhill. The world may act as if they have the lock on the outside of the door to the theology department, but they’re bluffing.

Also, this is not Postmillennialism. We do not think that we are making the world a better place for Jesus to return and rule. Like Israel—somewhat ironically for the point I’m making—in Egypt before the exodus, we will continue to grow and multiply and that will make the surrounding pagans nervous. We won’t win, but we will be delivered. This is Dispensational, and more on that in the weeks to come.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Father, as we study this and realize that we can be nothing without you and your spirit, help us understand that in a deeper way today as we talk about this doctrine and just guide us to speak it in such a way that it internalizes for all kinds of people that maybe never really have grasped onto it. So we thank you for that. And it's in your son's name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. OK, this is the final part of the tulip. We started off total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints. And I started with total depravity a while back. And I mentioned that the whole tulip thing was really not put together until 1905 by a man, Reverend Cleland Boyd, and Dabney, R.L. Dabney in 1878 had put together the five points with different titles on them.

And it really became a big deal when Lorraine Bettner used it as a teaching device starting in 1932 at Westminster. So that's the thing of the tulip, because we tend to think that that's an old thing, but it isn't all that old. The thoughts were there, and the doctrines were clearly taught back in those days, but they didn't have the titles that we've put on them today. So this is kind of an overview of the doctrine, and I've got quite a few verses I'll talk about. But the big thing is the subtitle that is eternal life or eternity really kind of sums it up. And it's just stunning to me. The first time I heard that was when Walter Martin back in the, well, I guess he started in the 60s, the Bible Answer Man, the original one.

And people would call in and, you know, well, how do you know you have eternal life? Or how long is it? And he would always say, well, forever. What do you think? And hang up on them. So the thing is that if God gives you eternal life, he's given you a brain to reason that out, what does that mean? Is it eternal or isn't it? So another thing that it hinges on is if God chose you, who, the big thing that I always talk to people when I disciple them, my first question when I meet people is did God choose you or did you choose God? That gives me a starting point to figure out where they're coming from because a lot of people will tell you, Oh, I chose God when I was nine years old in the Baptist church and you know, I've followed him and I'm all for it brother.

Amen. Well, they don't understand their total depravity at that point. So you got to start off with that part before you can get to this part. So the idea is we've covered these things, but without the spirit opening your heart to the truths of God, you wouldn't hear any of this and without that spirit you wouldn't be able to continue in it. Galatians 2 20. It's not I who lives. It is Christ who lives in me. And once you're walking in the spirit and you get used to that daily, as we have to repent, you know, in our service and the whole thing, and you probably got to repent three or four times a day, if you're anything like me.

So the whole deal is that, you know, you're out of whack. To get back in a whack you confess your sin and get back walking rightly. But who is guiding you in that? God is. He's superintending what you should recognize and how to deal with it and how to move ahead in it. So the perseverance of the saints is a natural flow from that. Are we going to persevere? Well I hope we don't persevere on my strength. And we can collectively help each other, but I don't care if we got the holiest men around all together, we wouldn't make it without God's help. So if God has chosen you, He will enable you to endure. Okay? Perseverance of the saints, also known as eternal security, and Baptists like to say, once saved, always saved.

You hear that a lot. If you're truly born of God or regenerated by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, nothing in heaven or earth shall be able to separate them from the love of God." Romans 8, 39. And it results in a reversal of the converted condition. So once you turn from this way and God puts you on this direction, He's going to get you there.

John 3-2 says he's going to conform you to the image of his son. That's crazy. By the time we get to heaven, we're going to be thinking that way. This position is held by Reformed Christians. It's a Calvinist doctrine which argues that all men are dead in their trespasses and sins, like we said, and that the only way they can get out of that is the Holy Spirit comes down to them. Calvinists maintain that God selected certain individuals before the world began? Where did they get that? Ephesians 1, right? Before the world began, right? And draws them to faith in his son Jesus Christ. They believe that when Jesus said, no man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him. So unless the Father's drawing you, you ain't coming.

Jesus was saying that men had to be drawn to him by God before they would believe Calvinists have taught this foundation again in Ephesians 1 and 4. It's just if he chose you is he going to let you lose? No way. Okay. They attempt to prove in the text of the books of Philippians where the Apostle Paul writes, which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1 and 6. Okay. There's an old saying in the Reformed tradition, and Sproul uses this a lot, and I think it's really a good one. And this is real plain language for those of you that don't want to memorize all these verses or whatever, can't think about all this stuff.

So the old axiom in Reformed theology about the perseverance of the saints is this. If you have it, that is, if you have genuine faith and are in a state of saving grace, you will never lose it. If you lose it, you never had it. Think about it, all right? If you're just here pretending, you ain't got it. But once you shift from pretending to where that's your second nature, you got it. God is changing you on the inside. And once you do that, you're in the club. It's great. It's fantastic, okay? And the thing is, are we gonna screw up? Yeah. Are you gonna do stupid stuff? Yes. What's the issue? repentance Repent turn away from that do this don't do that do this My favorite thing in counseling is you know you meet a guy and he's I just you can't believe how sad I am and all I just keep doing this you know well don't do that and do this Ephesians 4 is the classic counseling chapter You those of you that are doing this stop doing that and replace that behavior with this So replace the bad behavior with good behavior and move ahead.

Is that hard? Yeah, it can be. And there are some sins for some of us that are harder, and you have to keep redoing, keep redoing. But over passage of time, you'll get better at it. You'll make it out of the ditch. It's good. There are a lot of Calvinists who maintain that a person who is saved can never be lost. This is free grace in non-traditional Calvinist doctrine or free will Baptist theology, but also other Protestant churches of the evangelical tradition. It's also come about of the free grace movement, which John MacArthur's book of the 90s, which is Lordship Salvation Book. The whole issue there is, is Jesus Lord?

Well, hello. Is there a question of that? And the whole thing is, well, He isn't Lord until I make Him Lord in my heart and all this kind of stuff. So it's this conversion experience that brings you to the Lord. So your experience brings you to that. And then you come up empty when the experience isn't being fed properly. But there are those that say, if you go in that camp, and you made a decision, you came forward at the Billy Graham crusade or whatever, you're saved. It doesn't matter what you do the rest of your life.

R.B. Themes said that even if you become an atheist, you're still going to go to heaven. Well now, what kind of person gets converted by the Holy Spirit, understanding what Christ has done for us, and then goes, I don't believe that stuff, and becomes an atheist. How can he, You know, it's just nuts to think that way. It's just stupid. But it's a big deal out there. And you hear people argue it all the time. And why they argue it? A lot of it is because they've got family members that aren't saved. If you have disobedient children that maybe walk the aisle in the Baptist Church, you want to have that protection.

Oh, little Jimmy got saved at seven. And even though he lived like I did till 37, and maybe got killed in a car wreck before he got saved, Oh, he's going to be in heaven because he walked the aisle at seven. Not if he lived like hell for 30 years. He probably was not saved at all. Now if he had struggles, fell off the horse, got back on, keep falling off, get back on, but he's moving upwards and to the right, he probably was saved because he's showing that growth. All of us are all in different ditches. That's the thing that Sean's pointing out and we talk about all the time here. Just because you look good on the outside or you're doing the Lord's work, that doesn't show what's going on inside of you.

And that perseverance has to happen through God working in you. And for those of you that are experienced, God working in you, you will persevere because He is supernaturally changing you to understand this stuff. So that's where the thing gets rock solid. in that club. Okay. Westminster Confession teaches this in chapter 17, an Assurance of Grace and Salvation in chapter 18. Big long descriptions of the same thing we're talking about here. We know that many people make a profession of faith and then turn away and repudiate or recant those professions. The Apostle John notes that those who left the company of the disciples and he says of them, those who went out from us were never really with us. 1 John 2.19.

1 John is like one of the crystal clear books. If you're doubting your salvation or whatever, or you're not sure that you understand the Gospels or all this stuff is confusing to you, read 1 John as black and white. If you're doing this, don't do that. If you're sinning, confess this, you know, and it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, like that and it's real easy to understand. It was the first book that the guy that discipled me told me to read. It took me three months to get around to it after he told me for three months but I finally read it. It's also the first book usually that you translate in seminary because it has some of the easiest Greek in it. So it's interesting book. So of course there were disciples in terms of an outward appearance before they departed. Now Now this brings to mind, we've been around now, this is our sixth year I think, and we've had people that we've baptized that we've had to discipline out of the church.

Well man, what are we doing? What kind of dodo birds are we? How can we make such a mistake? Well, what are we? We are sinners saved by grace and we have other sinners come and profess their sin, give a great testimony and say they want to be part of us, what do we do? Oh no, we can't let you in for 30 years because I have to watch you in every aspect. No, we take them in and love them and bring them in and help them through that thing. But after a period of time, if they don't want to be in that kind of crucible, the crucible we're all in where we're holding each other accountable, living with each other, going through life together.

They don't want any part of that. They were never really of us. And they walk away. And that's sad, but that happens. And we have to make it clear that those people weren't of us, so there's no confusion as we go along. So all of that to say, it reinforces this doctrine of the people that really are saved will stay saved. And I think that I'm going to read a lot of verses and talk about this for 30 minutes or whatever here. But the bottom line is, if you know God is inside of you, don't get spun out when you fall down. Lots of people make big mistakes and do really stupid things that are saved, and they repent and come back and come back stronger from it.

There's all kinds of stories I could tell you about people that are in leadership in churches and stuff that really did stupid things in their life, you know, and they repented and changed their way. Now there are certain positions where a guy say I were to cheat on my wife. At that point I am no longer a one-woman man. I would be disqualified from the office of elder, but I certainly, if I repented, would not be disqualified from being a member of the body and would not be disqualified from going to heaven.

Think of some of the greatest saints in the Bible. David would be one of them. Not a good routine if you read through his life. He screwed up a bunch, but he was called a man after God's own heart. So the point is though, that doesn't mean now go out and try everything David did. No, no, no, no, no. It was bad, okay? All you got to do is read the Psalms and see what kind of condition he was when he got caught in those sins and when he knew what he was trying to do. And most of the time if you're feeling miserable about something, repent and get over it because you're probably just wallowing in your own sin. So all that encouragement just to say you know. So Jesus even warns at the end of the Sermon on the Mount that at the last day many will come to him saying Lord Lord didn't we do this in your name didn't we do that in your name and he will send them away saying depart from me you workers of iniquity I never knew you. That's Matthew 7 23. He will not say I knew you for a season and then you

went sour and betrayed me. No, you were never part of my church. You weren't part of the whole invisible body of believers. You were only doing these things looking good. And there's a lot of people that can look good for a long time and then all of a sudden, whoa. The whole purpose of God's election is to bring his people safely to heaven. Therefore, what he starts, he promises to finish. He not initiates the Christian life, but the Holy Spirit is with us as the sanctifier, the convictor, and the helper to ensure our preservation." Another quote from Sproul, true Christians can have radical and serious falls, but never total and final falls from grace. That's a good one. Okay. Now I'm not telling you all that so that you can go out and do something stupid. I am telling you that that though if you're in a position now where you've done something stupid repent and straighten out don't dally out there all right the history of this thing eternal security or perseverance of the saints Church Father Augustine

taught that those whom God chose to save are given in addition to the gift of faith a gift of perseverance. Donum perseverant I probably mispronounced that one which enables them to continue to believe and precludes the possibility of falling away. Interesting that he got that being a Catholic you know of the time but he understood the sovereignty of God and he knew that if God chose you he would give you the gift of faith to do that. What first does this bring to mind? Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, right? That that gift of faith brings you to serious conviction.

And then in 2, 10 he tells you that those, that will give you the power to do the good works that he prepared beforehand, before when? Before you ever got saved. All the things you were going to do that please him have already been put in the cooker. It's really incredible when you think about it that we're part of this flow of history, his story. The traditional Calvinist doctrine is one of the five points of Calvinism that were defined at the Synod of Dort during the quinticular controversy. The quint is the five points and the Synod of Dort they argued about them. Again, they didn't call them the same names that the tulip does, but they're the same subjects that they were arguing about. This is 1608 to 1618 in Holland. So 10 years theologians of Europe talked about this with the Arminian remonstrants who objected to the general predestinarian scheme of Calvinism. Wesleyanism agrees with Arminianism that true Christians can fall away. Okay? And Arminian says, I chose God therefore I can unchoose God. Wesleyan says that they choose God but

they disagree over whether or not fallen Christians can return again to salvations. Wesleyans believe they can, Arminians deny they can. Now that's really interesting because we put them in big categories like Arminians are just people that believe God didn't choose them. Well your standard Pentecostal Church will teach that you can lose your salvation, but come on down to the kneeling bench repent and you can get it back. And you see that a lot in Pentecostal denominations where a guy just doesn't feel right and everything and then he repents and he comes back and he feels better and oh my goodness down back in the Lord's thing. Basically a lot of times I think what's happening is they weren't walking in the Spirit, they confess their sin, they get back walking in the Spirit and they think they got their salvation back. If they were truly saved. They were always saved. They're just going through this up and down thing because their whole theology is based on how they feel about it. That's

another dangerous thing to do because some of us, I mean if you ate something wrong and you don't feel well, you know, that doesn't mean you're losing your salvation. It just means you don't feel well and you're maybe not able to process things correctly. That's why it's nice to have discipleship and people that can help you process some things that maybe aren't going well.

All right. So the traditional Calvinist doctrine, perseverance is articulated in the Canons of Dork chapter 5, like I said, the Westminster Confession, and may also bound found in other Reformed Confessions. It is however seen by many as a necessary consequence of Calvinism and of trusting in the promises of God. Well, duh, yeah. If God chooses you and promises to bring you to him, well of course he's going to deliver on that. Traditional Calvinism voiced its opposition to the carnal Christianity and the non-traditional Calvinist doctrine and recent controversy over lordship salvation. And that was the whole thing back in the 90s. It actually had gone on in seminary journals for about 20 years before that. And that was the thing that you have a carnal Christian and a real Christian. Now a carnal Christian is out doing all these bad things, but he's still a Christian doing those things. Well, he's a Christian in sin if he's really saved doing those things, but if he continues to do those over a period of time and has no repentance, he's not a Christian.

The Bible doesn't recognize carnal Christian and that kind of thing. It recognized sinning Christians and not sinning Christians. You don't get That'd be, oh, I'm just being bad, and I can do that for a while, and just be this carnal Christian and everything school, because I walked the aisle at nine. So the Reformed tradition has consistently seen the doctrine of perseverance as a natural consequence to predestination. And according to Calvinists, since God has drawn the elect to faith by Christ, by regenerating their hearts and convincing them of their sins, and thus saving their souls, by his own work and power, it naturally follows that they will be kept by the same power to the end.

Since God has made satisfactions for the sins of the elect, they no longer can be condemned for them. And through the help of the Holy Spirit, they must necessarily persevere as Christians and in end be saved. It's just that simple for those things. The Westminster Confaith goes on in chapter 17. They whom God hath accepted in his beloved, effectually called and sanctified by the Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away." Neither totally nor finally can they fall? Yes. "...from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere thereon to the end and be eternally saved." That's chapter 17, section 1.

This definition does not deny the possibility of fallings in one's Christian experience because the Confession also says, nevertheless believers may through the temptations of Satan and of the world the prevalence of corruption remaining in them, remember total depravity, and the neglect of the means of their preservation fall into grievous sins, the neglect of their means of preservation, confessing your sin, walking in the spirit, your means, fall into grievous sins and for a time continue therein, whereby they incur God's displeasure and grieve his Holy Spirit and become deprived of some measure of their graces and comforts, have their hearts hardened and their consciousness wounded, hurt and scandalize others, and bring temporal judgments upon themselves. Temporal judgments upon themselves, but they don't lose their salvation. I think that's what it means where some of you have died in communion, if you take the bread and the wine, you know, in a wrong way where Paul says and some of you have died. I think 1 John talks about this

in chapter 5 where there's sins that people die, God just takes them out. Does that mean they lose their salvation? No, they're not going to repent and he takes them out of the situation. Now those are hard things to determine when you bring up specific cases. Well, my Uncle Bob did this and did this, what do you think? Well, I'm not God, I don't know. understand that people can get screwed up but not lose their salvation. All right? So all this means there's a lot of wisdom needs to be called into hand. But the big message is walk in the spirit and you're not going to have any problem with this. You're just going to know, oh wow, I'm way better than I was last year and I'm getting better today than I was two years ago.

therefore I'm moving ahead here and God has got me on the right track and all of that will just reinforce and bring you stronger in your conviction about these things. On a practical level Calvinists do not claim to know who is elect and who is not and the only guide they have is the verbal testimony or good works or fruit of each individual. Any who fall away that is who do not persevere in the Christian faith until death is assumed not to have been truly converted to begin with. Though Calvinists do not claim to know with certainty who did and who did not persevere. Which is true. We're not God, we don't know.

But we can have a good testimony and know about people we've known, you know, and you just... God gives you a peace and you know. Can you, you know, be absolutely sure? No, because I don't know your heart, you don't know my heart, but God knows And the thing that is interesting to me, the more the body works together and the more discipleship goes on and more life to life, you just know when people are in fighting on the right team. You're on the right side and together we'll all get there. Thus, all who are truly born again are kept by God, the Father, for Jesus Christ, and can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace.

That's it. Bottom line. Okay. So now let's look at some verses. This is a long list. I'm not going to read every one of these verses, but I'll call them out and just think about them as we go through them. It's over and over. It's kind of like that time when you thought you chose God and then all of a sudden you started reading your Bible and realize God was in charge. And then all of a sudden the whole thing flips over and you look at it and you go, oh my goodness God's doing everything. How can this be? How did I miss that? You know it's kind of like that trip over as we look these verses up. Okay, 1st Peter 1.23, being born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever. Gee, there's that forever again. I guess that only means till next Thursday, but Friday maybe you'll come back and get it right.

Okay? John 5 24, truly, truly I say to you whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment but has passed from death to life. John 6 35 37 Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. John 10 27 29 my sheep hear my voice I know them they follow me I give them eternal life they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

Romans 5-9, Since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. Romans 8-1, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8-29, For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. Romans 8, 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or the sword? The answer is no. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present or things to come, nor powers, nor heights, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 11 29, Hebrews 3 14, 1 John 2 19, we'll read that one again, 1 John 2 19, they went out from us but they were not of us. For if they had been of us they would have continued with us but they went out that it might become plain that they were not of us.

That's the verse for the situation that I described for our six-year church situation. That's the way it works. But the ones that are with us and the ones that are amongst us and have slogged through the trials and tribulations that all of us go through all the time, the more we do that together, the stronger it gets and the better we get at being able to shepherd those people. 1 Corinthians 15, 10, by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, Though it was not I, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Paul saying basically, Galatians 2.20 again, not I who lives, but it's Christ who lives in me. Second Corinthians 5.19, that is in Christ, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Ephesians 2, 4 through 6. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love which he has loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 4, 30. Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

A warning, don't grieve him. But if you do, repent and move on. Okay. Philippians 1.6, we mentioned this one before, and I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 1.12, 2 Timothy 2.13, Hebrews 13.20 through 21. Now, may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. That's a charge that we use here, the end of the services a lot.

