The Responsibilities of the Church: Preaching, Part 2

Were you have strong biblical preaching and teaching.

Everything else tends toward strength where you do not have strong biblical teaching and preaching. Everything else is weak and tends toward shallow preaching sets the tone in the church spent more than five decades teaching the Bible verse by verse, often for nearly an hour at a time. Clearly he's committed to in-depth preaching, but the question is, should all pastors still preach like that since attention spans of dropped should pastors adapt their messages wouldn't congregations be better served by shorter, more topical sermons consider that today on grace to you as John MacArthur looks at this question.

Why is preaching worth fighting for. That's the title of his current study, and now here's John. Continuing to make the case for biblical preaching. If you open your Bible to second Timothy and this is the word of God to every pastor the word of God to every elder. The word of God to every leader in the church. Chapter 3 and chapter 4 are all built around one command and the one command in this entire section is in chapter 4 verse two chapter 4 verse two says this preach the word be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with great patience and instruction. Other is the dominating command of this entire section from chapter 3 verse one on through chapter 4 verse four preach the word and he adds be ready in season and out of season. That means stay at your post that means seize every opportunity preach on every occasion that is presented to you and when you preach there is a negative side, reprove, rebuke, there is a positive side, exhort with great patience and instruct. That's what Timothy, a young leader in the church was told to do that was to be the heart and soul of his ministry. Now the remainder of the passage surrounding that command gives us reasons why that is so critical reasons why that is so critical and I want to share those reasons with you and I know in the past you have studied this section and I have preached through the section in years past, but I want to approach a little bit differently and not quite so detailed, but to give you the sweep and the flow of this particularly important passage. There are five reasons why the Lord has designed that the center and part of the ministry of the church is preaching and preaching the word. The word of God.

The revealed Scripture, reason number one is because of dangerous times dangerous times will get chapter 3 verse one but realize this, he says that in the last days difficult times will come. Now the phrase difficult times is dangerous times really dangerous times, not in a chronological sense, but Kai Ross in the Greek, which means, seasons or epics. It's not talking about clock time it's talking about movements, errors, and he says you must preach the word because of the dangerous seasons that will come says they'll come in the last days and I don't need to remind you that the last days began when Jesus Christ arrived last days began when the Messiah came to earth, the last days were initiated by Jesus Christ when he came preaching his kingdom were still in those last days and these are a prolonged period of time, but nonetheless the last days awaiting Christ's return and the establishment of his kingdom in these last days dangerous epics, dangerous seasons will come in the intent of the verb there will come a sort of carries the emphasis of accumulation.

It's not as if they come and go, I would make things easier.

It is as if they come and stay in. So the longer we go after the coming of Jesus Christ. The further we move toward his return, the more of these dangerous epics we collect.

In fact, looked down at verse 13 where he addresses the same issue. He says evil men and imposters. That's false preachers, false teachers, religious fakes and charlatans will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. They are both deceived in their own minds and deceivers of others, and they will get worse and worse and worse as time goes on in the last days when Paul was writing to Timothy, the dangerous seasons had just begun. Here we are 2000 years later and we have the accumulated impact of from bad to worse.

For 2000 years. We live in very dangerous times. These epics have accumulated through these years. They threatened the very life of the church. They threaten the integrity of preaching, they threaten the proclaiming of God's truth all around us. Let me just suggest what they might be for you briefly. As you look back over the history of the church. As you look back over the epics that have thrown themselves as were against the church. A number of things come to mind immediately. First of all let's start with the dangerous epics at the time when Christianity became this the religion of the Holy Roman Empire, and so you have not long after that what is commonly known as the dark ages that runs from the time of the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire clear through to 1500 over a thousand years of dark ages there called in the dominating danger to the church at that time was sacramental is him sacramental is him and that's the word that you will identify in your mind with this first epic sacramental as a means that the church was dominated by sacraments by mechanisms by external mechanical means dominated by attempting to to know God through some kind of automatic action.

Weather was lighting a candle weather was genuflecting with her was bowing down weather was going through beads and whether it was inflicting some pain upon yourself physically whatever it might've been.

