Transcript

Let’s go to Luke 16 again and we’ll finish what we began last Sunday and then I want to do a rather extensive conclusion for practical application, talking about the primary means of salvation that comes out so powerfully at the end of this text. Luke 16, beginning in verse 19,

19 “Now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day. 20 And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, 21 and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table; besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores. 22 Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom; and the rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom. 24 And he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus so that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off my tongue, for I am in agony in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your life you received your good things, and likewise Lazarus bad things; but now he is being comforted here, and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you there is a great chasm fixed, so that those who wish to come over from here to you will not be able, and that none may cross over from there to us.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, that you send him to my father’s house – 28 for I have five brothers – in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 But he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!’ 31 But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'”

We called this “Death the Great Clarifier” and in the last week’s message, we saw the great contrast in living between this rich man’s selfish indulgence and this very destitute poor man, Lazarus, laying outside of his gate. I mean, the rich man had everything: attendants and servants and wealthy friends. He was esteemed by the community. He was congratulated and honored for his spirituality and righteousness because they had a prosperity theology among the Jewish religious authorities of the day and if you were doing well financially, then you were blessed of God. In contrast, we have poor Lazarus who had just been kind of thrown, if you will, by his other so-called neighbors and friends at the gate of the rich man. No one cared for him. His total destitution is seen in the fact that the only attendants he has are the stray dogs that would come by and lick his sores. So we have this great contrast in living and, once again, the primary application of the context in this day was that the rich man represented the religious Pharisee. They congratulated themselves. They used religion and manipulated and used the people to gain wealth, power and control and they gloried in it all and quite often, the true genuine believers in God and genuine followers of God were more like Lazarus: they were kind of considered outcasts and those who were weak and those who were not successful, those who were not spiritual or godly.

So the Lord wants us to see that, however, there’s an application for every age. In every age, men prostitute true religion for selfish and worldly ambition. In every age and in every denomination, if you will. In modern evangelicalism, it’s so true today but it’s not just our day. I think it may be worse in our day perhaps than others because there is more stuff to manipulate, perhaps with all the media and the technologies we have to get a false message out there. But nevertheless in every age you have those who have twisted doctrine and perverted doctrine so that they can gain the world and look spiritual and look like they’re God’s people. And so often those who are genuinely God’s people are the cast outs, the ones that people say, “You’re off-track. You don’t know God. Look, there is no blessing in your life. You’re not doing well. You’re not being followed very strongly like the rest of us are.”

So we see this a great contrast in living and the lessons the Lord wants us to learn and get out of it but then secondly we saw the great reversal in their death. What a powerful picture this is. The Bible says the rich man passes away and he’s buried. Once again, expressing that he probably had a royal, glamorous, if you will, esteemed burial with lots of pomp and ceremony and hired mourners. All the bells and whistles, if you will. Lazarus, the Bible just says he died. He probably was dropped in a ditch somewhere. But the great reversal of fortunes happens immediately. The wealthy man that all the community and the culture esteemed as righteous and blessed of God went immediately into torment in hell. Lazarus, the one they would say didn’t know God and wasn’t righteous or blessed of God, immediately goes to the glory of Abraham’s bosom, a picture of heaven. So their fortunes are radically and immediately reversed and we begin seeing the great contrast we talked about with some great length about the torment and the torture and the heartache of the man in hell and a little bit about how Lazarus was in that comfort and blessing, being attended by holy angels.