First John 3.9, no one bored of God makes a practice of sinning for God's seed abides in him and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. But I sin all the time. But what do you do? You repent, and you stop, and go good for a while, then you sin again. The practice of sinning is the continuous. This is part of the simple Greek there. It's the present tense where you are continually doing that. But you break that by confessing it, move ahead, move upward and to the right, maybe just a little notch. Then you make it to the next one. Then you make another notch. you get up there. First John 5, 4 through 5, For everyone who has been bored of God overcomes the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith, who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

And who gives you the faith to believe that? The Spirit gives it to you. God gives it to you. Ephesians 1, 13 through 14, In him you also, when heard the word of the truth, the gospel of your salvation and believe in him, we're sealed with the promise of the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. John 17, two, then comma 12, this is the priestly prayer where Jesus prays for us that they will not be lost, okay? Since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him, That's given Christ. Then in verse 12, while I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.

I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the Son of Destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled. And remember, Judas was predicted to be that one. And it's clear, as time goes on, you see Judas was appointed for that, which even furthers the Calvinistic kind of doctrine of stuff. 1 Corinthians 1, 6 through 8, 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 through 24, 2 Thessalonians 3, 3, Hebrews 9, 12, 1 Peter 1, 3 through 5, 1 John 5, 11 through 13. This is a good one. You hear this a lot in little Bible cards. You can pass out to your friends. And this is the testimony that God gave us eternal life and the life is in his son.

Whoever has the son has the life. Whoever does not have the son of God does not have the life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know, that you may know that you have eternal life. Oh, there's that eternal life thing. That you may know that you have eternal life until next Monday. So it's eternity you get eternal life for. So there's just piles of verses that say this stuff. Then the problem becomes, well, what about Saul and the Bible? And what about people that seem to have fallen away? And what do we do with that? And were they saved? Were they not saved? What about Hebrews 6?

What about Hebrews 10? Those things are really bothering me. I don't know what I can do. All those kind of things. Those are good questions. And it's not a Bible study on Hebrews 6 or Hebrews 10 or Saul. But if you read those verses and you start thinking about it in a general way, and this is the way I prefer to have people look at them, that the people that are doing that are not really Christians, okay? They're being described, they're part of the body that are doing that, and like Hebrews 6 says, if they fall away it is impossible for them to repent. So the people that say Hebrews 6 teaches that you can lose your salvation, ignore that part, it is impossible for them to repent in the further part of Hebrews 6.

So they're describing people that are in disobedience. The same thing in Hebrews 10. There's no sacrifice for sins, remains for the person, but only a fearful expectation of judgment. This is a person that neglects what Christ has done for them, and they re-crucify Christ over and over. How a Catholic can read Hebrews 10 and hold communion where they re-crucify Christ every time they have communion or every time they have mass is just mind-boggling that they can read that book and go ahead with that kind of procedure. The debate over these passages center around the identity the person in questions. While the opponents of perseverance identify the person as Christian believers, Calvinists suggest several other options. They weren't Christians. They never were.

They were just part of the community. They got the blessing of the Spirit. You can come and be part of our church and get blessings all over the place. We can help you financially. We can, you can be part of our life. You can come over and help you with your yard work. We can give give you all kinds of biblical truth, help you with your kids, and then you just desert the body. Well, how does that work? You weren't part of us. So you can have those rewards and be blessed by the Spirit of God through His people, but it just, you know, it's not real. But if you're really part of it, you'll know that and you become part of that and you will be giving all of that out.

Some people want to say that it talks about loss of eternal rewards and for the millennium and all kinds of stuff like that. I tend to think that that's really getting out there, that starting to talk about that kind of thing. Other people think that all these passages are hyperbolic, that it's just stating crazy stuff that really is impossible. I don't buy into that either. I think that what's being stated in these passages, you clearly see a lot in congregations. So the passages refer to Jewish Christians who were reverting to Judaism. Yeah, in some cases that would be true in those congregations. And it's interesting to note that Arnold Fruchtenbaum, who I really like, he wrote a book called Israelology that I think ought to be part of theology, a big major section of it.

position he takes that because most of these letters especially in Hebrews were written to Hebrew Christians that the big passages are warning those Hebrew Christians not to revert back to those Judaism tendencies that they needed to leave behind. That one is it's a little more complex but it's an interesting study if you fall into that rabbit hole. Okay. Let's see here. I guess we could end this section on in Revelation 3 2 through 5. Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then that when you received and heard it keep it and repent. If you will not wake up I will come like a thief and you will not know what hour I will come against you. Yet you still have a few names in Sardis, the people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the Book of Life. I will confess

his name before my father and before his angels." If you are slipping away, don't do that. Wake up and remain. Wake up, repent, and get back on track. That's That's what he's saying to these people. If you're on track, the one who conquers will be clothed, thus in white garments, and I will never blot out his name out of the Book of Life. I will confess his name before my father and before his angels, okay? Just get back on the track, get back on the horse. Things are good.

See, we've still got a little time. Now I wanna go to the groups that view this doctrine and what they have to say, the different groups. Now our group is you will persevere to the end. God has got you. He's got you in his hands. You can't jump out. All of those kind of things. You'll see that's a Lutheran interpretation there. But the free grace thing is probably the craziest thing that's come along. And it's fairly new. It really came about in the second half of the 19th century. Free grace or non-traditional Calvinist doctrine is been espoused by Charles Stanley, Norman Geisler, St. Hodges, Bill Bright, and others, okay.

Chuck Swindoll did it. All the books that were written against the lordship, salvation books, that talk about this. And some of the things they say are just crazy, but I think it's necessary if you're reading your Bible and you read the verses that talk about these things and then you read what they say, you go, what are you talking about, okay? So, the, let's see here. Charles Stanley, pastor of Atlanta's mega church, first Baptist and a television evangelist has written the doctrine of eternal security of the believer persuaded him years ago to leave his familial Pentecostalism and become a Southern Baptist. That's a good thing that he left the touchy-feely thing and moved over to a more biblical base in the Southern Baptist.

He sums up his deep conviction that salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone. We wouldn't deny that. Of course it is. Who gives us the faith? And it's in Christ. God doesn't. Even if a believer, for all practical purposes, becomes an unbeliever, his salvation is not in jeopardy. Believers who lose or abandon their faith will retain their salvation." What? How? That's just crazy. How? By faith they have their salvation and he says, and to abandon their faith will retain their salvation.

And that faith is given to you by the very God that revealed what salvation is all about to you begin with. He says look at the verse John 3 18 and answer this question according to Jesus what much the person do to keep from being judged for sin must he stop doing something must he promise to stop doing something must he have never done something the answer is so simple that many stumble all over it without ever seeing it all Jesus requires is at the individual believe in him? What does believe in him be? I mean they're just destroying the words and what they mean in context to sing things like that. I mean if you believe in who Jesus Christ is, he's the Savior of the world who died for your sins. I mean there's necessary theology that has to go with that. You don't just believe he was a good dude that had some wise sayings and they had this book with his stuff in there. He's way more than that. He's the God that created the universe, you know. So it's just silliness they talk about that, all right. In a

chapter entitled, For Those Who Stop Believing, you said, The Bible clearly teaches that God's love for His people is of such a magnitude that those who walk away from the faith have not the slightest chance of slipping from His hand. A little later, Stanley also writes, you and I are not saved because we have an enduring faith. We are saved because at the moment in time we express faith in our enduring Lord in a moment at time. No, we live that faith out. If you're not living your faith out, you don't really have faith. And if you haven't been changed by God, you know you're a pretender. So stop and get on your knees and ask him to change you. Okay. It goes on and on here. I have a page and a half of all this stuff. I'll quit reading that one. That's the free-grace thing. Then we have the Arminian view. So the central tenet of the Arminian view is that believers are preserved from all external forces that might attempt to separate them from God and further that God will not change his

mind about their salvation, but that these same believers can themselves willingly repudiate their faith, either by a statement to that effect or by continuing sinful activity combined with an unwillingness to repent. Thus their salvation is conditional on remaining faithful. Amen. But I would say that that person never was saved. I mean if the guy continues in this life habit that just I just described there's no way he can be a Christian. Okay. But if he is in that thing and then he repents and turns from his way it proves that he really was. But if he's faking it and then becomes convicted of it and then really gets saved he'll be a different person. So they're possibly talking about people that we would recognize. The only problem here is the change his mind about their salvation. God will not change his mind but that these same believers can themselves willing repudiate their faith.

That's why I always ask, did you choose God or did He choose you? And when you realize in the bottom of your soul that the God of the universe is the one that used His Spirit to open your heart to recognize who He is, that just puts you in your knees and in the state of awe that you will not be able to get out of for the rest of your life. That's crazy. The person that created all of this died for us and then opens up these spiritual things to us supernaturally through his spirit is unbelievable. So it goes on to describe basically what I said there and turns away the carnal view of the carnal Christian. The Lutheran view, like both Calvinist camps, confessional Lutherans view the work of salvation as monergistic.

That is, God does it all. natural light, the natural, that is corrupted divine renewed powers of man cannot do anything to help towards salvation. And Lutherans go further along the same lines that free grace advocates to say that the recipient of saving grace need not cooperate. Hence Lutherans believe the true Christian is a genuine recipient of saving grace can lose his or her salvation. But the cause is not though God were unwilling to grant grace for the perseverance to those in whom he has been in the good work, but that those persons willfully turn away. Again, puts it on their thing. I had the guy that was in charge of the Missouri Synod for Southern California tell me the verse where, you know, I have them in my hands, God's got you in your hands. And he said, that's right. You are in his hands and it's no problem.

The problem is when you jump out. Okay. Who put you in? All right. The Roman Catholic view. The 22nd canon of the decree concerning justification of the Council of Trent succession 13 January 1547, yes and it's still their law, has this to say regarding perseverance. If anyone says that the one justified either can without the help, the special help of God persevere and the justice received or that with with that help he cannot let him be an anathema. In this canon, the council reaffirmed that perseverance absolutely requires divine help, a divine help that cannot fail. Amen. Bottom line, we agree with that point of what they're saying.

Respecting these parameters, Catholics can have a variety of views as regards to the final perseverance. On the question of predestination, Catholic scholars may broadly characterize as either Molinas or Thomasus. The view of the latter are similar to those of Calvinists in that they understand the final perseverance to be a gift applied by God to the regenerated that will assuredly lead them to ultimate salvation. Not too bad, close, huh? They differ from Calvinists in one respect, whether God permits men to fall away after regeneration. The Thomases affirm that God cannot permit men to come to regeneration without giving them a special gift of divine perseverance so that they do fall away.

Calvinists by contrast, tonight, that an individual can fall away if they are truly regenerate. All right, that's the whole deal, and now I wanna read two quotes, and these are really good. And this is how we'll close this session. First one is by John Gill, and this is The Cause of God and Truth, Part Three, Section Six. How preposterous and irrational must it be in a man who thinks himself to be a child of God and believes he shall persevere to the end, from this consideration to indulge himself in all manner of sin, as if resolving that he would persevere no longer? In other words, antinomianism. I'm safe, so I go out and sin.

And how preposterous and irrational must be for a man who thinks himself to be a child of God to be able to do that. Which hence shows me, if you're truly saved and you get stuck in the ditch and you've fallen off and you're that way, God will convict you, make you so miserable you cannot stay there. You will repent and come back and be part of the group. He won't allow you to stay there. The next one is R. L. Dabney, who wrote the Five Points of Calvinism back in 18, I think it was 67 or 87, whenever it was, 1878. We do not teach that any man is entitled to believe that he is justified and therefore shall not come again in condemnation on the proposition, once in grace, always in grace.

Although he be now living in intentional, willful sin. falsehood of Satan we abhor. Okay? I'm saved. I'm just going to sin all I can. Paul says in Romans, may Genetim never be. Do not do that. We say, in fact, that this deluded man can live in willful sin is the strongest possible proof that he was never justified and never had any grace to fall from. And once for all, no intelligent believer can possibly abuse this doctrine into a pretext for carnal security. I mean, talk about taking care of the carnal Christian. That's harsh words there. It promises to true believers of perseverance and holiness, who accept an idiot could infer from that promise the privilege to be unholy.

Father, we thank you for this incredible truth that if you chose us, you will sanctify us, you will conform us to the image of your son. You will do that work, and even though sometimes we go kicking and screaming, you inside of us tell us that we can't do that. And you allow us to repent. And you allow the body to come alongside of us. You allow your spirit to come alongside of us and to strengthen us and to allow us to walk even more faithful than we did before. So we thank you for this Christian walk. We thank you that you are a patient God, long suffering with us, and help us to bring that light to all the people that we have in our circle of influence. And we thank you for all these things in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.

Father, we thank you for this incredible truth that if you chose us, you will sanctify us, you will conform us to the image of your son. You will do that work, and even though sometimes we go kicking and screaming, you inside of us tell us that we can't do that. And you allow us to repent. And you allow the body to come alongside of us. You allow your spirit to come alongside of us and to strengthen us and to allow us to walk even more faithful than we did before. So we thank you for this Christian walk. We thank you that you are a patient God, long suffering with us, and help us to bring that light to all the people that we have in our circle of influence.

At the beginning of 2005 I was finishing up preparation to teach about the Reformation at our youth ministry’s winter retreat. I had recently listened to a message by John Piper from the “Sex and the Supremacy of Christ” conference where he preached a rousing message on the preeminence of Christ. In his message he quoted a man I had never heard of before named Abraham Kuyper. The quote was:

“There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

It’s a fantastic quote, and I’ve heard or read it used a number of times since then. I even used it in my message on Solus Christus at that retreat. Jesus reigns! As much as I believed it to be true, I didn’t realize how wide the truth of it applies.

That fall I started teaching through Ecclesiastes with the students. I wanted to preach something other than an epistle, and I also thought that Ecclesiastes was perhaps the book most like an epistle in the Old Testament. Solomon wrote about life under the sun and, in particular, its heavy vanity. But as we studied through the book I noticed that every so often he described a buoy in the middle of the sea of vanity that a person could grab onto and pull their head out and get a breath.

What surprised me, though, as someone steeped in the epistles, is that joy for Solomon was not found somewhere other than earth or outside of normal activities. I don’t think it’s because in all his wisdom Solomon didn’t know about or believe in heaven, but rather because he believed that for those who fear God there is good to be had here, good in white garments and life with one’s wife and working with all your might (see Ecclesiastes 9:7-10).

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy (Ecclesiastes 2:24–26a)

This joy returns a few times in the preacher’s wisdom. It isn’t found by getting away from people or duties or even the planet. Joy is a gift from God for those rightly related to Him, a gift that He gives for those in the process of life on earth, not just those waiting for eternity.

Repentance dominated those days. Repentance was needed for complaining about repetitive, routine tasks. Repentance was needed both for seeking satisfaction from earthly things and also seeking liberation from earthly things. Repentance was required for avoiding God’s gifts, not just abusing them. According to the Scriptures, eating and drinking and toiling are places to find joy, not hindrances to joy.

To me, joy had been found in reading the Bible, in prayer, in studying theology, in writing sermons, in equipping others to disciple, in retreating for spiritual purposes. That was my work as a pastor, but I defined my work so narrowly that filling out paperwork, running errands, maintaining the car, or talking about budget spreadsheets seemed like lesser things. Was joy to be found even in that work?

How couldn’t it be? I knew that in studying the Bible one must always ask who the original audience was. Who were the people who first heard Solomon? They weren’t all philosophers or politicians. They would have included farmers, soldiers, carpenters, musicians, cooks, homemakers. Solomon couldn’t really be saying that God gives enjoyment in that kind of work, in itself, could he? Isn’t that kind of work the work to do to get to the work that matters? Yet my conclusion wasn’t in the text. The wisest man in the Bible had nothing for me about finding joy in longer hours of devotions and less in diaper changing.

When we finished studying Ecclesiastes I still wanted to stay in the Old Testament. I thought perhaps Genesis: starting at the beginning. Genesis is the foundation for the entire Bible. It reveals initial and crucial parts of redemptive history such as the Fall, the call of Abram, the Twelve Tribes of Israel, and some favorite stories. Plus I thought we could work through the creation account and pound on how a good reading of the text just doesn’t leave room for evolution.

I was sure this would be great foundation building stuff. What I didn’t realize is how thin and puny my own foundation was. I didn’t realize that I would not make it out of the first chapter without a severely remade worldview and even more reasons to repent.

I was coming to Genesis as a Christian and even as a Calvinist. I was coming to Genesis as one who believed the Bible in the craziest-seeming parts, including six 24-hours-as-we-measure days of creation. I believed God was all-powerful, the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. I did not come to Genesis as a doubter, but I soon realized that I had come to Genesis as a dualist. I came to it as a Christian, which is fine, but I needed to come to it as a man, a human being with flesh and bones and blood. I came as one eager for heaven and I had to repent for not appreciating the earth.

Maybe more than His potency, Genesis 1 reveals God’s gushing gladness to create. He spoke nothings into somethings, He separated things into different things, and called it good. It was all up to Him at that point. He could have made whatever He wanted however He wanted for the sake of whatever He wanted. And He made time: seasons and days and years. He made dimensions: up and down and around. He made colors and shades and dimness settings. He made big and small, many and few.

Then He started talking to Himself, in the Persons of the Trinity (verse 26), about Their upcoming, unrivaled work. They were readying to make a creature who would mirror Themselves. This creature would be stamped with the divine image.

What would it be? Perhaps a vast library filled with the greatest poems and prose, exalting the all-wise and rational truth of God. Or maybe an intricate system of precise scales on which things could be measured and weighed, demonstrating the goodness of God. Perhaps an immense museum filled with paintings and sculptures, with harmonious music in the background, showing the beauty of God.

Instead, God invented toes and knees and hips and elbows and shoulders and vertebrae and teeth, all out of dust, and then breathed life into it. A little while later He made a complimentary creature out of chest-bone, gave that creature more curves and some different internal parts. God ordained their uniqueness and their covenantal oneness, celebrating their relationship as a pattern for all time.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,

When the Maker addressed Adam and Eve He gave them a mandate, recorded for us in Genesis 1:28.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

God said: Have kids, who have kids, who move out of the house, and figure out how to build houses, and keep bugs out of your houses, and later make an online shop to buy things to furnish those houses. Here was a human task, to have and enjoy families, to invent and extend work.

This is what God thinks is good. He patterned weeks for us by His own work. He patterned equal but different relationships for us.

So: the things of earth are not keeping us from what God thinks is good. Even verse 29 is as if God couldn’t wait to show Adam the goods. “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.’” (Genesis 1:29). He wanted to show Adam all the variety of veggies available for eating. Eating! It’s not a chore, it’s a grace, an undeserved gift given to men. All of it, from babies and to bananas, dirt and dominion, generations and exploration, genders and astronomy and sleep, God says is good.