These were mechanical means supposedly to give people salvation sacramental is and was a severe danger to the church fact, it dominated the church. It took the word of God out of the hands of the people and the litany in the liturgy that was done during all of those years was done in the Latin language, which was obscure, reticent people don't even know what was being said or what was going on and that was part of the idea of the church was the only justifiable interpreter of God's truth and nobody was allowed to interpret it on his own or her own and you attached yourself to the church externally terrible, terrible era in which the word of God was terribly suppressed and people thought they were Christians because they had an attachment to a system, but no knowledge of God, by the way sacramental is him came and stayed and it's still with us. It was then the Reformation came as you remember the Reformation in the 16th century, when all of a sudden the word of God broke loose from this terrible incarceration in the dark ages and is the word of God broke loose in the Reformation, people turn to the Bible and they found out you're not saved by attaching to the church. Your essay by attaching to the living God through faith in his son and as Martin Luther discovered it and articulated the just shall live by his faith.

The Reformation was born was a great dawning of a new day always through the error of sacramental is him.

There had been pockets of believers. God always had his remnant whether it was the French shooter knows or whether was the Anabaptist or or whatever Waldensians there was always a group of people who were true to the faith.

Marching through those terrible terrible years. Then came the Reformation in the light dawned, and it was great turning point in the history of the life of the church, but it wasn't long after the Reformation. In fact, before the reformers could really sweep through all of theology and all of the church and do all of the corrective work that might've been done, a new dangerous application called rationalism in the 18th century. Remember what happened the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution followed in man coming out of the dark ages began to realize his intelligence he began to realize what could happen when he could read for himself and when he could discover things and it was an explosion of inventions and discoveries in man begin to worship the human mind and the byword of that era was the book by Thomas Paine called the age of reason, written around the 18th century, Thomas Paine, of course, basically denied the existence of God debunked to the Bible and called people to bow down to the shrine of human reason that swept into the church that swept into the colleges, universities, and seminaries in the came up with this commonly known liberalism or theological rationalism which denies the Bible is that which is taught today in most seminaries in America and around the world. It had a dominating effect, they denied that the Bible was inspired by God other denied the deity of Jesus Christ. The deity of the Holy Spirit and on and on and on it went that had a tragic effect upon the church is to destroy the church across Europe and destroyed the church across America to the degree that today most of the major denominations are dead is dead can be because of the liberalism that entered them the supremacy of reason, the discrediting of the Bible. And so it went. Wasn't long after that that there came a Cordova movement back to grip the Scriptures and the Bible was published and disseminated it in a Brett that it never had been before because there even during the Reformation that was impossible, to the print Bibles and spread them around, since they were printed one page at a time, and saw that there was not yet mass-produced Bibles until you get into the late 18th century the 19th century.

All of a sudden the Bible starts to spread people get a hold of the Scripture. But there was a sad reality in the 19th century the end of the 1800s, and that was shallow spirituality, dead orthodoxy.

There was an Orthodox schism was it was sort of a denominational and wasn't personal that dangerous reality entered the church and it's still around. We still have dead orthodoxy. We still have sort of angry fundamentalism.

Even today where it's cold and dead, and indifferent, and they have the Bible, but their spirituality is shallow at best. This was followed coming to the early 20th century and the influences in Europe by what you could call. I suppose another great danger politicize him.

The church became politicize the church became the state church.

The state began to own the church and the church was politicize and begin to take on agendas that were social agendas and political agendas. One of the most remarkable of those was what happened with Adolf Hitler when Adolf Hitler developed the Third Reich and when he developed his Aryan supremacy theories and wanted to to obliterate the Jews from the face of the earth, and that was simply a man carrying out a satanic plan that was a new remember that Satan is try to obliterate the Jews. A number of times is go back and read the book of Esther.

If you want to see an attempted genocide, but failed. There and here came Hitler and he wanted to obliterate the Jews in the process he wanted to capture all of the thinking of the people of his time who were involved in the Christian religion, which was the state religion. Of course Lutheranism of Germany and so we developed was called the German Christian movement the German Christian Faith movement declared himself the true Christian preacher. In fact, declared himself the apostle of Christ and may have even said things like he was the Messiah, and he managed to wrap his arms around the whole of the church politicize the church get them to believe that they should eliminate the entire Old Testament and all positive references to the Jews in the new and take the rest as being from God and follow him as the voice of God and believe it or not the church moved right in and acknowledge that what you know the church is still dealing with politicize him. We still have that with us today social gospel re-constructionism, liberation theology, and all of that, the trying to win the culture war at the expense of sound doctrine. Setting aside the preaching of the gospel in favor of some social moral agenda.