Now, finally we come to new material, III. and out of this we finally get not only the great contrast in life and the great reversal of fortunes in their deaths but lastly we see a great declaration of the means of salvation. One of the most piercing and clear statements on God’s ordained means, the word “means” I’m using in the place of “methods or agencies or instrument.” The means God uses primarily that men might be saved and miss the torment of hell and know the glory of heaven one day. What are those means? Well, it comes out very powerfully and very clearly. Look, if you will, at verse 27. The rich man in agony in hell cries out to father Abraham who is in heaven with Lazarus and he says, “I beg you, father,” that’s father Abraham, “that you send him to my father’s house for I have five brothers in order that he may warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.” So this rich man says, “You know, if you will just…if I’m stuck here and this is my eternal doom, then at least would you have mercy and send someone back from the grave to warn my brothers not to come here?” But one thing this rich man doesn’t understand: prayer is not answered in hell. There are no prayers heard or answered in hell. But note here that this man has changed not at all. Are you listening to me, church? Hell doesn’t change a man, only the Gospel and the Spirit of God can change a man. In hell, he’s still full of himself. In hell, he’s still selfish. In hell, he still thinks he deserves God to be obedient to his beck and call. That’s the way he was in life, that’s the way he is in hell. This is really a bold arrogance. On the earth, he lived in rebellion and extreme selfishness. All of his life, he was that way and now he dies and he goes to hell and he still thinks God ought to submit to him, if you will. This request he makes is nothing but a self-justification and something of a complaint. What he’s saying is, “If I had had a better testimony, if I had had a better witness to me, if somebody had come back from the dead and warned me, then I would have probably repented and not had to have come to this awful place of torment.” So he’s blaming God.

So we note once again the heart is not converted by hell. Men who go to hell still remain in their unregenerate state full of pride, self-righteousness and blame shifting. So this man is not in hell for his own sin, God didn’t send a good enough witness to get him into heaven. Isn’t that interesting?” If somebody has just done some astonishing like come back from the grave, oh, I would have surely repented and believed and not come here.” So he knows he can’t come back from the dead. His eternal state is fixed and that’s the way it is with everyone in hell. I know the Catholic Church has taught a doctrine of purgatory and I believe that was clearly a doctrine taught to manipulate the people to give more monies, that’s all that was because if you gave more penance and more donations, you could get your family member out of purgatory quicker. That’s a false doctrine. It’s not biblical. Once you die, your state is fixed period. That’s why there are those emphatic clear statements that there is a great chasm fixed between the rich man and Lazarus. It can’t be bridged. It can’t be filled.

So he knows his eternal state is fixed. He can’t go and warn his family so he has a self- consumed thought, “Well maybe I can get father Abraham to send Lazarus back from the grave and warn them and they’ll repent.” Now look at verse 29, “But Abraham said,” this is to the rich man in hell, “‘They,'” your brethren, “‘have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.'” Powerful. What does he mean by this? Well, who is Moses? Well, Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible. The prophets were the human authors of the remainder or the balance of the Old Testament. He’s basically saying, “They have the Bible. If they’ve heard the Scriptures, if they’ve been taught the Scriptures, if they’ve read the Scriptures, that’s the most powerful thing they can have. If they won’t hear the Scriptures, they are not going to hear anything else.” That’s God ordained means to save men and convert them. God’s ordained, empowered means of converting the heart is through the faithful proclamation of his word. God neither needs nor blesses man’s fanciful, creative methods or other means outside of his primary ordained means, the word of God. Other things like signs and wonders and miracles being performed in a worship service, our creative media, the arts, these type of things often only illumine and excite the natural mind and the natural emotions but these only produce carnal and false converts and they only give false security because it’s not in signs and wonders and miracles and creativity and media and the arts that men are converted. It’s in the faithful preaching and teaching of the word of God that the Spirit of God has promised to use to transform the inner man and produce true converts who can have true security. And that’s why I think we see the great, vast, falling away of people who make professions of faith in the evangelical church today.

I heard Billy Graham the other day in one of his early messages. I have a lot of respect for Dr. Graham and Billy Graham said quite emphatically that the people who come forward in his services, he doesn’t call them converts, he calls them inquiries or seekers because he knows a big bunch of them are not truly getting converted and I appreciate that kind of honesty. I personally wish Dr. Graham hadn’t used that method so much because I think a lot of people were misled by it but I do think Dr. Graham is a good man with a good heart and led a lot of people to Christ and I thank God for his ministry. Nevertheless, Billy Graham saw in his own ministry, the vast numbers who come forward, we just don’t have good evidence that many of them were faithful in the faith many years later and in our own churches and our own denominations, millions and millions, that’s not a figure of speech, that is actual, literal, true numbers. So many millions are baptized in our churches and we have no evidence at all of a true changed heart and life. I think it’s because we’ve excited them, we’ve entertained them, we’ve amused them and in some cases manipulated them and stuff happened but no true conversion takes place.