Do we? Yes, Genesis 3 happened, and work now requires a sweat when you have to restart your computer after the software crashes. Birth involves extra pains not present previously. There are conflicts in relationships that come because of sin. But sin is also what keeps us from seeing the good world and being thankful. God didn’t give up on the human body after the fall. He gave His Son one and promises all His people a glorified one. God didn’t give up on marriage after the fall, or the blessing of faithful grandparents and parents and cultural heritage. God didn’t limit us to grits without salt and butter after the fall, He even added beef and eventually pork to the menu. And note, Adam and Eve didn’t even have a Bible to read in paradise. They had work, fruits and veggies, walks, sex, rest, and fellowship with God.

There are many verses in the Bible that talk about God as Creator. Genesis reveals it, Israel depended on it, the Psalms celebrate it, the prophets expect it will be important in the future. In the New Testament we learn that Christ Himself, the Word of God, deserves credit for creation (see John 1:3, Hebrews 1:2-3).

Consider Colossians 1:15-17.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. (Colossians 1:15–17)

Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in Colosse to deal with some false teaching in the church. There seems to have been a few elements of error. One of them was the idea that Christ was just “one” among many divine beings. The list of principalities and powers that He created shows that He can’t be on their level, let alone on a lower level. There is a hierarchy, but not necessarily a descending staircase of mixture between spirit and flesh, with the highest level being no flesh at all.

This was an early form of Gnosticism which, among other errors, included what we call dualism. Dualism is the idea that matter/flesh/visible/becoming are evil, or at least less valuable than spirit/invisible/being. But Jesus is fully God and fully man, and this didn’t ruin His deity.

It got me thinking: what is the point of Colossians 1:15-17? Why talk about Christ’s creative wisdom and power before talking about His redeeming work (verses 18-20)? What does the preeminence of Christ in the universe have to do with the goal of Christian ministry as Paul described near the end of the chapter?

Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. (Colossians 1:28)

For too long–and I should have known better as someone who loves to read the context–I thought verses 15-17 established Christ’s preeminence by brute force. Because He made everything, you better do what He says. Being more like Christ is, therefore, mainly a moral issue. He obeyed perfectly, and He has the authority to demand similar obedience.

He certainly does have all authority as He told His disciples (Matthew 28:18). But His creative work establishes not only the extent of His authority but the extent of His interests. Creation is not just one big object lesson to motivate our obedience before His force. Creation is His playground and His love and His gift. Ironically, we behave immorally when we complain about and avoid the things of earth He calls good.

As image-bearers and as Christians, to reflect God and to reflect Christ means that we must be interested in what God in Christ is interested in. We must learn what He is like and that includes the kinds of things He likes. He likes what He made. He likes wine and wood and websites. He likes legs and breasts and muscles. He likes family trees and family names. He likes farms and good food and the semi trucks that deliver it to the store for us to purchase. So enjoy the process. Being complete in Christ is no less than a way of looking at the wide wide world.

Let’s return to Kuyper’s quote. Whoever translated it into English missed a great opportunity. The phrase “every square inch” is accessible, but a much more concrete and personal and more accurate translation is available. It should be:

“There is not one thumb’s width in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

The Dutch phrase is een duimbreed which refers to the distance between the sides of the thumb. Everything held or touched by any hand is claimed by Christ.

This is more than a declaration about the boundaries of His dominion, it is a declaration about the breadth of His interests, the assortment of His likes, the scope of His concerns. His domain extends everywhere, but it’s not as if He owns a 10,000 square foot house in order to impress on us that He only cares about what happens in the prayer closet.

Maybe better than anyone else at seeing God’s love for the cosmos and how God ordered it for humans to use in honoring God, was Abraham Kuyper. This one quote is only the thumbnail of his entire body of work about the Bible’s revelation about all revelation.

We are starting to answer the question: What is a Kuyperian? Using the adjective as a description of those who see what God says about creation in the Bible: a Kuyperian is a Calvinistic Christian who acknowledges Jesus Christ as Lord over the wide, wide world. A Kuyperian is wide awake with wide eyes to the wide range of Christ’s concerns. A Kuyperian asks what salvation is for? A Kuyperian recognizes that our bodies and our wives and our kids and our lawns and our jobs may not last forever but their value is real. A Kuyperian gets that nothing is neutral, that without Christ was not any thing good that was good (see John 1:3). A Kuyperian commits to avoid indifference to God’s creation, and repents of dualism that seeks to avoid, let alone abuse, God’s creation.

A Kuyperian worldview means that:

The label “Kuyperian” is useful, if not vital, because there are many two-dimensional image-bearers in the church, whose worldview is as thin as a printed word, reading only what they think are the “spiritual” parts of the Bible. Many Christians have read the wisest man in the Scriptures—Solomon, have read the first chapter of the Bible—Genesis 1, have even embraced Paul’s inspired goal of ministry—Colossians 1:28, and still missed it. I did. It is a hermeneutic irony that Dispensationals, who pride themselves on reading the Bible, misread the Bible. The “Kuyperian” adjective is important because we are supposed to love everything that God loves. We’ll come back and see more of the Bible’s teaching about God’s interests next week.

On the very first resurrection Sunday two Jews walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus and talked with each other about all the things that had happened over the previous days. While they conversed, the risen Jesus joined them and started asking them questions. They didn’t know it was Jesus, and were surprised that this stranger seemed not to know about all the events concerning “Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.” They went on for a while explaining to Jesus about His death and reports of His tomb being empty. But they themselves hadn’t come to any conclusions.

At some point “[Jesus] said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” All these things were in the Bible.

They got to Emmaus and Jesus sat down to dinner with them. “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed it and broke it and give it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.” We imagine them saying, “Wait! Now we have more questions!” They hadn’t had a problem with their physical sight, but now they could finally see.

Not only could they see who they had been talking with, they could see how what He had said made sense. “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’” Jesus had been clearing brush away from the signs and then showing how all the signs pointed in one direction.

Both because the Bible is a more-than-human book, and because sin is a blinding force, not seeing what is right in front of us, especially on the pages of Scripture, is a typical problem. We can be obtuse on a sentence level, we can be oblivious on the story level. But we are about to embark on a a new series, a sign-clearing effort to see a way of explaining God’s plan, from beginning to end, that has been in the Bible all along but for whatever reason we haven’t recognized.

This is a Bible reading project, “beginning with Moses” and including “all the Prophets,” as well as the Gospels and the epistles of Christ’s apostles. This is a project to read and believe that “‘everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’” This is a project to describe the things that make our hearts burn within us.

This series has been brewing for quite a while but the coffee hasn’t turned into sludge, not yet at least. There have been a few stages, starting with a gnawing discontent with epistolary exclusivity. I’ll have more to say about the eye-opening effect of Ecclesiastes, Genesis, and the Psalms in the next couple of weeks, but there is more to the Old Testament than just historical background to or illustrations for the New Testament. The New Testament is great, inspired even (!), but the whole thing was written in one long generation. Sometimes in the Old Testament, you can skip a couple hundred years between chapter breaks. The revelation in the first 39 books of the Bible has a breadth to it, and a breath in it, as it points to Israel’s Messiah, Jesus, the Savior of the Nations. I started longing to answer some questions I didn’t even know I needed to ask.

Then I got asked a question for which there was no good answer. I was meeting with Mitch Rothenberger for coffee one Saturday morning, probably about a year after TEC started. He asked me what book he could read that would explain what TEC was all about. I think I laughed, and I would still laugh today, because there isn’t one (except the Bible, of course, though almost everyone says that).

TEC is not a purebred anything. In terms of our theology and philosophy of ministry, we are not a mix, we are a mutt. Some mighty actually call us a mess. We love the truth, but we also think that relationships and fellowship in love is the point of the truth. We love the fundamentals, we even love the Fundamentalists, and we’d tell them that if they hadn’t isolated themselves away from everyone. We believe that the greatest commandment is to love God, not be right about Him, but we also think that affections are supposed to be driven and directed by doctrine. We do not fall into the Bible-study-at-all-costs camp, nor would we pitch our tent in the doctrine-divides camp.

We have a high view of the pastoral office, so much so that we let everyone have a look at it. We invited all our men to read a book on eldership and talk through it together before we officially affirmed the first board. We are an elder-rule church, and we expect every elder to remember that he is also a sheep and to participate alongside, like, you know, even talk with, others in the flock.

We believe in the sovereignty of God, the solas of the Reformation, and the Five Points of Calvinism, so much so we have a heart hernia; our Reformed organ is so large that it tries to push out everywhere. We also think that the Reformers didn’t go far enough, perhaps because many of them were just trying to not get themselves dead. We are Reformed and still reforming.

We believe something uniquely supernatural happens when the church assembles for worship, and that the whole assembly is worshipping the whole time we’re together. We believe that good liturgy should be more than singing a couple songs to get ready for the sermon, listening to the sermon, then singing a song to respond to the sermon. We also think that liturgy connects us to previous generations of saints, and yet we don’t parrot their words, we want to define what we mean by “saints,” and we would never include an icon to help us worship.

We usually have verse-by-verse preaching, but we don’t do verse-by-verse small groups. We use air war and ground war tactics.

We think the rapture could happen at any moment and also that adultolescent men should get off their mom’s wifi and out of her basement and start families, businesses, and do stuff because of the rapture. We think kids can love the Lord when they are still quite young, yet we won’t baptize them until they can profess it.

We think wine is a gift from God but not because we demand to exercise our Christian liberty. We believe in feasting and fasting. We care about politics because we think Jesus is the King of kings. We believe in the Trinity, in the gospel of forgiveness, and that we really should get along with one another.

So we’re not close to Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. We’re not Charismatics or Lutherans. Nor are we Presbyterians or Seeker Sensitive or Emergent. We are close-ish to Baptists, and we will re-baptize, but that’s ironic since most Baptists/Anabaptists have been separatists. The very first “missionary” we supported is a lawyer. We meet in a Seventh-Day Adventist building. We are hopefully not heretics, but we are a mutt. What we believe can be pinned down, but it will take a lot of pins.

It’s not actually convenient. What are we supposed to put on the church brochure? How are you supposed to tell others what we’re about? “We’re like every other church except for the ways we’re not.”

Anyway, I told Mitch to read The Trellis and the Vine, which is still a good choice. We like a lot of what it says about how to make faithful men and give away grace-work as I described last Sunday. That said, it’s not enough.

We are a peculiar people, not by any means the only faithful assembly of Christians, but when we read the Bible our hearts burn with a hot cup of joy when we see certain things fit together. In particular, we have started to see more about God’s created world and how He considers it good. We’ve been learning about image-bearing in individual and cultural ways according to the beginning of things in Genesis 1.

Our Calvinism had to pull up the other pant leg. God’s glad sovereignty works salvation and sustains the cosmos. This is a Kuyperian viewpoint, and more needs to be said about it.

But historically, the kinds of people who have thought in a Kuyperian way, whether or not they used (or even knew) his name, have been our Presby brothers, Covenantalists, Post- or A-mil Christians. They have a heritage of appreciating creation and the work of men on earth.

We epistle-readers don’t have that rich heritage. But then we read Genesis 1 and recognize that it still applies. We were reading the Bible wrongly. It’s why we read through The Things of Earth in our men’s and women’s meetings. It’s why the ladies read The Supper of the Lamb and the men read Lectures on Calvinism and the Life to Life leaders watched For the Life of the World together. We needed to repent.

That said, we also think there is a way of looking at the end of things—eschatology, that also requires good Bible reading. We’re jealous of the cultural heritage among Covanentalists, but we’re possessive about the distinction between Israel and the Church, a distinction that is usually better held by Dispensationalists. It’s those Dispy brothers, though, who historically haven’t built much but bookshelves for study Bibles (and rapture fiction) in their bomb shelters. Actually, they are also good at building walls between themselves and others, and often between the church and the world.

Here we are, trusting God and joyfully working in the world, knowing that He says things are going to “go on from bad to worse” (2 Timothy 3:13, see also 1 Timothy 4:1; 2 Timothy 3:1), while we also trust that the power of the gospel is and will continue making things better. We are thankful for the Christian accomplishments in missions, and in medicine, technology, education, indoor plumbing, free markets, etc. Christians have made many things better because they were here on earth rather than whisked to heaven. We are optimistic Pre-millennials. This is how we read the Bible. It’s what makes our hearts burn.

A couple summers ago, Jonathan was in Moscow, ID, with some of the teachers from ECS, and he was talking with Doug Wilson about our mutt-ness. I’ll have to have Jonathan expand on their discussion some time, but Doug, who is a died-in-the-wool Postmillennialist, had no category in which to put this juxtaposition. He told Jonathan, “You know what you ought to do? You ought to start a blog and call it The Kuyperian Dispensationalist.” He, Doug, doesn’t think the two things go together. He can’t see how one doesn’t cancel the other out.

When Jonathan told me about the idea, my heart burned. Even the name: The Kuyperian Dispensationalist, rather than -ism, is so good, because there may only be one other Kuyperian Dispensationalist in the world. We’re on a mission to find that one! Actually, all the elders would consider themselves to be such, while still trying to figure out what it means and what we should do about it. But we believe that there are more, more who think this way but don’t know how to describe it, more who are primed to join in, and some who will need a lot of time to think about it. There are, of course, others who will refuse to agree, until we’re raptured together in the air.

A typical question, or even strong objection, is: Why use names at all? Abraham was in the Bible, but not Abraham Kuyper. Dispensation is also not a word used in the Bible, even if you agree with the doctrine. Like Calvinism, isn’t this elevating a man over Scripture? Like any system, won’t we be guilty of forcing an external pattern onto the Bible?

It absolutely could be any of those things, and worse things. But when Adam named the animals God created it didn’t change what they were, and it was part of Adam’s calling by God to label and classify things. That was part of his image-bearing glory. Recognizing patterns is not making the patterns, like the golden ratio in nautilus shells or planetary orbits in astronomy, or theology. Doctrine about the Trinity is helpfully summarized by the one word that isn’t in the Bible.

Names help diagnose and then treat diseases. Names help plan and assemble buildings. Names can be misused, they can also help to communicate, to share the meaning of something in common. It doesn’t matter if someone says he is a Trinitarian as long as he believes the truth of it. It doesn’t matter if someone hates the word dualism as long as he actually hates dualism. The Kuyperian Dispensationalist is shorthand, a nickname, a quirky code for convenience (and some provocation) in order to share an understanding about how things connect.

I an not sure exactly how long this series will go, perhaps 6-10 weeks. It will be different because it won’t be sequential through a book of the Bible, which we’ll do after this is over, and which, ironically, will probably be an epistle. Even today’s message has not been an exposition but a testimony of repentance and making progress in the 1 Timothy 4:15 way.

I’ve already said that this is what all four pastors believe. This is the defining trajectory for our interests and efforts. We think there are more for whom these truths will resonate, whether or not they use the name.

That said, I’m not going to underestimate the threat some people feel when introduced to something they feel is “new,” even if all that’s new is a name. I still remember going through and explaining our liturgy after we’d already been doing it for a year, and it caused concern for more than a few people. It’s like finding out about a surprise ingredient in your favorite dish. You thought you liked it, but knowing changed your taste.

And this will be a first time for everyone to hear about Kuyperian Dispensationalism (it will be my first time teaching about it!). Some pieces you will have heard before, on both sides, and some pieces need to be said again. You may already be more Kuyperian, you may be more Dispensational, but there isn’t anyone else we’ve found trying to talk about them together.

Usually “new” things are dangerous things. Neither Kuyperian thought or Dispensational thought are new for this series, what’s new is seeing how they necessarily fit together. The trellis and the vine image emphasizes life over structure. Peanut butter and chocolate taste great together but also taste fine apart, just as a sword and a trowel could both be hooked on your belt but you’d probably only use one at a time. Oil and water do not mix at all. We think Kuyperianism and Dispensationalism are like the tongue-in-groove that keep the worldview floor from sliding around under you. Kuyperianism and Dispensationalism are like a door knob bolt and the latch in the frame that just “click” into place. Kuyperianism and Dispensationalism are like the chain and the teeth on a gear that “catch” and crank the wheel forward. Kuyperianism lets the clutch out of Dispensationalism. Kuyperianism is the ink to Dispensationalism’s pen. Kuyperianism takes the lens off of Dispensationalism’s binoculars. Kuyperianism is the bow to Dispensationalism’s arrow.

Some might say, “Oh, yeah! That’s exactly what I believe but never had a name for it!” Others might say, “Oh, no! I’ve been wrong! I need to repent!” Still others might say, “Oh, no! You guys are crazy and I don’t want anything to do with you!”

But this is no less than an attempt to fuse a Weltanschauung (German from Welt = world + Anschauung = perception), a new way to perceive the world. This is no less than an attempt to read the Bible from beginning to end, to account for every promise given and fulfilled and yet to be fulfilled. This is no less than an attempt to obey every command and commission given to humanity and to Christians, all together in Jesus. He is Lord. He claims it as His own, from before the foundation of the world through the last days. It is an explanation of history and an expectation for the future. This is not a worldview so that we can interpret the world and escape to complain about it, it is a worldview with marching orders for today. Kuyper himself called for:

“a central motive in the mental and emotional life of a people, which shall dominate the whole existence from within, and which consequently carries its effect from this spiritual center to its outermost circumference.” (Lectures, 150)

More than an abstract cause, it is a comfort and a catalyst centered on the Triune God.

The Kuyperian Dispensationalist: it’s not a new brand, but a way of reading the Bible and seeking to obey all of it. Of course, I need to define the terms, and then show how things fit. Romans 9 will be included; no series is complete without it! Can Kuyperianism and Dispensationalism commingle (blend, per Kuyper), or must they contradict?

With the disciples on the road to Emmaus Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” His Word created a new world of thought and connections. He “said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.’” On the map, we are here.

Be patient. Be Bereans. Be Kuyperians. Be brothers and sisters. Be humble. Be ready; this is just the start.

Every generation finds itself replaced by another generation at some point. “A generation goes, and a generation comes,” said the Preacher. God’s people, though, have a responswibility to raise the next generation to know God, to love Him and fear Him and obey Him. Fathers in Israel had this task (Deuteronomy 6:4-7), and so do fathers in the church (Ephesians 6:4).

Thinking about the next generation is more than, though not less, a family task. It is that, yes. Jonathan recently wrote a great post on A Generation with No Last Name for the school website. Fathers and mothers train their kids up with identity, who they are and how they ought to behave. This is a parental calling, and it is inescapable. Even if you think you are doing nothing, that is what you’re passing on: that parents do nothing.

But again, it isn’t only a job for dads. Jesus gave His disciples a similar calling, and theirs was more than domestic. They had an international calling to “make disciples of all nations.” Everywhere the apostles went, first generation Christians were born (again) since there were no “Christians” before Christ came.

Before us there have been many generations of disciples of Christ. If a generation is 25-40 years, the there have been around 50-80 generations. God is building His church, as He promised Peter, and He does so through parents and pastors and teachers and friends proclaiming the gospel and modeling obedience to Christ.