We fight that battle as well. Then after politicize him in the 50s, the 1950s came what I guess we call ecumenism in the big wave in the church was let's all get together and love everybody.

Jesus is all about loving God's all about love and I remember because I was starting to study the word of God. At that time something came down the pike from the liberal seminaries called Jesus ethic or the Jesus hermeneutic and since Jesus is all loving hearts and flowers and gentleness and kindness and tenderness and meekness, and all of that only the things in the Bible which reflected that attitude were true. Everything else wasn't true and the only way you can ever interpret the Bible was by the Jesus hermeneutic and that is to say you looked at every passage and says, and said, does it express the loving, tenderhearted, kind, and meekness of kindness and meekness of Jesus. If it does we accept it if it doesn't we don't and let's all get together on the basis of love and let's forget what divides and that was the raging issue when I was a seminary student sentimentalism unity without dogma. Tolerance of error.

It still around. It has all kinds of different forms, but there is a new sentimentalism. Even in evangelicalism and wants to make sure doctrine is not an issue. Then in the 1960s in no less place than Van Nuys California movement was born that has swept evangelical from pillar to post evangelicalism from pillar to post. I like to call experiential is 1960 in an Episcopalian church right down here in Van Nuys, California under a rector by the name of Dennis Bennett. There was an explosion of interest in the revival of the of the expressions of quote on quote Christianity that were characteristic of the early 20th century and what was called the Azusa Street meeting when people broke into tongues and claimed healings and visions and all of that experiential is a basically sad truth comes through experience. Truth comes to feeling God through getting visions getting touched, hearing prophecies, signs, wonders of the charismatic and the church faced, dangerous, dangerous season of experiential is somewhere, all of our spiritual experience becomes authoritative is one lady said to me one time after I had spoken. She said I really don't care what the Bible says I know what Jesus told me that I look back at that is kind of a byword for where that movement has taken the church experiential is him is a dangerous dangerous epic.

It came along with all the rest, and it never went away.

And here we are up to our ears in Sacramento. Listen we continue to face rational liberalism in the seminaries and universities of our land. We still have a cold, dead, sort of shallow orthodoxy. We have the politicizing of the church not only in our country but all over the place. Certainly South Africa endured some of the horrors of a politicize church we face ecumenism. The idea of let's all get together or not make doctrine an issue, and experiential is him dominates in so many ways. We came into the 70s and there was a new way in the 70s we could do we.

We met the terrible danger of subjectivism in the 70s. The psychologist began to rise and tell us all to contemplate our navel. If you want to get in touch with spiritual reality that spiritual reality started within us, not outside of us we needed to be concerned about our own needs and the meaning of our own needs and coping with our own anxieties and in the developing self-esteem and so we became narcissistic navel watchers and we turned inward and we got very preoccupied with psychology and psychologist became the reigning gurus in the church and they were the ones who knew all the mysteries of being in all the secrets of the human heart and all the reasons why people did what they did. The church became very subjective and very enamored with that and it engulfed the church. Here the church on the one hand adjustment exposed to experiential is him and was getting engulfed in that in and then came another wave of subjectivism. Both of them turning the church away from the word of God. We came into the 1990s and we had another danger, mysticism, mysticism, that sort of believing in everything, believing in intuition coming to truth by intuition. Mysticism began to accumulate power energized both by sacramental is him which is mysticism as well and by experiential is him which is mysticism and by rationalism which is mysticism and by subjectivism, the psychology which is a form of mysticism and so we had all of this stuff for accumulating and here we are. It's all around us, and then in the 90s you notice as we go.

They come faster than once.

They took a thousand years to develop and now they they develop in a few years because of the intense exposure of media into the 90s we came and another is an came pragmatism and pragmatism basically says that the appropriate means for ministry are those that are most popular with the people. That's basically what it said. That's a truly MacArthur definition but as I try to boil down what pragmatism is. It simply says this the appropriate means for ministry are those that are most popular with people so find out what people want and do it. Preaching is seen as a sort of a pony express function in a high tech computer world.

They say that preaching is like pony express in a time when we ought to be using email and then number 10 on my little list just in the last couple of years is syncretism and syncretism says oh well, we all worship the same God. Whether were Buddhist Muslims. Catholics are even atheists who are searching for truth we all are worshiping the one true God anyway.