So this man in hell does what every flesh-monger, what every man of the earth wants, “Give us something sensational. Give us something miraculous and then we’ll really believe and be converted. Oh, father Abraham, rise someone from the dead and go and warn my brothers and that will work.” Father Abraham says, “They have the word of God and they will get nothing else.” It’s powerful, isn’t it? It couldn’t be more clear. Look at verses 30 and 31, the rich man argues back, “But he said, ‘No, father Abraham,'” in other words, you don’t understand. Your method, Abraham, is not going to work. You just wouldn’t believe how many pastoral circles I run in where they believe God’s method doesn’t work. I mean, I see it all the time. That’s why we’re kind of where we are today as a church because I kept bumping into so many preachers who were just stuck on stuff other than the main thing. Some of those things aren’t necessarily wrong and evil but, folks, there’s a main thing and a primary thing and other stuff can come and go. And, you know, you’ve got to keep them with what you get them with. If you get them with something less than Moses and the prophets, you’ve got to keep them with that stuff. I mean, I told you about the church a week or 2 ago that their whole stage set is a scene from the animation movie “Frozen.” Everything looked frozen up there. Well, once that gets a little old, what’s next? And when that gets a little old, what’s next? And pretty soon the church is literally ushering in vile worldliness because they’ve got to keep the crowd coming. I want you coming to this church and this pulpit because you want the word of God period. Period.

So he argues back to father Abraham and says, “‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent!'” “Abraham, I know you’re in heaven, I know you’re glorified in heaven, I know you’re the father of all the true spiritual children of God. I know you represent all those who are in heaven but you don’t understand, I’m smarter than you. If someone would just do something miraculous,” verse 30, “like come back from the dead, I know my family would repent and believe.” Verse 31, he’s just stronger and clearer, “But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.'”

Now, so the rich man suggests that if we have a miracle of the magnitude of someone rising from the dead we can convince men to believe. However, while fascinating, amazing things in church may bring wonder to people’s emotions and may even convince people’s minds but even those kind of miracles, signs or wonders have no ability to regenerate the heart and produce converts to Jesus Christ. The old-timers used to use this phrase all the time and it’s not used anymore and it needs to be: they would call it excitements. They’d warn young preachers to be careful with excitements in the church. Things get really whooped up and stirred up. By the way, I like it when it gets kind of lively, by the way. I like it. I like some amens. I like some hallelujahs or praise the Lord. I wouldn’t even care if somebody ran down the aisle shouting every now and then. If you get out of hand, I’ll say, “Sit down and shut up, we need to go on.” Alright? I mean, I like some of that so don’t get me wrong. Not all of that is bad but they would warn them that in an excitement environment, you have a lot of spurious conversions. Look, I study church history and I read these guys and that’s why I wonder, what happened to that warning? We just don’t even hear that kind of stuff anymore.

So there might be some excitements if somebody rises from the dead. What if some of our old church members just walked back in that’s been in the graveyard for several years? I think it would be pretty exciting, don’t you? But God says that will not save one soul. Only the preaching of the Gospel save souls. We do know for a fact that a real Lazarus, just a little while after this event, Mary and Martha’s brother, who had been in bed for 4 days, Jesus showed up and he raises Lazarus from the dead and what happened? Everybody got converted and saved? No, the Bible actually says that instead of changing people’s hearts to repentance and faith, in John 12:10, that the Pharisees were more hardened after seeing the miracle and hearing of the miracle and pledged together to kill Jesus. It didn’t help them to believe, it made them harder and more bitter against Christ. We know in Matthew 28 that the Roman soldiers who witnessed Christ’s resurrection on the same day gladly took bribes to slander Christ and testify that he had not been raised. So it just doesn’t work. Miracles may make men astonished but they cannot make man reborn. They cannot make them new creatures in Christ Jesus.