It is our responsibility to think about the future. We’re not to be anxious about it (Matthew 6:34), we’re not to be presumptuous about it (James 4:13-16). But faithfulness today means investing in those who will be here tomorrow, especially since we may not be.

The elders were recently asked about our plan to replace me, not because I have more authority or importance as a pastor, but because the pastoral assignment I have is a particular one. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this story in a corporate setting before, but it illustrates my role. A few Decembers ago, in a week of multiple important-to-the-people-planning-the-event events, I was remarking (okay, it was more grumbling) about the fullness of the schedule one night at dinner. Mo said to me, “Sean, you are not the captain of the ship. You are the mermaid on the front. Your job is to go first and get wet.” I’m sure that such a comparison would cause constipation to many of my former teachers, something about how that analogy demeans the pastoral office, but I find it’s good for humility.

So who would replace me as the mermaid? Dave mentioned in his message a couple Sundays ago that I have lots of problems, and it’s true. Who would replace all of the pastors if the plane to T4G went down? These are not panic induced concerns, though the situations I’ve suggested are of a more dramatic nature. The concern is whether we are obeying/fulfilling Ephesians 4:11-16 and 2 Timothy 2:1-2.

Before we look at 2 Timothy 2, I want to make an observation about us, about our kind of 50 pound leather bound Bible (app) sort of people, that tends to cause problems down the line.

There is a difference between teaching and discipleship. Discipleship includes teaching, even as the Great Commission expresses: “Make disciples…teaching.” The problem comes when teaching is considered to be the fulfillment of discipleship. Teaching is truth illuminated, discipleship is truth incarnated. Jesus didn’t say teach others “to observe” as in look at it all that I have revealed, He said teach others “to observe” as in live out “all that I have commanded you.”

A teacher and a discipler may not necessarily have the same goal. Much of what they do looks similar, certainly at the beginning. But their aims lead in different directions, and I bring it up because one aim tends to miss the target it claims to be shooting toward.

Unless he’s careful, the goal of a teacher can become to be needed more, to always need students who listen, whereas by definition the goal of a discipler is to be needed less and less. A teacher wants to be heard, a discipler wants to be imitated, which includes the disciple making his own disciple, not necessarily bringing more students back to listen to the teacher. A teacher can get satisfied transferring knowledge whereas a discipler cannot be satisfied until he’s transferred responsibility. A teacher looks for students to regurgitate info, a discipler looks for disciples to reproduce disciples. A teacher wants his student to be right, a disciples want his disciple to be ready, which includes being right, but also more. If a teacher works to explain things, a discipler works to entrust the work to another generation.

This is what Paul wrote to Timothy about in 2 Timothy 2. His letter urged Timothy to think about his responsibility to the next generation, not just to find faithful men who can continue to pass along the faith, but to make faithful men. In the paragraph, verses 1-7, there are four imperatives and a variety of illustrations. I want to focus on the first two commands in verses 1-2.

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:1–2)

There are two imperatives, so two parts to generational work, a get and a give: get strong in grace and give the work away.

Generational work must be done by grace, and grace is a gift of God.

Grace is necessary in light of a number of realities, including discouragement that comes from a massive turning away and minimal loyalty that we often experience. The Then or “therefore” in verse 1 comes after “all who are in Asia turned away from me,” including two guys by name. There was only one man, Onesiphorous, along with his household, on whom Paul could depend. A continent of men opened their umbrellas to the winds and flew away from Paul, only one man dropped anchor with him.

A signal of generational perspective comes as Paul addressed Timothy, You…my child. He called Timothy his “beloved child” in 1:2, so this is more than a teacher/student relationship, it is like father/son. Timothy’s faith “dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice” (1:5). No father is mentioned, who knows where he is, but Paul filled that role to some extent for Timothy, and he wantred sons for his own son.

The first imperative is be strengthened. Because of various clues, it seems that this letter may have been written due to Timothy’s discouragement. He needed “to fan into flame the gift of God” (1:6) perhaps because his experience of faith was cooling. He needed to be reminded that “God gave us a spirit not of fear” (1:7). He may have been fearful, depressed. The work is difficult, passing on a culture of truth and faith and obedience and worship in a culture of lies and doubt and rebellion and idolatry. Paul said, “Get strong.”

The rest of verse 1 explains the command to be strengthened By what? and From whom? The source of that strength is the grace that is in Christ Jesus. The grace-strength is supernatural—it’s His power (see Colossians 1:29), the grace-strength is salvific (1:9), the grace-strength is sufficient—enabling rejoicing in all things (Philippians 4:13), the strength is superlative. Who else has more strengthening grace than Jesus? While it is undeserved, while it is Jesus’ to give or not, it is still a command to go and ask for it. Go get grace-strong.

Generational work must be done by grace and also by design. Giving the work away to another generation is how God wants it done.

The second imperative is entrust. It’s not only an investment, it is a handing over. There is content to transfer, the things you have heard from me, which he called “sound words” in 1:13. There is teaching to be done.

But why is the presence of many witnesses important? Truth propositions don’t depend on witnesses. Truth is true whether anyone acknowledges it, agrees with it, or accepts it. Truth stands on its own. So why witnesses? Because Paul was passing on a way of life based on the truth, not just lessons about the truth. The curriculum is written and walked; it has hands and feet. Qualifications for elders require both basic catechesis about Jesus and character like Jesus. That’s the work he’s giving to Timothy. Commit the truth and the way of truth to a new generation.

There are five generations in view: 1) God to 2) Paul and witnesses, to 3) Timothy, to 4) faithful men, to 5) others also.

Timothy needed to identify faithful men, or “steadfast men,” who will be able to or sufficient, to teach others also.

The rest of the paragraph refers to suffering, to the fight of a soldier, to the focus of a soldier, to hard work, and even to the work of thinking. Cultural transition happens by intent.

One reason why grace-strength is so important is to hand over the grace-work. Without knowing this grace in practice some teachers (even those who know grace in principle) get grabby, they have a hard time giving up their control. They talk about others standing on their shoulders, but it’s almost as if they want those standing on their shoulders to keep looking down at their support rather than looking up and out. They want to be thanked, not improved upon. Mo has illustrated it as one generation standing on the shoulders of the previous generation, looking over the wall that needs to be scaled, and seeing that if everyone moved 25 feet to the right it would be way easier to climb over. But the parent-teacher says, “Why don’t you appreciate what I’ve done for you?” But you do appreciate it, you couldn’t see what you see without them. Their attitude shows the need to be needed, not the desire to be needed less. This is not entrusting. It makes it about one generation, like parents always wanting their kid to stay five years-old.

Timothy couldn’t confirm his obedience to the imperatives until the next generation was obeying the imperatives. There is no future for these imperatives, no next generation to obey them, if we don’t obey them properly. While there isn’t a prescribed timeline (“Do this in two months, two years, etc.”), it must be the purposeful trajectory.

We desire for every father to be elder-like, to function as the pastor of his family, getting grace-strong and entrusting his children with a culture of grace in Jesus Christ.

It bothers me that we spend so much effort raising our kids and then send them away for education or employment. That’s not a good strategy. Timothy’s disciples started to raise faithful men, not just find them or import them. What if we had a college? A way to train pastors? Meaningful jobs to offer maturing image bearers? Generations of families? Elder replacements from within the body?

If we love TEC, if we love our neighbors in Marysville, and if we love the commands of the Lord, then we ought to be thinking about how to get strength to give away the work. This will happen in formal and informal ways. This should happen in individual and institutional ways. But it won’t happen if we’re grabby, it won’t happen if we’re unwilling to think about the future, and it won’t happen without the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

The greatest impulse of the human spirit is to worship GK Chesterton observed when we cease to worship God we do not worship nothing We worship anything the very first commandment God gave the people of Israel was a prohibition Against Ron worship you shall have no other gods before me This commandment implies an either or proposition you will worship God Or you will worship something else. The seeds of worship we sow determine the fruit of our life. Worship is not a part of life. It is the driver of our life. This is true of every single human being and hard-hearted failure to obey God's command to worship him will result in a life that is ultimately futile.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 4, you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their heart. So as we gather this morning to worship, let's humbly ask God to remove any hard-heartedness that's in us, lest we end up walking in the futility of our mind. And as we do, remember that our help is in the name of the Lord. Praise the Lord. For it is good to sing praises to our God, for it is pleasant and a song of praise is fitting. The Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel.

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars He gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble. He casts the wicked to the ground. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. make melody to our God on the lyre. He covers the heavens with clouds. He prepares rain for the earth. He makes grass grow on the hills. He gives to the beasts their food and to the young ravens that cry. His delight is not in the strength of the horse, nor his pleasure in the legs of a man. But the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him and those who hope in his steadfast love.

Let's pray.

Father, we humble ourselves in your presence this morning as we gather. We acknowledge that you are the only one worthy of all praise and honor. We ask that you lift us up even as we lift you up with hearts filled with worship. We do not calm boasting of anything other than your greatness. We acknowledge we are weak but you are strong. Thank you that your strength is made perfect in our weakness and that we can do all things to him who strengthens us. Help us this morning to add to the chorus of praise that is do your name and when the final Amen is said may we may you find the quality of our worship pleasing in your sight amen amo purple neat save deus disbelief excuse my Latin in case you don't understand what I said and I apologize to mr. Higgins ECS Latin class what I said or tried to say I don't know what I really said but I tried to say was man proposes, but God disposes. This well-known saying comes from the imitation of Christ by Thomas A. Kempis. In chapter 19 of book 1 he wrote, For the resolutions of the just depend rather on the grace of God than on their

own wisdom, and in him they always put their trust whatever they take in hand.

The Bible states the same principle this way, Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand." For those of us who believe in the sovereignty of God, we sometimes fall into the sin of proposing our own plans and forgetting that it's God who disposes them. James chapter 4 warns against this sin, "'Come now, you who say, today or tomorrow, we shall go into such and such a town and spend a year there in trade and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, if the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. There is no practical difference between a believer who does not acknowledge God in the details and the unbeliever who will not. Trusting in our own plan-making wisdom is a sin and it usually breeds more sin when our plans go awry. The antidote to this sin is to trust in the Lord with all of your heart, not leaning

on your own understanding, but rather acknowledge him in all of your plans and then he will make your path straight. If you've been guilty of this sin or if any other sin comes to mind, now then is the time to confess that sin. And as we do, you are invited, if you're able to and desire to, to kneel now as you take some time to confess your sin. Let's take that moment right now. Father, we confess that we who would vigorously defend the doctrine of the sovereignty of God far too often respond as though you were far off or gone on vacation. We say you're in control and then we rail when things don't go according to our plans. Forgive us for our negligence in acknowledging your hand in all things and for being thankful for all things for not being thankful.

May we learn to count it all joy when various trials come our way knowing that the testing of our faith builds endurance and in time that endurance will make us more complete and mature in Christ. Thank you for your loving patience that is so long suffering when we do not trust as we ought and thank you for the forgiveness that is ours because what of what the Son did for us on the cross. We pray this the name of the one who died on our behalf so that we might live in newness of life, Jesus Christ. Amen. You invited to stand. Our assurance of forgiveness this morning is found in Hebrews 10 14 through 17. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified and the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us for after saying This is the covenant that I will make with him after those days declares the Lord I will put my laws on their heart and write them in their minds then he adds I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more That gives us some reason to sing and to continue to worship this morning today's scripture reading is Galatians 5

16 through 24 Galatians 5 16 through 24 But I say, walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing these things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident. immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control against such things. There is no law and those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Let's pray. Father, we come to you as a congregation to pray for our nation and the people that are in authority over us. And we know that you have put believers in positions all over our government. Help them to be strong in their faith and to be those lights in some of those dark places where they may serve. And we ask a special blessing on those people today to move our country more into the light. We thank you for the men in our congregation that serve in our military. We thank Jubal Marlat and Hack Barth and Dad and Wimmermeyer all serving in the Navy. And we thank the Fujianaka family that Ian is going to go off to West Point next year and Anna's already there and they have an older brother who's already gone through it.

So we thank you for the Fujinaka family, and who knows, we may not even need a military if they keep sending people there. So we thank you for that. We pray especially for our fathers in our congregation and the elders and deacons in our congregation that we would be those men and properly leading our families and our congregation, that each one of us has those duties in their unit as a home, in their unit as part of the church, and in their unit and society. And if they do those properly, then the wives and the children will all have those models and we will be coming together as families for you in our world. We thank you for that.

We think of the people that need personal prayer in our congregation today. Debbie Wold first comes to mind in her battle with cancer. She had a new appointment this week, and the two spots on her liver have shrunk for the second time, we praise you for that, and that the spots on her spine and hip have remained the same, and the tumor in her kidney remains the same. So it seems that you've at least stalled the progress and actually shrunk some of the others. We do ask you for complete healing for Debbie, and that if that requires medicine and all the stuff that she's going through now. They've chosen not to do, have a two week break from chemo and Debbie and Dave are gonna be able to go off and have some time together and we pray that you would bless that and bring Debbie up strongly and again, we ask for full recovery for her.

We think of Steve Snyder and Mary Kaye. We're glad to see Mary Kaye here today after her fall And we pray that Steve would continue to recover and go through his therapy to fix up his hip and knees and all the things that he had going on and that he is recovering incrementally. Incrementally. We think of Rhonda Luce, friend of our congregation, that as she goes through the ongoing chemotherapy that she would learn how to adapt and be as comfortable as possible. And we do pray for her healing also. He's a great friend of our congregation. We think of Carmen Nielsen and her continued recovery from her brain surgery.

She seems to be doing better and we ask that she would go slow and not try to do too much, but that she would continue to bring her back to her full recovery. We thank you that Sean's operation went smoothly and seemingly it is improving his condition and his leg is less numb and things do seem to be getting better, just like the doctor said they would, so we pray that he would have a complete recovery also.

We think of people that are just having a hard time out there and we think specifically of Alicia Kulishov's sister Emma and we pray that she would be strengthened by your spirit and understand her place and have her fully engaged. And a lot of people get down and we think of them and we ask that you would lift them up. And those of us that know those people help us to be those people that can come alongside them also. Then we have our great crew of expectant mothers in our congregation. How exciting it is that all this new life is coming in. And we think of it looking from my generation and then a middle generation and then the ones that are having the babies right now and how you're blessing us with all those new births.

And yet those bring upon all kinds of decisions and worries and all that kind of stuff. I would ask that you would give a supernatural calmness to everybody as they approach this and go through their pregnancies. So we thank you for that. We thank you for our outreach with our school, the Children's Law Center, Good Shepherd's Home, all of those things that we see as direct influence in the societies that they're in and where those people disciple those people to be stronger people for you. We thank you for the local churches that preach the gospel here in our community and all over the world and we pray for those people that are being persecuted at this very moment in some of those places.

We don't even know what that's like. We think persecution is having people talk bad about Christians and what squares they are where those people are facing martyrdom. So we pray for all of us to recognize the blessings you give us and to be that light. So we thank you for all of these things and we thank you of course most of all for your son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. Amen. Father, we have just sung a song that is packed with worshipful expressions. May it be true of us that we would rather have you than anything else this world has to offer. As we've already talked about this morning, it does come down to an either or proposition.

You or what this world has to offer. As we look at this morning at the topic of worship and how that is the driver to life, we pray that you would really shake us, challenge us, confront us in our hearts where those words we're just saying aren't quite true, but that they would slowly but steadily become more and more true as we walk with you daily. We just pray this now in your son Jesus' name. Amen. This message will sound a little familiar to some of you who have been around for I think I preached a version of this back in 2012, but it really fit well into what Dave and I wanted to cover these two weeks. So if you'll allow me, and for many of you, you're new, so you haven't heard these thoughts expressed before.

If you've attended Trinity Evangel Church for very long, you've probably picked up on various words or phrases that we like to use a lot. Words like affection, joy flag, image bearer, laughter is war, the mess, boom, dualism, sovereignty, liturgy, Kyperian worship. That's a lot of jargon floating around and it creates its own kind of mess in your mind as you try to reflect on what is the essence of what we have been teaching and what we try to live here at Trinity. How would you distill into a few sentences what is the core characteristic of Trinity? Now Now that question alone should make you a bit uncomfortable.

After all, aren't we but one physical manifestation of the universal body of Christ? Is it okay for a local body of believers to consider their own uniqueness within the universal body of believers, or is it bordering on man's centeredness to consider our own identity? As Dave and I talked about what we wanted to teach on for these two weeks that we're filling in, we thought it would be good to reflect on where TEC is and consider how we can be an even better church. We also wanted to reflect on what makes TEC the special place that it is. Now our intent is not to pat ourselves on the back, but rather to warn ourselves not to lose what we have and to excel still more.

What makes for a good church? By good I mean one that is faithfully living out the gospel of Jesus Christ. How would you define a good church that is meeting that objective? What is the key ingredient to making a good church? What's the recipe if there is one? Several years ago, Sean and I had a conversation during a layover at Denver International Airport on our way to the T4G conference in Louisville, Kentucky. We were discussing what one thing we hoped that members of TEC would have begun to get. I think that conversation when we had it, we were about two years old as a church at the time. I love the answer that Shawn gave.

He said he hoped that we had come closer to understanding just how glad God is with us in Christ and that we in turn would be models of that gladness to others. That sounds pretty good to me. After all, we do have good news. If it really is good news, shouldn't that produce some measure of gladness in us? Wouldn't true gladness manifest itself outwardly and make people want to ask what is the reason for the hope that's in us? Wouldn't true gladness be a bright light in a dark world and force others to take notice and see the reality of God in our lives? True gladness produce an attractive aroma that appeals to those who are being saved as 2 Corinthians 2.15 tells us.

The answer to these rhetorical questions is yes. True gladness would have all these effects and more. Now a synonym we could use for gladness is joy. Jesus' desire for us is that we would have true gladness or joy. John 15.11, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. We tend to gloss over that verse. Jesus' goal, his purpose, his desire, is that his joy be in us. Just imagine joy immeasurable in quantity and quality. What would it look like to have the fullness of Jesus' joy in us? The thought occurred to me that if this kind of joy was as prevalent as Jesus intended for it to be, we wouldn't need so many sermons on what the joy-filled life looks like. Perhaps we spend so much time talking about joy because so if you experience it in the fullness that Jesus prayed for it. Think about it.

From your experience or observation which of the following describes more Christians? Those whose lives are typically and obviously full of joy with occasional off days or those whose lives seem humdrum or worse negative with only occasional spikes of evidential joy. How much of our joy is dependent on our circumstances? Here's another way to think about what I am getting at. Our salvation, as you know, can be broken down into three distinct phases. Justification, sanctification, and glorification. Many Christians in our camp have their doctrine wired when it comes to justification and glorification, the beginning and the end.

They are glad to be saved from the penalty and the power of sin, and they look forward to being removed from the presence of sin. What about the in-between part? The sanctification phase. Do we realize that God is just as glad about this phase as he is with all the others? He doesn't see the space between our justification and our glorification as wasted or idle time. This messy, sometimes painful, often irritating middle space between justification and glorification is part of his plan. He deems it good. Perhaps you've heard preachers ask the question, why has God left us here on earth? Their conclusion is that the only reason God's left us here is so that we can lead more people to Christ.