So let's all get together and forget about our differences and realize were all gonna wind up in heaven in the end anyway to log it sorted out up there. These are deadly dangerous seasons here we've accumulated all of this and all I've oversimplified it is to keep it there are nuances that overlap in these issues and they come in all different forms is one of the reasons why young men today need seminary training. You can't send a babe in the woods out to deal with this kind of stuff they need to be trained. These are deadly dangerous seasons and at stake are the souls of men and at stake is the truth of God and the honor and the glory of God.

Now the characteristic of people who are engaged in developing these dangerous epics are given to us starting in verse two. People who develop false systems.

He describes in this way, men who are self, lovers who are money lovers who are boastful, arrogant, reviled learners, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, not a very nice group really they are characterized as those who are self, lovers, money lovers, they develop these things out of their own pride, their own desire to be wealthy. They are boastful, arrogant, proud, they have little regard for their forefathers. Their parents there, ungrateful, unholy, they have no love. They don't want to make peace or reconcile their malicious haters of good, and so forth and so the people who develop these things are then not well-intentioned but they are ill intentioned and they seek to destroy the truth. Verse five defines them not only a self lovers but as religious frauds. They hold a form of godliness, although they have denied its power and avoid such men as these men not everybody and every one of these isms that I've talked about is a non-Christian and a false teacher, but the basic error of these is produced I believe by those who have malicious intent toward the truth. Many well-meaning people get caught up in the many believers get caught up in therein lies the responsibility that faces us that therein lies the initial compelling reason to preach the word he says preach the word because of the dangerous times the dangerous seasons. It is, it is a time of all times to preach the word here. We are getting further down the line accumulating more and more danger and at the same time a diminishing of the proclamation of the truth to meet that danger rather than an escalation of water be doing exactly the opposite of what we are instead of setting preaching aside, we ought to be increasing preaching and preachers because of the increase in the danger serious dangers exist today in the church and everything I've mentioned to you is in the church threatening the church. That's what we have to preach the word because the word answers all of these.

This is grace to you with John MacArthur thanks for tuning in today. John just made the case that a pastor's most important job is preaching God's truth.

The title of John's current series. Why is preaching worth fighting for. Along with teaching every day on radio John serves also as chancellor of the Masters University and seminary in Southern California, John, you've been showing us the negative effects of the church that abandons preaching the church will inevitably wander into heresies and reject the gospel so I wanted to kind of flip that and ask what happens when a church embraces biblical preaching Outlook congregation change if week after week, a pastor simply explains what the text means will I have lived the answer to that question. Now what I'm in my 51st year over half-century of doing that at Grace Community Church. I came in February 1956, 69 yes over her head and into that 52nd year I can tell you what the word of God preached week after week. Sunday morning Sunday night Wednesday night in all kinds or classes home Bible studies the church dominated by the word of God. I I I am living. What 1/2 a century in the word of God produces in a church and I will tell you the dominating reality and that church is willing joyful submission to divine truth, whatever it is it doesn't matter how controversial the subject is, it doesn't matter how contrary to people's normal thinking. It is the thing that I see it at Grace Community Church and I've seen it for decades now through this whole half-century is people's willing, happy, joyful, thankful submission to the word of God, and they have found that submitting to the word of God is the path of blessing that John says that these things are written, that your joy may be full so I would say Grace Church is defined first of all by joyful submission to the word of God. Secondly, by love people comment who come to our church of never been there before. Come for a conference or something. How kind how gracious, how loving, how eager our people are to serve shepherd's conference. We have 700 people serving what we had last year. The. The truth matters conference and we had six or 700 volunteers serving people kept coming up to me and saying these people are amazing. They love they care for us. These are strangers who came to the conference coming on the church so thought I would say submission to biblical authority, a deep and abiding joy happy to obey the word of God. Whatever it says and they live out love and the thin, the next thing is they eagerly serve the Lord.

They want to make a kingdom difference, we see that even the volunteers graced you don't wait yeah every area. Every week they pour in here to serve the Lord with joy.

I want to send you a free booklet called your local church and why it matters if you're not a part of a local church. You must be that is mandated by our Lord is the head of the church.

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Call our toll-free number 855 grace or go to our website Jide TY.org again the number here 855 grace and the website Jide TY.org in the booklet your local church and why it matters. John MacArthur looks at why you need to be part of the local church why that is so important for spiritual growth.

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Thanks for making Grace to you part of your day be back here for our next broadcast. John's going to show you one of the most important skills your pastor or any pastor can bring to his congregation. That's on the next installment of his study. Why is preaching worth fighting another half hour unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on