Now quickly, some conclusions for practical application about this means of salvation, the primary, that is, means of salvation. Of course, it’s the preaching of the word of God, now listen to me, and the power of the Spirit. You get both of those, the preaching of the word of God and the power of the Spirit. Now, that’s a challenge for those of of us called to preach and it’s very humbling because it’s hard to put your finger on what is spiritual power. There is a lot of faking and phony stuff. There is a lot, again, of emotions that can get involved that may or may not be Spirit, however, I do believe that when the Spirit is working in the preaching of the word, there is also an emotional element and a passion in it. But it is hard to discern. You’ve got to be careful.

Let me just give you the first conclusion for practical application and that is: the Spirit has an essential role. The Spirit of God has to be involved. If you will real quick, look at John 14. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, one book over. John 14:16 and 17, “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever,” here it is, and “that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.” So the Spirit is call the Spirit of truth. That’s the same thing again in John 15:26 and in John 16:13. Now, when he says the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth, 2 thoughts come to our minds. Here we’re talking about the Spirit of truth, 2 thoughts, 1. It speaks of the essential nature of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. Now, there are other spirits working in the world but they are not the spirits of truth. So that’s why we’ve got to be careful discerning stuff that goes on. There are spirit forces we can’t see that are doing stuff and one of the main things they enjoy doing is counterfeiting the truth so you’ve got to be careful about counterfeitings that come under spiritual powers but the Holy Spirit is essentially truth. There is a veracity, the theologians would say.

But it also speaks of the unique ministry of the Holy Spirit. Not only the essential nature but that unique ministry he has and that is: he is the one who makes truth known. Did you hear me? He is the one who makes truth known. Listen to me now: no one knows the truth of God and about God except the Spirit of God reveals it to him. It is not a powerful professor in the seminary. It’s not a powerful expository preacher. In the final analysis, it is the Spirit of God. If you are here at Grace Life Church, loyal to the church and loyal to Christ because Jeff Noblit has impressed you, God help you. It must be that God may have used an instrument called Jeff Noblit or Matt Fowler or whoever but you know beyond those men, the Spirit of God has testified to my soul that these things are true. Then if Jeff Noblit dies, I’m still with God and I’ll go to be in heaven with him later. It’s not built on a man. It’s not built on a personality. It’s not built on charisma. It is built on the work of the Spirit of God.

So he’s the one that makes the truth known. There are 2 parts to that. 1. Inspiration. Inspiration. He’s the one who inspired the biblical text. He has infused, if you will, and ordained that this text has divine authority. 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness.” Inspired is literally God breathed. When you read the Scriptures it’s as if God himself is breathing out, speaking out truth to you. Inspiration, 2 Peter 1:20 and 21, I’ll not read it for time. It says basically the same thing but no human will was involved. This is God. Only God can take mortal, ordinary men and write through them as they used their own cultural influences and personality and style of writing, yet pen the perfect word of God. Now, you see, if you were God and you were penning the perfect word of God, you’d put men in a trance and they wouldn’t even think about what they were doing. But God is so big that he can use men with their own intellect, with their own cultural influences, with their own personality, with their own style and keep all that in check and yet pen the perfect word of God. Isn’t God good?