Now evangelism is certainly a high priority for the church, but is that all this in-between time is for? We are called to make disciples, but does that mean we should view the world as an evil place to avoid, except when we send out fishing parties on Tuesday night to capture fish for Jesus and drag them back to our stained glass aquariums. So many Christians live like the prisoner who's told that he's been paroled, but the release date is 50 years from now. The net effect is that they slog through life thankful at some level for their salvation, but largely living with a joyless prisoner-like mindset. If you don't like having to hang around this planet after salvation, you have Jesus to thank for it.

In his high priestly prayer recorded in John 17, he prays to the Father concerning us. Verse 15, he prays, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. Why would Jesus specifically pray that we not be taken out of the world? The reason is given a few verses later, starting in verse 20.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their world and that they may all be one just as you father are in me and I in you that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and you in me that they may become one become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Jesus prays to the Father that the church may be one even as he and the Father are one. Why? So that the world may know that the Father has sent the Son and that the Father loves us. Everything about how we live our lives is supposed to present compelling evidence to the world that God has sent his Son and that God is love. This will result then in God getting more glory.

Matthew 5 16 let your light shine before others so they may see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. The essential characteristic traits of the Christian life joy love unity are exactly what the world so desperately wants but so completely lacks. At some level a godly testimony can cause even unbelievers to give glory to God. If we are going to have Jesus intended effect on the world, then we need to have a proper perspective on two things. One, we need to view the messy phase of our salvation we call sanctification as something good and from God and be glad in it. And then two, we need to view the world not as an inherently evil place to be criticized and avoided. It is God's creation and as such it is good even though though it is now being corrupted by sin.

We are called to engage the world with joy and gladness without becoming part of the world system. Those of you who have been at TEC for more than a few months should be familiar with the name Abraham Kuyper. And only the Bohr family can pronounce that word properly, but Abraham Kuyper. For those that aren't, he was a Dutch theologian and former prime minister of the Netherlands. Not to mention, he started a newspaper at a university in his free time. He was a pretty busy guy, well accomplished. He was also an eloquent apologist for the sovereignty of God. His influence was so great on his disciples and his community that years after his death, Adolf Hitler gave instructions that Kuyper's disciples be sought out and killed unless their beliefs about liberty and God's sovereignty would interfere with Hitler's plans.

Can you imagine that? Somebody like Hitler saying, well, we got a bunch of these disciples of this guy named Kuiper running around. We got to kill him off because their worldview is going to mess up my plans. In Men to Men, we have been reading a book titled Lectures on Calvinism. The book contains six lectures that Kuiper gave in 1898 at Princeton University. In one of those lectures, he said this, The world, after the fall, is no lost planet, only destined now to afford the church a place in which to continue her combats, and humanity is no aimless mass of people which only serve the purpose of giving birth to the elect.

So if you follow that, he's saying it's not just a place for evangelism. On the contrary, the world now, as well as in the beginning, is the theater for the mighty works of God, and humanity remains a creation of his hand, which, apart from salvation, completes under this present dispensation here on earth a mighty process, and in its historical development, is to glorify the name of Almighty God. Now, if you've been a man to man, you know that all of us say we have to read those sentences like 99 times to start to understand them. What he's saying, all of God's creation, works and all, play a crucial role in glorifying God.

The wicked may not know it, but they too are instruments being used to bring glory to God. All of humanity plays a part in this immense drama written and produced by God Himself, in which He is the primary audience and the chief actor in it. He delights in this cosmic play because He wrote it. We believe in the doctrine of total depravity, but this does not mean that men always act as depraved as they could. All men are created in the image of God, and all enjoy common grace from God. This means that all are capable, at times, of acting consistent with the character of God, even though they have not received saving grace from God.

We see lots of evidences around us of unbelievers doing things that are totally consistent with the character of God. Doesn't mean you're saved, but because of their image-bearing characteristic, they can still do good things. We who have received saving grace should walk among those who have only received common grace so that all men might behold the glory of God. We are not called to avoid contact with the world. We are supposed to be engaged with the world as salt and light. Now with all of that, what I've said is introduction. Let me now then attempt what I set out to do this morning, which is to distill the essence of what drives our thinking here at TEC.

Here it is. What you worship shapes your worldview. Your worldview guides your daily walk. I can look at how a man walks his life, and by observing him over a long enough period of time, I can get a pretty good handle on his worldview, and thus a pretty good idea on what he worships. Worship always drives the way we walk. Stated another way, we can say our affections affect our perceptions, and our perceptions affect our actions. Let me say it again. Our affections affect our perceptions and our perceptions affect our actions. In the time remaining, I'll show why I believe this to be an accurate way of looking at the human experience.

This view then will help us in a couple of ways. First, it will reveal the unifying theme of what has been and is being taught here at Trinity. Two, it will expose the root cause of why so many Christians have their systematic theology correct, but have a weak theology proper. In other words, it will show how a Christian can have a full truth tube and yet not be a joyful believer. It will show why so many Christians look like unbelievers in practice. Third, this worship worldview walk view, this view will serve as a spiritual diagnostic tool to help you evaluate your life, and to become more sensitive to sin and to see how sin strangles belief.

Think of this worship worldview walk, this view as a three by five card that you periodically pull out of your mental shirt pocket to review as you prepare for the next spiritual test. You do not know when the next test is coming because like pop quizzes, spiritual tests can occur at any time. This means you have to keep reviewing that three by five cards so that you're ready when the test comes. The worship worldview walk view shows the cause and effect relationships in your life. So let's start taking this worship worldview walk model apart and see how it really affects us. Typically around the start of a new year, our church will have a short series on worship.

In the past, some have been a little impatient with us revisiting this topic annually. They prefer that we stay in a verse-by-verse exegesis of the Word. They go, oh no, worship series again. Now there's no disagreement on the importance of teaching the Word of God verse-by-verse. But isn't the point of rightly dividing the Word of God so that we will be better worshippers of God? 4 23 tells us, but the hour is coming and is now here where the true worshipers will worship the father and spirit and truth for the father is seeking what such people to worship him. If the father seeking true worshipers, then it seems to me that it behooves us to understand what that means. I believe our problem is not that we talk about worship too much, but that we understand worship too little. The whole point of God's revelation to man, both written and natural, is so that we might enter into fellowship with him and worship him.

And then I'll try to show in a minute how much worship dictates how we respond to life events and how we choose to engage in the world. When the elders were first coming up with what our Sunday service would look like, worship was the driving factor in why we chose the elements we did. It wasn't just a random, let's throw a bunch of elements together and call it a worship service. We were very purposeful. Now, it isn't to say that our service structure is the only way, but we believe it serves our body well in promoting a worshipful expression of faith. Some churches focus more on how to minimize uncomfortableness for their visitors.

The danger that comes with that focus is that people begin to think that Sunday services are about them. Now, we don't wish to make people intentionally uncomfortable. We didn't purposely leave the AC off. We don't want you to be uncomfortable, but that happens. But trying to make you comfortable is not our priority. I recently came across an article titled, The Whole Christian Life Every Sunday by Tim Chalise. Chalise, some of you know, is a prolific Christian blogger who visits quite a few churches and conferences every year. In this article, he lists out what he believes are valuable and often missing components of a beneficial church service liturgy. So here's Charlie's opinion on what a good church service would look like. See if it sounds familiar.

He says, here's his list. A call to worship, a time of confession, a time to provide assurance of pardon, a time of prayer, a time of scripture reading, a time of preaching, a time to give financial gifts, a time of singing, a time of communion, a time for benediction, a time of fellowship. Sound familiar? And we didn't consult with Tim before we came up with our service. Taken all together, all these elements drive our corporate body towards worship of God, provided they are done in the right spirit and not mechanistically. Our liturgy here at TEC would be worthless if we just come in like robots and just crank the handle again and then our Sunday move through our five C's.

Now with the time remaining, I want to show the linkages between worship, worldview, and our daily walk and how that determines, one, how we respond when life comes at us, and two, how we choose to engage the world around us. Our worship, worldview, walk, all of that, when understood.

explain why do I respond the way I do when life happens to me and it will explain how I engage the world around me. First, how does worship dictate how we respond when life comes at us? This is the aspect of life where events or circumstances outside our full control happen to us. They may be pleasant or they may be undesirable. How we respond to them says something about who or what we worship. You can't talk about worshiping God without talking about your affections. It is impossible to worship God and at the same time have something else be the primary object of your affections. It doesn't work. Now don't misunderstand. We can and we do have affections for things other than God. I can have multiple affections. I can have affections for my wife, children, and grandchildren, I can have affections for my friends. It's when those affections lead me to find God insufficient in any way that then I'm in sin. For example, I have affection for my wife, but let's say that she begins acting in ways that I

find hurtful. What if after many attempts to resolve the conflict, she is still doing hurtful things? If my response to her hurtful actions is anger, despair, hopelessness or sullen resignation, then my affections for her is improper because I believe in my heart that God is insufficient to meet my deepest needs.

I won't take the time to read Jeremiah chapter 2, but I refer you to 213 because it lists the two options for satisfying our soul. Option 1, drink from the fountain of abundant living water that God supplies. Or option 2, drink from broken cisterns which are leaky, shallow holes in the ground. Broken cisterns, metaphorically, can be anything. Spouse, child, job, bank account, friends, grades, reputation, popularity, beauty, anything. If I were to ask you, which is more important, God or one of those broken cisterns, you would all give me the right Sunday school answer. You'd all say God. But what does your daily walk say about which one is more important. How do you respond when your spouse disappoints you for the hundredth time? How about when the bank calls to tell you that a check bounced?

What happens in your heart when you realize that you aren't very popular and you're feeling isolated? Don't your, or don't our emotional responses to life's disappointments reveal that we don't really believe what we say we believe about God. We sing songs with words like, all I need is you, or nothing I have compares with you or I surrender all with a song we just saying before I came up but then when those broken cisterns go dry and they always do we respond in sinful ways what do these responses say about our beliefs in God what do they say about our worship of God they don't make very positive statements beliefs that falters when things are hard is not belief affections for God that go sour when we're disappointed with life is not true affections. Belief demands that we say with Job, though he slay me, yet I will trust him. There's a story in one of the biographies on John Knox of a time when Knox was in prison for preaching and his wife went to the king to appeal for his release. The king

listened to her petition and then said he would release Knox if she could get him to stop preaching. Nock's wife responded by holding out her apron like she was collecting fruit and said she would rather that the king put the head of her husband in her apron than ask him to stop preaching. Do you think she didn't deeply love her husband? Of course she did. But she loved God so much more that she was willing to become an instant widow. That is what believing looks like. I said earlier when our worship, i.e. our affections for God, is what it should be, it will of necessity shape our worldview. By worldview, I simply mean the grid through which we interpret the world around us.

Our worldview determines our perceptions of life's events. As things happen at me, I have to make a determination, what do I think about that? And our worldview is going to affect how I interpret the information coming in. For example, if my worldview says that I have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that's the core of my worldview, then anything that impinges on that is going to make me unhappy, possibly to the point of despair. If my worldview, the core worldview, says that life should be fair, then any form of injustice is going to rock my world. All of us have some sort of mental grid we apply when interpreting events in life.

For most of us, our grid is a mashup of lots of ideas that we've picked up along the way and I dare say that if we were to pick apart our world views we would find out there's a lot of conflicting inconsistent pieces to our worldview. We just glom on to the ideas without really considering where did they come from, what's behind them and we've gotten so good at this process of receiving information and interpreting it in our heads and our worldview. We're not even mindful of the process anymore we're just reacting but in that reaction if we would stop and consider and ponder we'd say oh that tells me something about my worldview. That tells me something about who my worship. Sometimes these ideas that get in our head are not very compatible with a Christian worldview.

For those of us coming from the Reformed faith tradition, our worldview has at its core the belief in the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God means he appoints the course of nature and directs all the events down to the minutest details. His decrees therefore are eternal, unchangeable, holy, wise, and good. In layman's terms, and I think Dave's got a t-shirt to express this, God is God and you are not. He does what he wants, how he wants, when he wants, without anyone's counsel. So then proper worship alters our affections and shapes our perspective on life. We are not victims of chance, luck, or random acts. Some of those events will be painful, but with the right perspective, they will be tempered by the knowledge that God is good and that all things work together for good.

Worship dictates how we respond when life comes at us. Again, if you don't like the way you're responding to life, it's a sinful response. You can trace it back to a problem in your worship. Next, I want to show how worship affects how we engage with the world. So if you're following, first point was how does worship affect how I respond to life coming at me? Now, how does worship affect me engaging the world? If we worship a sovereign God, how should that shape our worldview or perspective on the world around us? Do we see it as an inherently evil place to avoid as much as possible? Or do we see it as part of God's creation and intended by God to be enjoyed?

Quoting again Abraham Kuyper his famous quote, there is not one thumbs within the universe that the Lord Jesus Christ does not declare it is mine. Anywhere you hold your thumb up and look at the universe, Jesus says that's mine, that's mine, that's mine, that's mine, that's mine, that's mine. And some of us come out of a camp and says that's evil, that's evil, that's evil, that's evil, that's evil. You see the problem? In more extreme cases, Christians try to live in near total isolation from the world. They say it's all going to burn. And so as any kind of engagement with the world that does not have anything directly to do with the church is viewed as either a waste of time or spiritually dangerous.

An example from church history of an extreme case of this isolationist was a Christian sect known as the Shakers. The sect has pretty much died out today for obvious reasons in the moment, but I think they officially had their last known shaker person, I think, as eaters. It's barely alive or it may have just passed away, but it's pretty much gone. But in its heyday, it taught, among other things, that Christians should remain separate from the world, and even that sexual relations, even among married couples, was evil. That might help explain why they died out. This latter view came about because one of its leaders, and Lee had lost four children in infancy and she believes that God told her then that sex was evil. Her conclusion, her worldview told her, well, four babies died in infancy. The problem's got to be sex.

Let's that's not wipe out sex. Our variations of separatism, a proper response to the world. If it's true that Jesus Christ declared that every square inch in this is his, then isn't the right view of the world one that sees it as Christ's domain. Psalms are filled with statements about creation declaring the glory of God. We are told to taste and see that the Lord is good. Is that just metaphorical or are we called to actually use our senses to enjoy his creation and to give him thanks? Could it be that much of the spiritual decline in America is due to Christians being holed up in their churches, except when they go out on their weekly evangelism visits.

More often than not, those churches that do engage the community, unfortunately today, have gone apostate and preach another gospel that even has gone so far as to bless sinful behavior. Christians were once the driving force behind Western civilization, which brought about many improvements to communities, Whether it was education, science, politics, art, medicine, human rights, or other civic-minded activities, Christians were major players. Somewhere along the way, we have surrendered our involvement in those sorts of things and even disdain them for being so, quote-unquote, godless. If Christians are hanging out in their stained-glass aquariums, we shouldn't be surprised that the rest of the community has become so godless.

Even some of our practices have been dictated by the world's sinful excesses rather than by what God has said. The world perverts something good God gave and our response is to condemn the thing that God has given rather than condemn the sinful abuse of it. Drinking is just one example of that. Sinful man abuses wine, which the Bible calls a gift, and we respond by calling wine the devil's juice and tell Christians to avoid it. Now I've wondered, and I've been a part of that camp for many, many years, but I've wondered why we never applied the same principle to sex. Doesn't the world abuse sex? Why don't we have a prohibition against sex?

I know there are some here who have a history of abusing some of these gifts, and have now chosen to abstain to avoid temptation. That is good, that is totally fine. I'm addressing the case where we carte blanche, condemn things abused by the world that God has called good. Maybe it's time for Christians to once again engage their communities with winsomeness and sacrifice rather than just throwing pronouncements of judgment from our sanctified compounds Now let me to hasten to say that I am NOT advocating some type of social gospel that exchanges the proclamation of the gospel for soup kitchens But soup kitchens aren't all that bad, especially when you're starving It seems that I recall a verse somewhere about giving a cup of cold water water as evidence of one's salvation.

The life to life leaders have recently completed a video series titled For the Life of the World. And in the series, the question is asked, what is our salvation for? The series title gives away the answer. Our salvation is for the life of the world. We are supposed to be in the world, but not of it. We are to demonstrate how to properly receive and use God's gifts with thankfulness and to use our image-bearing creativeness to further His glory. Some will argue that we are not citizens of this world and that we should fix our attention on our future home and busy ourselves with evangelism. Don't get entangled in the world.

This is not my home. Agreed? We are aliens in a land that seems increasingly foreign to us, but consider what God told the Jews who were exiled off into Babylonian captivity. If you know the history, because of their sin, God allowed the Jews to be defeated and humiliated by Nebuchadnezzar. Their homes were raised, their wealth pilfered, their temple destroyed, and most of their leaders have been killed off. Now the remnant is all huddled up in Babylon. If anyone had a reason to sink into isolationism and resent the culture, it was them. But then God sends an extraordinary message to the surviving elders by way of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 29 4 through 7 we read thus says the Lord of hosts stay away from those filthy Babylonians not section I wouldn't says thus says the Lord of hosts the God of Israel to all the exiles who whom I have sent into exile from Jews or Jerusalem to Babylon build houses and live in them plant gardens and eat their produce take wise and have sons and daughters take wise for your sons and give your daughters and marriage that they may bear sons and daughters, multiply there and do not decrease, but seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Seek the welfare of the Babylonians? Really? Pray for them? I imagine the Jews were praying all right.

They were praying every imprecatory psalm they could think of. But God tells them to seek to be a blessing to their captors, and in so doing they would find their welfare. Hmm. Maybe God doesn't want Christians to just hang in there and wait it out until the Lord returns. Now, a side note to young couples, I've heard some through several generational cycles. Now I've heard some question if they should even have children and bring them into this evil timer in. You aren't the first generation to wrestle with that question. When we were having babies, our friends were asking the same question. Suffice it to say that if God thought it was a good idea to have kids during the Babylonian exile, then it's probably a good thing to bring God-fearing children into our time. Looking to the New Testament, we see that we are supposed to pray for our leaders and submit to them, which by the way was written when Nero was reigning. We are to bless those who curse us. We are created for good works assigned by God before time began. We are not to

let our light shine so that men, pagans too, can see it. Any way you slice it, Christians are supposed to be engaged in the world. Not only for the sake of our witness, but also for the sake of our worship. All that God has created represents gifts given by God for our enjoyment and his glory as we receive those gifts and direct our thanks back to them. Now get this, we do not merely have the license to enjoy the things of earth. We have the duty because in so doing properly, we give glory back to God. When we say evil, evil, evil, evil, evil, and we start pronouncing judgment and refuse to enjoy the things of earth, we are basically denying ourselves a primary avenue of directing glory and worship back to our heavenly Father.

He's the one that gave the gifts. I use the analogy in a couple of our discussions of, what is a father's expectation on Christmas morning when he gives this kid a bicycle? Does he want the kid to put the bicycle back in the box and jump on his lap and say, oh, daddy, I love you so much. Thank you for this bicycle. They spend the rest of the next 25 years as a kid sitting on daddy's lap saying, thank you for that bicycle. Thank you. Thank you. The father has been waiting eagerly to see the son jump on the bike and go pedaling down the street. Yes, he wants the son to know where the bike came from and to be grateful for the bicycle, But he wants to see the kid ride the bicycle.

And as the son's riding a bicycle and thinking, what an awesome father I have, the cycle of worship is happening. It's supposed to happen. Everything about our life begins and ends with God, and that is why a worship-driven life is so essential. Frankly, it's unavoidable. We will worship something. Early on, I asked, what makes TEC unique? We are a admittedly a strange duck among churches. We are happily Calvinistic, Kiberian, and dispensational. Now, Sean is going to do a series of messages drilling in on exactly what that means when he gets back. Our covenantal brothers scratch their heads and say that we can't be Kiberian and dispensational.

Some on the other end of the spectrum think we're selling out to some type of worldliness. We just smile and keep on doing what we're doing. Going about living a fully orbed gospel, trusting in the complete sovereignty of God as we engage the culture around us and push back against sin wherever it seeks to mar the beauty of his created order. Your walk talks. If nobody wants to listen to what your talk is talking, then pull out that 3x5 index card I referred to at the start of the message and examine your worldview. Do you really believe Jesus is sovereign over your life? Also examine your affections. Do you love Jesus more than anything? If all you had were Jesus and the hope of the glory that's to be revealed, would that be enough? If your answer is no to any of those questions, then something is messed up with your worship. What you worship shapes your worldview. Your worldview guides your daily walk. Let's pray. Father, it's been a lot of words expressed here in the last half hour, but if we can only remember one word, remember worship.

It begins and it ends with worship. You are seeking worshipers. You created us to be your worshipers. You have given all of the all of a creation as an expression of your goodness and your majesty and you intend for your creation to enjoy it along with you and to then direct worship back to you as we enjoy those gifts.

Forgive us for the times that we have with our minds said the right things, but really with our hearts have allowed our affections for other things to crowd in. The ways many times perhaps even this morning that we expressed a our walk reflected something other than a proper worldview, you a proper worship of you. Father, just really grab us by our chins and direct our thinking and our thoughts back towards you. Help us not walk through life like so many who do not know you, just zombies, Father, just mindlessly following their God without even aware they're following their God. May we be more purposeful in our intentions to walk after our God and then may our worldview, may our walk look like that, may it express that made people see us and say, wow, they're clearly Christians.

They clearly worship the true God. Father, just thank you for all of your good gifts. And again, thanks for the challenges that we find in your word that caused us to continually have to re-examine and to repent and to come back to the truth of your word. Just pray all this now in your Son, Jesus' name, amen. You're invited to stand. Worship team can come back up as we prepare to move on. This is the part in the service where we continue our worship in a form of presenting the gifts and offerings that we've gathered throughout the week. Again, don't think of this as just the time when we collect the dough to pay the bills. This is a time when we, again, in another tangible way, express worship to our Heavenly Father. And so in that, in our singing, in our attentiveness to preaching, all of these elements of worship, we have a responsibility to put our whole heart, soul, and mind into it. So let's do that now as we continue to sing.

Now we come to the time of communion where we now in our service where we celebrate our fellowship with Jesus Christ and with each other. And the only way we can do that is through the evangel. And our church is named Trinity Evangel Church, another purposeful choice. The gospel given to us by our Our triune God is what allows us to even have the fellowship that we've talked about in the scripture reading before. For in order to walk in the spirit, you have to possess the spirit. You can't possess the spirit without you coming to the Lord for your forgiveness of your sins. And He's the only one that can do it. So as we celebrate this, we celebrate what Christ has already done.

Now, we do want you to examine yourself to see if you're worthy, and we do open this up to Christians. Communion is for believers in Jesus and what he's done for you. It's not just for the world to come down and have a snack. But the idea is that if we together believe in Christ and what he's done for us, we then should celebrate what he's done for us together and understand that in this supernatural process all of us together come gain strength through this and then go back out to the world to shed more and more light. The end of the cycle Jim spoke about the worship. And as long as you recognize who the one giving the gifts, whatever those gifts may be and at the time you may not see them as gifts, you then are in that proper cycle.

So when we have communion like this together, it's just amazing to me how you see and I love the way that we do it also, we purposely made it this way where we don't pass it out to you, you guys come and receive it and we get to see everybody come by and all the families and the whole thing that we together in union are doing this together and it's really one of the high points I think. Another thing we've discussed before and I'll say it again that the the idea that we might spoil it doing it every week I don't think anybody thinks that that's been here for a while. The more we do it the more we understand the onion gets peeled another layer and it's a joy to have that happen. So as we do this today, again I said it's an open communion. Those who have faith in the Lord are welcome to participate. We all come up, we come through the center aisle, get the bread and the wine, then circulate back around, and then we do it together. And so that's what we will do now. So let's have our song and let's participate. Now's the time where the

pastor gets to charge you to go out into our sinful world and be that bright light and to enjoy the good things God has given us. The idea to go out and be that light is foreign to some of us that have been in other fellowships and the idea of to put on our armor and be afraid and that kind of thing Jim spoke eloquently about it before but to go out as in Hubert Humphries words as a happy warrior and to bring that joy to the world is a real blessing that we can have and people will ask you why are you grinning all the time and then you can tell them why because you know in the end the good guys win so keep that in mind go out and enjoy the day your life the next week until we meet again and I And I want to leave you with this benediction, which Jim chose, and I think fits perfectly for what we're trying to say today.

This is 1 Timothy 6, 13 through 16. I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who is his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession to keep the commandment unstained, free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He will display at the proper time. He is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To Him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

We do not understand what God is like by looking to earthly examples of fatherhood. That's sometimes a mistake we make as we look at earthly fathers and then transfer that back to God. We understand what fatherhood is by looking to God. Our Heavenly Father is not stingy when it comes to blessing his children. We are told in Philippians 4.19 that He will meet all our needs according to the riches of His glory in Christ Jesus. According to is a whole lot better than out of. Out of is trickle down. According to is overflowing abundance. Fathers bless. That's what fathers do. Even trials and tribulations come with the promise of something good and beneficial.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. As we gather this morning to worship, we remember the manifold blessings he has poured out on us and humbly acknowledge our dependence on him for our help is in the name of the Lord. May heaven and earth. The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great. May the Lord give you increase you and your children. May you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the Lord's heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man.

The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any go down into silence. But he will bless the Lord from this time forth and forever more. Praise the Lord. Let's pray. Father, as we gather this morning once again to offer up corporate worship, we thank you for all the blessings we receive from your hand. Those that look like gift to us and those that don't at first where we don't foresee the blessing. We acknowledge that all is gift because all is ultimately from you. May we increase in our affections for you and thus our thankfulness to you. May we not be like those who grumbled against you in the desert during the exodus. Father, we love you and we praise your name this morning. Help us now to set aside all distractions and to join in one heart and mind to offer up to you the worship you are so worthy of. Amen.

At this time of our confession this morning, I want each one of us that are part of the church universal to think what our part is. And our theme today is, as you can tell by the scripture reading that's going to come up, a revelation two and three, which is a message to the churches, and I believe it's a message to churches today as well as in the past, and this is a little early because I haven't preached the message yet, but the thing I'd like us to focus on today, if you are not representing who we are in the world or in your family or here in the church or as a representative of our church in the community that you think about it and straighten that out.

Repent and be right because we're made and created for love and good works to be done. And those have been prepared for us beforehand, so it shouldn't be a problem if you're walking in the spirit to get that done. So the idea though is that Jim and I are going to preach this Sunday and then next Sunday also, and Sean is doing well, but he's being smart and not overdoing it.

And then next week they're off to a conference, and so Jim and I will hold down the fort at the same time then. Jim is going to preach again about the church and what we're doing here when we worship together. But today I'd like you to focus and think about when the scripture is read and then as you pray today, think about your representation in our local church. We as elders are responsible for you people in a supernatural way that we're told we are and we take that seriously and I just want everybody, it's been on my heart for quite a while now, we have a great body here and I think we're doing great but it's always a combination effort by all of us. So I want each one of us to examine ourselves and know that we're walking right and being that person God would have us be. So if you're able you can kneel and we'll have a quiet time here for a little bit and then I will get up and we will close this session.

Father, we come to you today in confession of our weakness and only through your strength that you supply through your spirit can we be those people that worship you properly. And we do come here to recognize you as the one true God and to do it corporately together at this time. We thank you for that. We thank you for this body. We thank you for each of the souls that are here and the families that are represented. Help us to be that light on the hill. Help us to be that light to our community. Help each one of us to be the light to our neighbor. We thank you for these things and we thank you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen. You can stand. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11. we came out of and reminded them what they are. So I want to close with that. 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherited the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor adulterers, nor adulterers, no men who practice homosexuality, nor nor thieves, nor greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you, but you were washed, and you were sanctified, and you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Our scripture reading for this morning is Revelation chapter 2 and chapter 3. I'll I'll be reading from the English Standard Version, both chapters in their entirety. To the angel of the church in Ephesus write, The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands. I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. I know you are enduring patiently and burying up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. Yet this you have, you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write, The words of the first and the last, who died and came to life, I know your tribulation and your poverty, but you are rich, and the slander of those who say that they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan.

Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death. And to the angel of the church in Pergamum, write, the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword, I know where you dwell where Satan's throne is, Yet you hold fast my name and you did not deny my faith, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was killed among you where Satan dwells.

But I have a few things against you. You have some there who hold the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, so that they might eat food, sacrifice to idols, and practice sexual immorality. So also you have some who hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans, therefore repent. If not, I will come to you soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will give him a white stone with a new name written on it that no one knows except the one who receives it.

And to the angel of the church in Thyatira, write, the words of the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire and whose feet like burnished bronze. I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality. Behold, I will throw her onto sickbed and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works and I will strike her children dead and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works but to the rest of you in Thyatira who do not hold this teaching who have not learned what some call the deep things of Satan to you I say I do not lay on you any other burden only

hold fast what you have done, what you have until I come. The one who conquers and the one who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my father, and I will give him the morning star, he who has an ear, that of here what the Spirit says to the churches. Chapter 3, and to the angel of the church in Sardis, That's right. The words of Him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.

Wake up and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember then what you have received and heard. Keep it and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy. The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my father and before his angels.

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, write, The words of the Holy One, the true One, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts, and no one opens. I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie behold. I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and they will learn that I have loved you.

Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those who dwell on the earth. I'm coming soon. Hold fast what you have so that no one may seize your crown. The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

And to the angel of the church of Laodicea, Right. The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation, I know your works, you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself, and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. Those whom I love I've reproven discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.

The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my father on his throne. He who has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." Let's pray together. Father we are grateful for the promises of your Word. We are grateful for its instruction. We cannot conceive of what life would be like apart from the direction that you provide in what you have given us, and yet all around us we see those who are trying to make do in this life, let alone thrive, without anything but their own wisdom to draw on. So we thank you. We thank you for it, but to be sure there are many parts that are difficult for us, there are parts that actually are impossible for natural men to comprehend apart from the help of the Spirit. So as we have opportunity today to examine Christ's letters to the churches. May you please by your spirit help us to find application in them. As today is Father's Day, we give you thanks as our Heavenly Father. You are

gracious, merciful, a generous provider. You have demonstrated tremendous love and sacrifice in Christ and you represent all that we would like to be as earthly fathers. So make us appropriately grateful for our earthly fathers as well. As dads, help us to realize and to live in light of the fact that we are giving our children an idea of what you are like as we go about our lives. Help us to model this with intention and with accuracy as we try to model you for them. Because of the work of Christ and because you have told us to do so, we with confidence lift our request to you. We think today of Mary Kay and her nephew Steve both recovering from their separate falls last week.

For Mary Kay in particular, as she sustained a concussion and dental damage as well, Give her no lingering effects, we pray, from the concussion. We pray that there would be no lasting nerve damage either to her teeth, and as they wait for temporary and then more permanent crowns, help her to endure that discomfort because that is just not fun. We give you praise that Rachel Rothenberger's new job is working out well, and that she's able to settle well into her new position, devoting more time and energy to it with the conclusion of school.

We pray on behalf of Debbie Wold, who now has a week free from chemotherapy and her next CAT scan tomorrow. And a follow-up appointment on Tuesday, we ask that the results would be favorable, and we ask that you grant wisdom and direction to her and to her physicians as they determine how to proceed with her healing. And of course, we ask you for complete healing on her behalf as you're able to do that. We think of Rhonda Luce and her continued chemotherapy treatments too. We pray that you would help her to capitalize on the opportunity she has to be a light in a dark place as she undergoes those and give her grace to bear up under that trial too and heal her completely.

We thank you that Shawn underwent a successful surgery on Friday and he's now resting at home. Please grant him complete and ongoing relief from his pain. Thank you that it's going about as well as could be expected in light of his condition and how bad it was. So thank you for that. We pray on behalf of the Evangel Classical School, as this is sort of the off-season for the school. We ask for enrollment that you would bring the right families to the school that share our vision of education and the same desire to make disciples that we have. We pray for refreshment for the teachers and for the families and students.

And for all the decisions regarding curricular and staffing that we need to make for the fall, we ask that you would grant clarity and wisdom there too. We pray for the Good Shepherd's Children Home in Southern India under the direction of Sajja and Yancy Thomas. Give them grace. We pray that you would meet the physical needs of the home and we ask for salvation and a vibrant walk with you for all of the girls of the home. For the Children's Law Center of Washington and the Permanence Project, as Andrew Schneider and his team work to place in forever homes the foster children of Western Washington, We ask that you would provide for their needs and give them encouragement, give them frequent enough victories that they would remain encouraged, and give them frequent enough obstacles that they would depend upon you.

We thank you for the privilege of joining with them in that service. For our local and our national political leaders, even as we deal with turmoil in Washington, from shooters trying to pop off Republican leaders to mixed signals related to the firing of Jim Comey or other chaos. It would seem that there's always cause for us to depend upon you, to depend upon you. We ask you to lend clarity and we ask you to raise up leaders who would rule with wisdom and joy very well. May that translate to a peaceful and quiet life us. And it's no surprise when people do what you have said to do, we do well. Help our leaders to make those decisions then based on principles from your word. It is a privilege for us to gather yet again on a Sunday morning and to be little by little changed and shaped by our worship.

We ask you to do that yet again. Even as we sing our praises to you, as we are transformed by your word, we ask that it would bring you honor. And we ask this all in the name of your son. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, help us to understand this couple chapters that we're trying to digest this morning. We thank you that you've given us these instructions and that it's a supernatural feat that we want to perform now to have your spirit teach us what we should know from these things. So we thank you for that and we thank you for your word. Amen. I called this, Is This For Them or Is This For us just in case somebody reads the titles. And the thing is, it's interesting how history is looked at these chapters, and of course the book of Revelation, which is hotly disputed how to interpret it. But I think that the correct approach is that these are historical churches that were there, and the lessons they learned, we can learn from them even though we may not be doing the things like they were doing it, but to be warned and to pay attention to them.

So the first thing I want to do is describe to you the four different approaches kind of in categories that people look at Revelation. One of them is the historicist approach, and the idea there would be that John is given a vision of Christ who announces that he is to write things that would soon begin to take place and which would extend through the entire age of the church. The seven churches in Asia receive these letters, but they represented seven periods of church history, each exhibiting a special feature of the respective original church. Then there's the Preterist approach. And this one is, Christ appears to John on Patmos, commissioning him to write things that would soon afterward find fulfillment in the fall of Jerusalem.

The letters reflect the conditions prevailing in the seven churches in the Roman Prosements of Asia prior to the Jewish War, AD 66 through 70. That one is probably the hardest one for me to take because I believe that Revelation was probably written in 96 or so. And there's other problems in that approach. The futurist approach sees it, while a prisoner on the Isle of Patmos, John sees a vision of Christ, commanding him to write the events that would fulfill the end of the present age, just prior to the second coming. Some futurists take the letters in the same manner as do the historicists, while others take them more as the preterists, or those who take the spiritual approach.

Notice how that one combined everything. Then the spiritual approach is that the symbolic vision of Christ depicts his glorious character and sovereignty conveying Christ's sovereign involvement in the affairs of the world and the church, including his intimate return for his suffering servants. The church resemble churches that might exist at any time throughout the church age, and the letters are applicable to any church that may or share their conditions. The number seven is symbolic and suggests supplication to the whole Christian church of all the ages, or application. So those are the things. So I'm a mix of historical and future kind of together.

And I see you read Revelation literally, unless it's obvious symbolic language. But we know that these churches existed. So I believe that these were real letters to these churches. And we'll see. There's all kinds of historical evidence as we go along. Now, I have 6,000 words that I put together. And I'm supposed to do it like 3,000 to 3,500. So I'm going to edit this as I go along, depending on how we're going here. It's a big passage. And the reason I took off the big chunk is that I've really come to believe that special things happen when we come to worship together. I think God is overseeing what we're doing and that there's a supernatural event that happens when all of us get together.

Things will come in your head that maybe don't come as you're having your own private Bible reading or study. And I think that's a function of us coming together to worship God. This is not a time that we come to teach. Teaching's involved. But the main focus of what we're doing here is to worship God. And to worship God, we have to have clean hands. Hence, that's why we confess and go through these things. And this more liturgical approach than a lot of us coming from Baptist roots are familiar with really keeps grinding in that we are worshipping God together. So Jonathan read the whole passage. It's a lot. It alone is 1,700 words.

I would like you guys to have your Bible open to those passages so that you can refer back and have the Spirit impress upon you as I describe what I think is being said there to give you more, you know, a bigger vision of what's being said. The whole purpose of this, though, is to have us understand, I think, that we are a church that if God wrote to us, we might be a combination of some of these kinds of churches in our local community. But we are a good church. I believe that at the moment we created, I mean the name Trinity Evangel Church, it was chosen very purposely to recognize who God is, the Trinity, the Evangel, the Gospel is what brings us together.

And we keep focusing that on that all the time. Whether we go through the book of Genesis where we see that over and over God rescues his people And we see that today. And if we're faithful, he will be faithful. So the first part of it is to the church in Ephesus. And you'll notice that in each front part of each section of the churches, Christ just scribes himself in a different way. In this one, he has seven stars in his right hand and walks among the golden lampstands. Other places, he's all kinds of different things. notice that as we go along. So this was written to Ephesus. It had an approximate population of 250,000 people in that day. Ephesus was the largest and most important city in the Roman province of Asia. The city was devoted to the cult of Artemis and Diana and had a temple to the goddess that was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. If If you don't know this, you should look it up on Wikipedia or in Encyclopedia and see the statue and the temple of Ephesus.

It was incredible. It was considered, like I said, one of the seven wonders of the world. The church in Ephesus had been established by Paul, who continued to minister there after three years after its founding, Acts 2031. In addition to Paul, Ephesus had benefited from the personal ministries of Apollos, Priscilla and Aquila, Timothy, who was now residing there when Paul sent him the two letters found in the New Testament. As a priest in the temple tends the lamps to keep them from growing dim or going out, Christ smooths among the churches to attend the purity and brightness of the light they give to the world.