So the Holy Spirit was superintending through ordinary men writing the perfect word of God. Now, you must understand the Scriptures are not a literary piece to be scrutinized as one might study Homer or Shakespeare. The Germans did this back at the first part of the 20th century, the last part of the 19th century and all great scholarship was in Germany and primarily in Berlin, Germany. And they were. They were the leaders of the world in most schools of thought. They developed what was called higher textual criticism where they would take any ancient writing and come to it with their own authority to scrutinize, “Is this true Homer? Is this truly from Shakespeare?” or whatever ancient Greek writer, Roman writer. Then they took that to the word of God. They said, “We’re going to start studying the word of God differently. We’re going to treat it like any other ancient writing. We’re going to use our authority and our learning to dissect it and tear it apart and study it like you would Shakespeare.” Then that notion of self, men- exalting authority floated across the ocean and it began settling in the universities of America and it began settling in the seminaries and the Baptist schools and the Presbyterian schools and the Methodist schools until today that’s the accepted view of the word of God, it’s another ancient book to be dissected and scrutinized by men. We set ourselves in authority over it. But you do understand that’s only about 150 or so years old, 200 years old. That hasn’t been around forever and now we’re reaping the harvest of that kind of arrogance in that we live in a culture today where there are no absolutes. You mention the absolutes of Scripture and they will scorn you and laugh you to death. It didn’t used to be that way. But it’s not just a literary piece to be scrutinized by man: the Bible is the divine authority to which we must submit. That’s the view we’re to have of the Bible.

So that’s inspiration. Just a word now about illumination. It is the Spirit of God which leads us into the truth. As the word of God is faithfully taught and proclaimed, the Spirit of God can take the true word of God, now listen, and cause the truth to not only illumine our minds but at the same time penetrate our hearts. That’s so important. It’s hard to describe and verbalize but there is a mysterious work, if you will, of the Spirit of God that opens your mind to grasp it intellectually but it fuses your heart to treasure it and hold it emotionally. It’s both. That’s the illumination of the Spirit of God in the word of God so that from the heart we treasure. In the minds we understand but from the heart we treasure and our minds will begin to understand what wisdom God has. What beauty there is to God. What power there is in God. But then our hearts begin to treasure and joy in that wisdom and that beauty and in that power.

Wives, do you want a husband that only intellectually appreciates your beauty and your wisdom? No, you want to know in his heart he treasures who I am and what I am. It’s the same way with God. But only the Spirit of God can do that. He’s the only one that can do that illumination. Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit.” Notice, the Spirit of God can cut through and do things that can’t be done. That’s why when I look at the liberalism of our country and our world today and I see these liberals and see what they do, they start with a false premise. They start that man is basically good so all we’ve got to do is help men, especially economically and if we can get all men economically to a certain place we’ll all love each other and do better because, really, all the bad stuff is just because some people don’t have as much as others because they cannot bring themselves to humble themselves to the word of God that says the heart is desperately wicked, not good. Men are basically selfish and users and manipulators and connivers and until we get preachers preaching the Gospel in the power of the Spirit and men are transformed from the heart, we won’t have better people or better cultures or better countries. The external teaching of liberalism cannot make the heart reborn, only God can do that.

So what happens? If you just have people who start with a false premise that man is basically good, then they just think we can do some laws and change the environment and change the situation and people will just do better. We’ll have a better, sane, moral, obedient, functional harmonized culture. Has that worked? Let’s look at the cultures that threw away God and threw away the Gospel. Are you listening? Do you know what you end up with? And usually they work with the labor party first, ask Hitler, ask Mussolini, ask Stalin, ask Lenin. They say, “We’re going to make it all better for you guys. Don’t look at our immorality and our character and our vileness, just know we’re going to help you. That’s all that matters.” And pretty soon without the changed hearts, the men of the culture are so corrupt, so selfish, so immoral, so vile, you have to have totalitarian dictatorial control to keep any kind of sanity in the culture. The only truly free people are those who have restraint from within and the only true restraint from within comes from the Gospel and the transforming power of the Gospel. It’s just simple. You’ve got to understand what the nature of man is if you’re going to help him. You can have all the high sounding, wonderful good stuff you’re going to do for people but if you don’t change their heart, you can’t help men.