And he starts to describe, he knows their toil, he knows their patience and endurance, but I have this against you that you abandon your first love. That one, everybody that's read their Bible a couple times and they know that one, ooh, I don't wanna do that, right? Remember that from where you have fallen, repent and do the works you did at first. Then he says, and the ending part of it, he who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, to the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God. Paul in his final visit to the church elders had forewarned them of wolves that would rise up to harm the church, Acts 2028.

In the second century, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, commended this church for its loyalty to the truth and had effectively prevented any false sect from gaining a hearing among its members. Now that goes to the second century, 200, okay? But no amount of religious orthodoxy, labor or loyalty can make up in the deficit of Christian love. If you're living out the gospel, you won't get hung up into dry orthodoxy or I've got all these Bible facts and I've read my Bible three times through this year and I'm really doing well. You don't get stuck in those kind of works. You understand if the gospel's not lived out through your life, through your discipleship, through your influence with people, with your family, and you convicting yourself, repenting and keep turning, you're dead, you've left your first love.

The warning that Christ will come quickly and remove your lambs time from a place can hardly refer to his second coming, and almost certainly speaks of the total extinction of the church in that location. Indeed, today, there is no city or church in the Turkish location that was once Ephesus. Islam has been established in this region, which Paul had once thoroughly evangelized, Acts 19.10. How different might history of that region been had the church continue to practice its first love? Interesting, huh? In particular, a group of false teachers named the Nicolaitans had attempted to insinuate themselves into the church fellowship, but then found the shepherds alert and had been exposed.

The tradition having the support of the same early church fathers identifies the Nicolaitans with the followers of Nicholas, who is one of the seven men selected to serve the church in Acts 6 5, but later became a heretical teacher. F. F. Bruce suggested Nicholas was a disciple of the Gnostic heretic, Serenthus, but whoever the Nicolaitans may have been, their teaching is compared in verse 15 without a Balaam. We don't want to be identified with Balaam. So we can get over that. As Jesus frequently had said to his disciples on earth, he now says to the churches, he who has an ear let him hear. But since the voice of Christ is now communicated in his abiding spirit, who each Christian has, though each church receives its own personal letter from the Lord, the message of the spirit is directed to the churches collectively.

The spirit of God still have relevant warnings to these letters in the churches in every place and time. In Revelation 22.2, the tree of life is seen as growing in the New Jerusalem. Thus the promise to the overcomer translate into a guarantee of eternal life in heaven. Now on to Smyrna. And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write the words of the first and the last who died and came to life. Notice how Christ describes himself as somebody different there. Smyrna, the modern Izmir, was the second largest and reputedly the most beautiful city in provincial Asia and is the only city of the seven that still is in existence today.

Smyrna was the first city of Asia to build a temple to Rome. The spirit of Rome in 195 BC in John's day, it was a city that had been resurrected from the dead and that it had been destroyed 700 years earlier and had lain in ruins for 300 years. This fact may be alluded to in Christ's reference to his own resurrection and the greetings who was dead and came to life. Of all the letters to Smyrna, this is the most brief and is one of the only two that receives no rebuke or call to repentance from Christ. Interesting, huh? It's amazing to me, now commentators, they go way off the charts when you start burning down the rabbit holes here, But the idea that this city was reborn, and then that Christ says the first and the last who died and came to life, and he's talking to a city that did that.

I think it's incredible how there are layers of the onion that you can peel when you look at Bible verses and study them that way. But don't get too hung up on that either. You can go way off on the rabbit trails and miss the plain message of what it says. He mentions that he knows their tribulation and poverty, And that's a slander who say they are Jews and are not. And they are the synagogue of Satan. Those are not true Jews. Those are the ones that we're screening for circumcision and all the rest of it. In the book of Acts, you see those discussions. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches, the one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.

That's a very encouraging thing. And we live in a time where there are more in number martyrs in the world for Christ than probably any other time in history. This was an interesting message that was given over at the Grace Agenda Conference a couple weeks ago. And I never thought of it this way. But if you count up how many people are being martyred today in the world by just numbers, There are more people being killed for Christ today than in all those times you have in your head. You know, the Colosseums and their lions are eating them and all of that kind of thing. But today, there are more people being persecuted for Christ by number than any other time in history, which is interesting, huh?

In John's time, Christians in Smyrna, like John himself, were experiencing tribulation. This was going to continue and possibly intensify in a later generation. The famous church father, Polycarp, would be the bishop of this church and would suffer a notable martyrdom. Now, this is way after this period of time. Some commentators have said that Polycarp may have been the angel of the church in Smyrna. That's just silly. He lived 100 years afterwards. So don't think that. To the suffering church, Jesus identifies himself as the first and the last, reminding them that he was dead and came to life. Always remember that.

The most incredible thing is that God kills himself and then raises himself up for whose benefit ours to make the church of true believers. The Christians should not fear any of these things, for they are about to suffer even as Jesus had previously taught his disciples not to fear those who can kill the body and after that, have no more, there's no more that they can do. So don't fear those that can kill the body. Fear those that can cast you into hell. So the bottom line was Smyrna, no rebuke. They lasted. They intensified. They made it. Now we go on to the angel of the church in Pergamum, the words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword.

Pergamos, or Pergamum, was the provincial capital of Asia. If Ephesus was the New York City of Asia, Pergamos was its Washington, D.C. The city noted for many things, it had the second largest library in the world, 200,000 volumes exceeded only by the library in Alexandria.

Besides being the oldest city of Asia, Pergamos was the first to erect temples to Caesar Augustus and to Zeus and to the serpent god, Escapius. The letter was considered, the latter, Escapius, was the god of healing And people would journey to Pergamos to seek cures for their ailments. In this sense, it was sort of the lords of the ancient world. Then he goes on after he introduces it. I know you dwell, where you dwell, where Satan's throne is. Yet you hold fast my name, and you did not deny my faith, even the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was killed among you where Satan dwells. It's the only mention of this guy.

We don't know anything about him other than he was martyred for Christ in this city. But I have a few things against you. Someone hold the teachings of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel. Don't want to be doing that. And some of you who hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans, therefore repent. I will come soon and war against them with the sword of my mouth. He was an ear, let him hear. Same thing, let him hear, let him hear. And then he will give them hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on it that no one knows who accept the one who receives it.

Reference to Satan's throne may allude either to the Roman authority seated in Pergamos or to another demonic idolatrous practices there. The church at Pergamos is the only one of the seven known to have a martyr, Antipas, who was killed among you. About, we just don't know anything else than what's referred to there. Since the church was in the Roman capital, the persecution that claimed life event to us was carried out by the Roman authority. And this may account for Christ identifying himself as he who has the sharp two-edged sword, a reminder that the sword of Christ was more powerful than that of Rome. An interesting side comment.

Hebrew is able to divide the word of truth. And that sword is a short, stabbing sword that correctly cuts, not the big broad sword that cut off heads. And Christ is exacting himself as that sword. There were some other ones who held the doctor of Balaam and some who held the doctor of Nicolaitans, detested by Christ. The whole Old Testament goes all into Balaam. And Balaam's death, Peter anticipated the coming of teachers who would follow in the way of Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness, 2 Peter 2 15 among the historicists and some futurists Pergamos is seen as representing the Imperial Church after Constantine.

Now, this is the group that thinks that the these churches are periods in history. It's kind of interesting that they think this is going to be the Imperial Church because Constantine declared the whole Empire Christian and the church ceased to be officially persecuted and obtained access to the portals of power. Pergis allegedly means married to power. It was during this time that the institution of the papacy had its inception. In 313, the decree of coronation made Rome, where Satan's throne is, the center of Christendom. Like Israel in the days of Balaam, the church of this period was being seduced into immorality and the worship of idols through the rise of the papal system.

Some who take this approach have suggested that Antipas does not refer to an individual but to a class of men, anti and to the Pope's papas. I think that's a huge stretch. Okay. But men were monitored in great numbers in Rome and Constantinople. Christ threatened to fight this institution with the sword of his mouth, his word. And his word is still fighting that. So you see how people can go off on the chart, you know. Oh, look at that, that really means this and off they go. Interesting, you know, mind games to play, but maybe not accurate. Now we come on to the angel of the church in Thyatira. The words of the Son of God who has eyes like a flame of fire in his feet are like burnished bronze.

Likening back to Daniel, those kind of description of Christ. Lydia, Paul's first convert in Philippi, was from the city of Thyatira, Acts 16-14. The purple cloth she sold was a major product that city. However, Thyatira was known for little else of importance. Of the seven cities of Asia mentioned in Revelation, Thyatira was the least significant. Though the church there received the longest letter, it is known that the city had many trade guilds and would have been difficult to make a living without participating in one of them. Yet the guilds practiced idolatrous rites at their gatherings which Christians could not continued accountants.

Therefore, the Christians in Thyatira may have been hard pressed to support themselves and their families without resorting to some measure of compromise with the idolatry. Hence the big, long description here. It could be said we live in a time like this, and we have to be wise with where we associate ourselves and how we go about our business. He knows their works of love and faithful service, patient and duros, and that your latter works exceed first. But I have this against you, that the eutolerate, the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality, eat food sacrificed to idols, I gave her time to repent, but she refuses to repent of her sexual immorality.

Behold, I will throw her onto a sick bed and commit adultery with her, and I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works. He really casts it down on them. Christ reveals himself to this church as the Son of God and informs that his eyes are a flaming fire, and his feet are brass, and that these characteristics suggest impending judgment. Piercing vision sees all can and fall, judgely and rightly, whereas his feet, which we will tread upon the wicked in the wine press of wrath. in the later Revelation chapter 14, are of irresistible strength like brass. Jesus will judge the wicked in the church, verse 22, with judgment that no one can thwart or resist.

In many respects, the church in Thyatira was a good church. The Christians apparently had no shorties of works, love, and service, and patience, and their works were increasing. The last are more than the first, verse 19. There's a striking contrast between this church and that in Ephesus. For the church in Thyatira was not effective in love, whereas Ephesus had abandoned its first love. But while Ephesus had no tolerance for error in false messengers, Thyatira's fault was willingness to allow the woman Jezebel to come in with a false teaching. Interesting problem, right? Sometimes you have churches that are doing all kinds of great works, but they get askewed in their teaching and their doctrine starts to stray off.

So it's this constant balance that we always have to watch out for. You can't just have total doctrine, and you just can't have total this. It's a combination. And it has to be put together by the Spirit of God Himself. This contrast points up to the difficulty of striking a balance between a generous and forgiving love and a proper intolerance for heresy and sin in the church. You've heard us say many times, a church that doesn't have church discipline If we don't keep the body pure, no good. But the self-righteousness that you can get if you're causing to judge somebody and you don't do it the right way, you can put a whole bunch more back on yourself than you ever do on that person. So it's a real balancing act that we perform here. Jezebel was not a problem of recent origin all throughout the Old Testament, right? The church should tolerate this woman's influence for some time. All the while, Jesus have not yet brought judgment because he wished to give Jezebel time to repent.

Here the overcomer is described as the one who keeps my works until the end, with whom Christ will share his power over the nations. Verse 26. Then in the paraphrase of Psalm 29, he shall rule them with a rod of iron. They shall be dashed to pieces like the potter's vessel, Psalm 29. In verse 27 appears in context without punctuation to apply the overcoming believer. In Psalm itself it is clearly Christ who wields the rod of iron, also in Revelation 19, which no doubt accounts for the translators in this case using quotation marks. Citation in the Psalms points out that the authority of the exalted believer is not his own but derived from the authority of Christ. It will give him the morning star in the later chapter and Jesus identifies himself as the bright morning star. Thus he is the hidden manna promised to the overcomers of Pergamos. So he is the morning star that will be given to the overcomers in Thyatira. The promise may convey the idea of those who continue to hold forth their lamp in the present

night. They will live to see the dawning of a new day. In the view of the historicists and some futurists, Thyatira represents the church period of the papal triumph and persecution, 606 to 1517. It is the middle church of the seven and likewise covers the Middle Ages. 1126, I mean Middle Ages. Thyatira's A commentator of this viewpoint says that the rule by a woman, in this case, the woman is likened to Jezebel in the days of Ahab and Elijah. This woman made immorality an idolatry the official policy of society. Uriah Smith wrote, a more striking figure could not have been used to denote papal abominations. As Jezebel calls Israel to worship the mother goddess, Ashtaroth, the queen of the heaven in Jeremiah 44.

So the church in the Middle Ages introduced the worship of Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Jesus threatens to kill her children with death. Some say that refers to the terrible plagues, including the Black Death beginning in 1347, the decimated Europe and the population in the Middle Ages. Fascinating how they fit all that into that letter and project it onto those things. Now, does that mean I think that the worship of Asheroth is good or that the worship of Mary isn't good? No, but I'm not sure it says it in this passage. We wouldn't follow those. Just flat out, you don't have a woman preacher, so that cures that problem.

So please, Jezebel, sit down. It's amazing when you start to think of these churches as places that you would go, and you wouldn't have this kind of apocalyptic language that's used here, and look at it from one spectrum to the other. But I've noticed in my experience visiting churches. I was fortunate enough to be saved into a strong Bible teaching church. And when we would go and visit other churches, you would go, oh my goodness, I wouldn't do that, or I wouldn't do that. And I knew that in my gut that it was wrong, which was the Spirit of God, I think, speaking to me. But I really had no structure, because I was going to churches that were just teaching the Bible.

And they really didn't, well, they had a liturgy. But their liturgy allowed all kinds of things to go on. And you start thinking in your head, why is that going on? Why would they allow that? They don't have control over this or that. Or why would that person be speaking? Or why would they have that person pray? And so as you look at these things, you realize it's these slippages of accommodating the society you live in or the time that you live in. Like, you know, Christians are persecuted. You know, we don't like women. We want them barefoot and pregnant and, you know, in the kitchen and that kind of thing. And it could be farther from the truth.

They are the main teachers to our next generation. And they are the ones that run the home. And we fathers oversee that as we elders oversee the church. But the women are the hands-on makers of the next generation. And to do that properly, how much time does that take? How much effort does that take? It's amazing. It's a never-ending job. And for those of us who have stayed home from work with a sick wife or tried to take care of the kids if the wife went to visit her mom or something like that, it's a disaster, right? You're hoping that the girl children would grow old enough to help you take care of them. And the problem when I got left is Morgan was the oldest and I had her at three.

And I had my mother with me and we couldn't handle it. OK? But that whole thing is just, it's crazy. And it's just upside down. And it's so simple if we just live out our lives in the proper way and put it in the proper perspective. Now we move on to Revelation 3 and the angel at the church in Sardis. The words of him, who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars, I know your works. You have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead. Ooh, that's not good. So Christ presents himself as seven pairs, seven stars. The city of Sardis is the oldest capital of Lydia. It had become famous for its red dye and woolen goods.

Twice in its history it had been conquered by Cyrus in 549 BC and by Antiochus the Great in 218 BC. Because of failing to keep adequate watch, it may be with the illusion to this historical fact that Jesus exhorted the church to be watchful. I think it's wonderful how John, through the power of the Holy Spirit, incorporates these historical things about these places in the way that God views them, right?

This is Jesus Christ speaking through the writer John, you know, Holy Spirit illuminating him, blowing him like a ship blowing along by the spirit of God, writing this stuff out, and how it all fits neatly with their history, their experience, and how he's talking to them.

So then it may be with this allusion to the historical fact that Jesus exhorted the church to be watchful against the encroachment of sin which might conquer the church. The city was known for its immorality and this may have been more challenging for the Christians of the city to Marine Pier since there were only a few names even in Sardis who had not defiled their garments, verse 4. So you're in a small congregation in a very wicked place that's tough sledding, Okay, but you still wherever you are you need to be that witness Wake up and strengthen that which which mains and is about to die Great songs have been written for that So it's a good one wake up for I have not found your works complete in the sight of God Remember then that you receive and heard and keep it and repent and you will not wake up I will come like a thief and you will not know what hour I will come against you Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me, in white, for they are worthy.

The one who conquers will be clothed, thus in white garments. I will never blot out his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before my father, before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches." Again, plural churches, I think the thing spreads out all of these things. Tragically, this is one of the two churches, Laodicea being the other, which receives no commendation from the Lord, no good word. But you notice that the ones that are faithful, they will be with him. Okay. So the church on the whole doesn't get the go sign, but there are believers out there.

That's another thing that we continually try to show here. We pray for other churches from this pulpit, and we recognize we are not the the quotation marks church. The universal church is made up of believers all around the globe, and there are believers all over Marysville that go to different churches, and we need to pay attention to our business and try to do the best we can, and not think that we are the only thing out there. Okay, it's a big God and he's saving all kinds of people in all kinds of different ways. Once a church has a good reputation in the public eye, it is possible mechanically to continue in the same activities but to lose the original motivation that made it great.

The incentive to do good works can shift from a desire to serve and please God to simply a desire to maintain the good public face that a church has come to enjoy. This is one of the biggest dangers to churches as they grow and become more corporate like or more pleasing to the populace kind of thing. It's a real tricky business. What little life actually remains in Sardis is unfortunately ready to die and the church is commanded to strengthen whatever is left of that original spark of life that had nearly gone out. There There was some backtracking to be done. The Christian needed to remember and hold fast in the manner in which they had formerly received and heard.

Such could not happen unless the church would repent of its present state of mind. Jesus mentions twice that Insardus will wear white garments perhaps in the contrast with the red woolen goods for which the city was renowned. The supreme compliment is paid to the Lord, these nonconformists in the church, for they are worthy. not unlikely, the eulogy pronounced over rare men of faith in the Old Testament times of whom the world was not worthy. Hebrews 1138. The historicists and some futurists see Sardis as a representative church at the time of the Reformation. See how they push this one now to the Reformation? 1517 to 1793. This extends from the time of Luther to that of Wesley. The movement ended in the Dark and brought about the professing signs of life to the church.

Though it is said, Jesus did not find its work perfect before God. The Reformation went a certain distance in discarding the unscriptural traditions and in some restoring biblical authority in the church. But in the opinion of some, Anabaptists, they did not go far enough. It's interesting how they fit all that together and then see those of us us in the modern day movement that want to reform and still reforming. That's what we do. And you notice that's in our thing. People have asked about that. And the reason is we see the reformation as a great movement. But remember they were trying to reform the Catholic church.

The Catholic church did not want to be reformed. So then we had to split. And when we split, we continually need to keep growing and learning. One of the famous things we say over and over here. If our leadership and we are not growing continually, stop all this. We need to constantly be growing. You don't quit growing until the Lord calls you home if you're one of His. Okay? That's just one part of the Christian life. Now we can move on to the angel of the church in Philadelphia. It says, write, The words of the Holy One, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.