So the Spirit convinces men, both their head and their hearts, of the truth of God’s word and he so does it that those men will grow in grace, it’s called sanctification, to where they will grow so that they will renounce all other dependencies and rest unreservedly upon the words revealed in the Scriptures concerning their salvation. There is what Azurdia calls, and Azurdia, if I’m pronouncing his name right, wrote a good book on Spirit empowered preaching. He calls this work of the word of God going forth with spiritual power a holy liaison. That’s a good way to say it. “Pastor, how do you know when you’re preaching in the power of the Spirit?” I’m not sure. I’ve been doing it a long time. I’m not sure. I know when I enjoy it more but I have had so many Sundays where I felt like I was fighting through a lead wall with 5 wet blankets over my head, just getting nowhere. I felt like I wasn’t prepared like I ought to be. I felt like I had studied like I used to. I felt like I had prayed like I used to but it just wasn’t working and lo and behold, somebody had called me on Thursday and said, “Pastor, God changed my heart during the sermon this last week,” so that God might humble me afresh and say, “It ain’t you, it’s me.” The Old Testament prophet said, “It’s not by might, it’s not by power but by my Spirit says the Lord.” Now be balanced. That doesn’t mean I want to stand up here and be dry and boring. I might get a big stick out and just beat the pulpit with it. That’s not all bad but I have to be humble. You must be humble to know it’s the Spirit of God ultimately. Should something happen to me physically and I could just barely come up here maybe like David Miller and just articulate for a while, the Spirit can use that powerfully too.

Well, secondly, not only the essential role of the Spirit but real quickly, I’ve said enough about this, I don’t want to say too much more, but movements that undermine. That’s the second conclusion for practical application. You need to be aware that there’s always in every generation, it’s bad in our generation but it’s true in every generation, there are movements that undermine the pure, prayed up, studied up, spiritual preaching of the word. What are those movements? Well, first of all I would say there is powerless Bible preaching, truth without power. There are those who think if they just study, study, study and dot every “i” and cross every “t” of true grammatical, historical, contextual, exigesis of a text then that’s all they are supposed to do, God’s going to work and they go home and what they’re saying is right but the power is not there. I mean, that’s something that happens in the pastor’s heart and I think due your prayers, there has been a growing conviction in my heart whereby that I more depend and more believe in the Spirit using my preaching than ever before. You see, it’s just not a physical exercise. I know men that study and study and study and they’re dotting every “i” and crossing every “t,” it’s historically, grammatically, contextually perfect but I’d walk across the street the other way than have to sit under their ministries. So we don’t want truth without power, amen? The old adage is: you may have your theology or maybe it’s straight as a gun barrel but just as empty. But here’s what happens: then they start leaving sound doctrine and go to stuff to whoop it up and that’s an extreme in the other direction. What we want is the word of God preached with Spirit-infused power that sets men’s hearts aflame.

So we don’t want that dry exigesis of intellectualism. We don’t want to be just a good biblical storyteller, that’s another kind that I think is truth without power. A person gets up and they tell the story and the story is good and it’s good to tell the story and it’s good to tell it good but there is no real passion of application and exhortation in the message. For example, our children in our small groups, we are dogmatic about making sure our children just don’t learn Bible stories. They need to know the God revealed in the Bible story, the great doctrines and attributes and characteristics of the God and what he is showing of himself through that Bible story. We have curriculum that causes us to think that way and view it that way. Paul said to the sophisticates in the culture of Corinth, 1 Corinthians 2:4, “And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” What is Paul saying? Now, the Corinthians gloried in great orators who were insightful and clever and witty and could keep your interest and Paul says, “So when I came to Corinth, I didn’t play to that. I couldn’t care less if that’s what the culture of Corinth would be drawn to.” As a matter fact he said, “I stayed away from that kind of stuff so that when you’re radically changed and you notice a new love in your heart for Jesus Christ, in no way, shape or fashion would you be able to say it’s because this guy, Paul, was sharper, more clever, had greater oratory skills than all of our Greek philosophers and so we were drawn to his message. No,” Paul said, “I’m not doing that. I’m going to give you a pure, simple, straight, Spirit-empowered Gospel message so that you’ll leave saying it’s not Paul, it’s not oratory, it’s not the cleverness of men, God changed me. God did it. God did it.” Following Paul’s example means that whatever the culture is clamoring for, the church shouldn’t embrace and bring that into the church. The church should push that out all the more so that we can prove people will come for God, not for other stuff. I do believe though we have not arrived and we must stay humble, that the great majority of you are there. You come for God and the truth of God.