Interesting, right? Keith the Kingdom, David, Kingling. The city of Philadelphia had relatively small population in John's day due to the fear of earthquakes with which the city was plagued. Historically, the inhabitants had frequently been forced to move out of the city due to its instability. Philadelphia had been destroyed by earthquake in AD 17 and even though it had been rebuilt, many people still were fearful about living in town and remained instead in the surrounding countryside. For this reason, the church there may have been small, though it remained a significant church in the region, at least until the 12th century.

And a small congregation is said to be in that location today on the outskirts of the old Philadelphia. Then further in the text, it says, I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have little power, and yet you have kept my word and not denied my name. Behold, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not, but lie, behold. I will make them come and bow down before your feet and they will learn that I have loved you. Because you've kept my word with patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to try those that dwell on the earth.

I'm coming soon, hold fast, and you will have so that no one may seize your crown. The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar. I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. So the interesting thing, I repeated the pillar thing. The pillar is one of the few things in most earthquakes those pillars that are built are not things that fall. And so they think that that was one of those little truths that is thrown in there to see that.

Jesus claimed to have the corresponding right to interference with reference to admitting people into heaven. In other words, he's the keeper of the keys. As a matter of fact, he tells the church that he has chosen to admit them have set before you an open door.

Again, Jesus refers to the persecuting of the Jews in the synagogue of Satan, similar to what we've already heard. They are not real Jews in Christ's sight because if you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham, John 839, and he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, but he is a Jew who is one inwardly. A nod to Philip on that one there. Philip and our congregation. Although prior to AD 70, the principal systematic persecution of the Christians came from the Sanhedrin and the synagogue of the Jews. Both Christians and Jews later became targets of Roman persecution, a development that would bring an end to the biblical Judaism, which would not be able to extinguish Christianity.

So, Roman persecution 70 AD stopped biblical Judaism. BAM, but which survived Christianity. All right? Interesting, huh? The church would weather the storm, but Christians will have to hold fast what you have, that no one may take your crown. So he just keeps repeating these things, stay fast, be strong, keep on keeping on.

I mentioned the earthquake pillars. The three inscriptions written on the believer who endures, the name of my God, the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, my name, having the name of God and Christ written upon oneself, like the slave bearing a brand of his master. Further along, we will hear an angel expressing concern. The judgments begin until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. Those thus who sealed are later to have been in the Father's name written on their foreheads. So it's just references to more things in the future that goes on.

Such a mark is not a visible tattoo, but a seal of God's ownership. The concept Paul equates with the believer's possession of the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 1.13 and 4.3. The writing of the New Jerusalem upon the believers suggests citizenship there, Psalm 87.5-6. This Jerusalem is described in symbolic detail in chapter 21. apocalyptic language describing the New Jerusalem at the end of the book. In the systems of the historicism some futurists, Philadelphia is taken to be the church at the time of the Great Awakening. Okay, let's move on, 1793 and beyond. This began in the era of Wesley, Whitfield, Edwards, Finney and Moody, whose activities range from the early 18th century to the 19th centuries.

The open door that Christ had placed before this church prepares the great opportunity for evangelistic harvesting. This period will continue until the return of Christ overlapping in the latter days by the Laodicean period. Interesting, right? Some of you may know the Church of the Openedoor, J. Vernon McGee in Los Angeles. It was started by all the guys that started Talbot Seminary and all of that kind of stuff. Interesting how these things fit in periods of history And now we're into the 2000s instead of the 1900s. So we're moving ahead now. And maybe some of this historical guys that are trying to put this stuff in a box are going to change their mind as we go on here.

Or Christ could come back today. And to the angel, now we can move on to Laodicea. And the angel of the church and Laodicea write, the words of Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. Laodicea, by all accounts, was a very prosperous city in John's day. It was noteworthy on a number of accounts. It was a banking center, which obviously related to its general wealth. Laodicea was also a producer of black wool, clothing, and carpets. The city was the location of a famous medical school and the producers of a powdered substance used to treat ailments of the eye. The city's water supply originated from a hot spring six miles away at Denizil, Denizili.

In the process of traveling through aqueduct to Laodicea, the water became tepid, neither hot nor cold. Allusions to these local distinctives may be detected in Christ's choice words used to address the church of the Laodiceans. Same thing like we've seen in all of these. There's these things that fit these cities, you know, and make it personal to them, but still does not pull them away from being a general reference, okay? I know your works. You are neither hot nor cold. Would that you were either hot or cold. So because you are lukewarm and neither nor hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say you are rich.

You say this. You say you're clothed. You're blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me refined gold and all these things. He gives all the cures to the things. They're not paying attention. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit on my throne, as I also conquered and set down my father's throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The state of the church in Laodicea was one of self-satisfaction and complacency. Apparently, Christians, like the city itself, enjoyed a high degree of comfort and prosperity, factor that led to diminished zeal for the things of God. The letter to the Laodiceans shares with Sardis the unhappy distinction of lacking any commendation from the Lord.

Jesus calls himself the Amen, verse 14. Though this word appears nine times in Revelation, numerous times throughout the rest of scripture, this is the only time it is used as a title or a name. It is a Hebrew expression, strongly affirmation means so be it. In John's gospel accounts, and there are many Hebrewisms in John's gospel accounts, Hebrewism is taking the Hebrew expression, putting it into the Greek, and you see where Jesus goes amen, amen, or verily, verily, or truly, truly, you see it translated that way. So he's taking that as his name in this particular thing, which is kind of interesting.

Seemingly unrelated to the above self-righteous designations, Jesus' next sentence identifies himself as the beginning of the creation of God, verse 14. It should not be assumed this makes Christ out to be a created thing. The Greek word translated beginning is RK which carries the concept of origin and an active cause, okay, rather than the first thing created. The expression could be understood to mean he who is the original source creator of the creation of God. This is an interesting fact here too where heretics want to jump on this and say this is makes Christ a created being being you can get the JWs at your doorstep running you to this passage but here's an interesting historical point and a biblical point. Ball instructed the Kalashan church to pass along his letter to the church of Laodicea, Colossians 4, 16. If these were instructions were followed, then this church would have been familiar with the Colossian epistle, where the role of Christ as creator is strongly affirmed. He is the image of the invisible God, the

firstborn over all creation, for by him all things were created, all things were created through him and for him, Colossians 1, 15 and 16. Thus there is little likelihood that the Laodiceans would interpret Jesus' words here to mean that He was a created being. So just in case you run across those clowns at the door, you can hit them with that. The statement, I wish you were hot or cold, verse 15, raises the startling prospect that Jesus, the wishing for all believers to be hot, would actually find coldness less offensive than Lukewarmness. Cold is less offensive than Lukewarm. Perhaps we should not find this too surprising.

Those who zealously oppose Christ, the cold, and those who zealously serve Him, the hot, have one thing in common. They both take Him seriously. The one who neither opposes nor serves offers Christ the ultimate insult, affirming his existence, but not taking him seriously. Interesting, huh? So hot's good, cold's good in the perspective that you're understanding what you're rejecting, but if you're just kinda dancing in the middle, you're going to get vomited out of his mouth. Ooh, not good. Such a condition places a church in jeopardy of being ejected from the very body of Christ. I will vomit you out of my mouth, verse 16.

The image of Jesus vomiting is an undignified and shocking one and is used here and warns us that he is not to be taken lightly. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. Verse 20, familiar is an evangelistic text for sinners. If all of you know your campus crusade material, Revelation 320. In this verse, the context actually expresses Christ's feeling of being an outsider from his own church, desiring to be invited back in the church and will not back, desiring to be invited back in. Christ is desiring to be invited back in. He's standing at the door knocking, invite him in and he will come and dine with them. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him.

So interesting verse, it's used, people have read it and gotten it wrong. I, the guy that actually led me to the Lord, set up a meeting and we went up to the headquarters of Campus Crusade and we got to meet with them and I had been saved for a big six months, whoop-de-doo, and, but I was reading my Bible and I asked them why they would use that verse and doesn't speak to the issue that they say it spoke to. The man we were speaking with said, we have printed five million of these little pamphlets and they have gone out all over the world and we are not about to change it. And I thought to myself, wow, that's interesting.

So there you go. God can use anything, but don't use things the wrong way. Among the historicists and some futurists, it is generally argued that the Laodicea represents the lupgorum sector of the church. and in the end times, possibly near the beginning and the end of the 19th century. The scholarly assault on the Bible, epitomized by the exacerbation of the publications of Darwin's Origin of the Species, 1859, puts tremendous pressure upon the church to conform to the modern thought of those academic respectability. Many theologians succumb to this pressure and begin to subject the Bible to scientific methods of analysis.

Such analysis, though far from objective or conclusive, became fashionable in many seminaries and denominations, resulting in the loss of respect for the Bible as a genuine revelation from God. In many cases, secular psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and whatever social trend became popular in secular thinking, e.g. the breakdown of biblical models of marriage and sexuality, have displaced the Bible in its authority to dictate the norms of the church. Modern churches that have gone in this route are said to be represented by this Laodicean church. They are lukewarm, and Christ says they nauseate him.

Those applying the seven church letters to the errors of church history believe that both Philadelphia and the Laodicean types of church will exist together until the coming of Christ. All right, that's the last one, and it's interesting that the historical people see them as that. I'm gonna end with a story of when Gail and I Our second church we went to, we were very involved in it. A guy that was the pulpit fill from Talbot Seminary had come there and was really preaching the gospel and giving Bible teaching to this church. It was a covenant church, which is an offshoot of the Lutheran Church from the central area of the United States, but it was planted out in Southern California there.

It was a large church. There was 3,500 members. And we grew really fast. in the neighborhood, lots of people were coming, and we had these evangelistic meetings and stuff. And then we had an Easter service out in the parking lot. And during the Easter service, the pastor would not say the word sin. He would say, if you had problems, come up and see the counselors and this kind of thing. And he just generally stopped using the word sin from the pulpit. So I set up a meeting with him and went to meet with him.

He said that he found that the word sin was objectionable to a lot of the people that came to the church and that the job of the counselors was he wouldn't use that term and then they'd come up for counseling and then if you were counseling the People then you could introduce them to these hard teachings, but it wasn't his job from the pulpit to introduce that I looked at him and I said you've got to be kidding and I said from your training in the tradition you come out of you're saying that Now this is in 1988, this is before secret friendly even became a word, and I said this is just man-centered, you're just appealing to these people as if we were selling a commodity and then we're the closers up front that are going to chloroform you in the back room and sell you the bill of goods.

And he said, well, I wouldn't put it that way, but that is pretty much how it is. Well, I couldn't believe it. And I said, so you're going to stop saying the word sin from the pulpit? And he said, yeah. So at that I went and met with the elders of the church and asked them what they thought. And there were seven of them that agreed with that direction. There was 12 elders and five that didn't. Well I didn't know what to do. We, Gail and I talked about this. We talked with our friends. We had a rather large Bible study in our house during that time. And we just, we didn't know what to do. And they invited John MacArthur to come to speak the leadership of this church.

And we had this banquet, and there was about 200 people in this banquet, and he came out to speak to him. And he had just written the gospel according to Jesus and sent the manuscript off to be published. And he got up to speak, and he said, I've just published this book, and it points out a lot of things that churches are doing these days. And I'd just like to talk from my heart to you guys to see what you think. And he started talking about the gospel according to Jesus. And about the first three things he said were just spot on with what this church was doing that was not good. I mean, MacArthur was making it clear.

This is not the way you should go and they were doing it. And then he would say this. The room was like super quiet. We had about 10 people sitting around his table right in front of a little pulpit. He was down at our level. And we were sitting right in the table right in front of him. And he looked across the room and he said, I'm not here to insult you people. I didn't come down here to make enemies or anything. And he said, if you want, I'll just sit down and we can have our dinner and I'll go home. But if you'd like to hear more about this book, well, our table went, amen, praise your brother. We're pounding the table.

And he said, well, since they seem to want to hear some more, I'll go on. 45 minutes later, he ended. As soon as he was done, they stormed the pulpit area. And they came to him, and they all had their Bibles. And they had them like this and opened to the front page. And they said, Pastor MacArthur, would you sign my Bible? And he goes, well, yeah, yes. But by the way, what you said about psychology and what you said about this, I can't believe you say that. Our church practices this. Our elder is, he is a psychiatrist. I mean, it was incredible. We were sitting at the front table, and I told Gail that we needed to talk to him about when you leave a church.

And so we sat there watching all these people go. We got up in line, and we were probably 16th in line, got up, and I said, I'd like to know how you know when you should leave a church. He looked at me, and he said, that's a very interesting question. Why don't you sit right there at that table? And when I get done with all these people, I'll talk with you. I said, OK. So I went over there. And all these people just came coming up, and he was so patient. It was unbelievable. They would scream at him, you can't do this, you can't do that. And he would just go, well, I think here it says that you really shouldn't be doing that in church.

Patiently went through them all and got done with everybody. Then he sat down with us, and he said, okay, what's the problem? I told him the whole story. And he said, well, you need to go back and take a poll of those elders and find out which one believes what and which one believes that. And if they don't, then you need to leave because you'll be the factious man here. But he said, if it's a tie, if it's six-six, stay here and fight the good fight. But if it's seven-five, you're the factious man and you should find a place where you get together. So we went home and talked about it and I had to write a letter of resignation because I was a deacon of charge of evangelism or something at that point.

And I wrote them a letter and I called them the Church of Laodicea. And the letter had to be read in front of the congregation. So we went to the church meeting when they read the letter. They read the letter. And it was like half the people in that meeting came up to Gail and I and said, that's crazy. You can't leave. You guys are great. No, no, no, no, no. And we said, no, we feel that we need to leave. So that was Sunday. On Tuesday, we get a call from the chairman of the elder board, and he's asking us, will you please keep your Bible study open to people of our church, even though you're leaving? And I said, yeah.

Do you realize that what I'm going to teach them will just create more problems for you? And he said, yeah, but you're the only people that are really doing it. And I said, okay, we'll be happy. And sure enough, they kept sending people to us. And finally, we ended up going to Grace Community Church, which was 50 miles away at that point. But it was just crazy. All these people would come and they would just make more trouble for them. So here's the good ending to the story. I'm up at Grace Community Church. It's probably three years later, maybe four years later. And the new head of the elder board calls me up.

Dave, I need to talk to you. I'll say, OK, how you doing, Harley? I'm doing good. I remember the fight. I remember you asking me, I've changed my mind. We've changed. Gordon's gone. We have a new pastor. We're actually doing church discipline. But I have to ask you about some things. We have a Bible Institute that we started down here. And we have a guy teaching in the Bible Institute. And I think that he's in sin and needs to go back to the church that he came from, and I think you know him. And I said, well, who is it? He said, it's Jim Battenfield. And I said, whoa. I said, not only do I know him, I actually have his son sitting right here next to me.

I was discipling this guy. He now is a pastor in England. And I said, I have his son right here, and it is true. He's under discipline from the Brethren Church in Long and he should go back and repent to them. And he said, okay, we'll do it. And see, so he said, you need to come and see me here in something, you know, he says, it's really incredible what's happened. Since we've done this, the church has grown and everything. We had friends that were still down in that neighborhood. So after that call, I called friends up, and sure enough, they went from going seeker-friendly to back over here, an actual church that disciplines its members and teaches the Bible and stuff, and they're still going today.

So it was a good story that that church turned around on that thing. So I want to leave with that positive part that even the worst can turn around. And I also want everybody to know, we really mean it when we talk here, that we want to know as elders and everything, we want to know what you guys feel and think. We're here to shepherd you and to oversee this church. But the church is all the members here. It's not one talking head or whatever. I mean, you see what happens to Shawn. He's always getting hurt or sick or another operation or something. Who knows? But the thing is, all of us together are the church. And that's what really makes it what it is.

So that's my bottom line pitch. and be encouraged, don't be discouraged from these letters, and if something perks you, repent, and remember, you are forgiven, and move on, okay? So let's pray, and we can get on with communion that we can all do together, all right? Father, we thank you for this time together. We thank you for the letters to those churches of the first century that you wrote through your of the book of Revelation, even though it's hard to understand. Some of those things help us to understand there's many different points of view and that we don't need to be pigheaded about where we stand, that as believers there's a prophecy, is a hard thing to understand.

But these letters are certainly historical for that time and look to have application to our time. So help us to be able to do that. We thank you in your son's name. in your son's name, Jesus Christ, Amen. Our next thing is going to be the offering. The worship team should come up. And our offering here is, again, purposely done as a community thing. You notice we have the bucket in the back, and then it's brought up during this time and put on the communion table to show that it's a community thing that we're doing. I am thankful for the right kind of lines in life. I really appreciate it when those four inches of yellow paint keep the other guy in his lane on the freeway.

Now, not everyone appreciates lines, however. In fact, our culture increasingly hates any kind of line being drawn. But have you noticed how the more our culture tries to erase God-given lines of distinction, the bolder the lines of division among men become. For example, sin blurs and obliterates the lines on gender, sexual orientation, and even life itself, resulting in more confusion and division than ever before in history. God decreed what is good and evil, separating them into black and white. Man mixes the two into 50 shades of gray and more to suit his own moral taste. Values once held by middle-of-the-road moderates are now considered far right.

The Age of Reason, also called the Enlightenment, has given birth to the age of unreasonableness where speaking truth is now hate speech. What Paul wrote in Romans 1.22 is our cultural reality, claiming to be wise they became fools. Were it not for God sending his son to die on a cross, all of us would have ultimately perished because of sin. He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. I'd like to invite you now to stand.

There is one line that God established in Genesis 3.15 that no one can cross on his own. That line is the enmity or hostility God established between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. While the person remains in spiritual darkness, he lives on the serpent side of the line, hostile towards God, and there is no human ability to cross over. Our time of communion commemorates what Christ did on the cross, making it possible for the Father to call us across that line of enmity. Colossians 1, 21 and 22, and you who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. As you make your way to the communion table, reflect on what it took for the Father's wrath to be completely satisfied and rejoice in the knowledge that for those who are in Christ, there is no more condemnation. If you're a visitor and have put your trust in Christ for salvation, you're welcome to participate in communion with us. And as

we've seen then come down the Middle Isle and then return to your seats back down the outside, and we'll all partake of the communion when we're back together, if you prefer juice as opposed to wine, right-of-center is one tray filled with juice. So go ahead and come. There isn't ever going to be a revised edition of the book of Revelation, but if there were and then it was written to the Trinity Evangel Church, what would it say? What would we be commanded for? Would it be our love for each other, our good works, our faithfulness and tribulation? What would we be criticized for? Now it's not really possible for us to answer those questions with certainty because we're not actually the final judge on those matters. But they are useful questions for us to ponder as we consider how we are doing in this post-truth era that we're living in. Very few churches have managed to not drift across the lines that God has set. The pressure is always on there for us to compromise with the world and to fit in. Refusing to cross lines does not mean we have to be jerks

or weirdos, although we should look a bit alien to the world. What we should be known for is our love and our good works. It doesn't mean that the world will always love us back, but at least we'll be giving off the right kind of aroma to those who are being saved. And for our benediction, I've chosen 2nd Thessalonians 2 16 through 17. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.