So there is truth without power. We don’t want that. But there are also methods that neglect growth, truth and power and these are so prominent in churches, methods that neglect both truth and power. That’s another undermining spirit that’s out there. There are these new paradigms they call it. A paradigm means a new way of thinking, a new method of doing something. They say, “We have to have a new paradigm in the church.” Brother, I’ve got a 2,000-year-old paradigm and I don’t have the authority to change it. God in God’s Gospel doesn’t need my help. I don’t need a new paradigm, I need to be faithful to the old paradigm, the established one.

There is the psychological paradigm that’s out there. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. I’m going to read that real quick. I’m aware of the time. Doggone, you need to hear this. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. I’ll be through in just a minute. “And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” Verse 3, he says, in fact, “I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” He said, “I personally and in my ministry wasn’t impressive in any human way at all. I was a mess.” Paul went through a lot in his ministry and sometimes he was just a mess, just worn out and weak and fearful. Verse 4, he said, “and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” We have this new psychological paradigm where the pastor or whatever he is, he’s in the pulpit somewhere but anyway, he uses the Scriptures as window dressing for his feel-good, fix all today’s problems psychology talks that really in the end do not leave you feeling good nor does it fix your problems. Lastly, it doesn’t even address the true fundamental foundational problem of your sinfulness, the wrath of God that’s on you and your need for divine salvation. That’s just so prominent. Joel Osteen, again, is the poster child for the psychological paradigm in the church today.

Then there’s this new undermining that comes in with overuse of marketing and media. Some of that is not all bad but it’s very, very easy if your church isn’t sound that pretty soon they get a lust for this worldly stuff you do and they don’t go back to the Gospel. Once you start down some of these tunnels, it’s almost impossible to get the “professing church” back into the sound stuff again. Marketing and media. In previous generations, the men of God lashed themselves to the truth of the word of God. They lashed themselves to God’s ordained means of primarily preaching the Gospel and the truth and then they just prayed and fasted and preached for true conversions. And if they weren’t seeing God do anything, they prayed harder and fasted harder and said, “God, we’re going to stay with what you’ve ordained until you do it.” Today, people kind of give lip service to that. If it’s not working then they run to new marketing and media stuff to draw people in. Today, the emphasis seems to be to de-emphasize proclaiming the truth, strapping yourself to the truth, preaching that truth and praying for God to use it to change hearts. These clever, creative things certainly can draw a crowd but they do not build a church. God did not call preachers to gather crowds but he called preachers to be instruments he would use to build his church. Of course, you know, in fact, that preachers build nothing. Jesus said to Peter after Peter said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” he said, “Upon this rock,” the rock of that truth, not Peter. The Catholics missed it there. Not Peter, the rock of the truth, Peter said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” He didn’t say, “I will build your church.” And he certainly didn’t say, “You will build my church.” He said, “I will build my church,” and he has the means he has ordained to get that done.

Today we have massive congregations in big cities and some not so massive congregations in smaller cities that have gathered a crowd using media and marketing techniques but what they’ve done is erroneously confuse the presence of physical bodies with the existence of spiritual life. Just because you have physical bodies present doesn’t mean God has changed anybody’s heart and made them spiritually alive. Conversion is being made alive spiritually. In these so-called congregations, you do not have converts who are fleeing the wrath of God coming to Jesus Christ ready to take up their cross of Jesus Christ and live for him in the world but you have “converts” that have just come to add another layer of frosting to their lives. There’s is a “salvation experience” that lacks genuine evidence of the new birth and the always attendance of the regeneration and that’s repentance toward God in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. What they preach is a Christ-less, costless Christianity that focuses on fixing today’s problems and gets them a get out of hell free pass.

Thirdly, and I’m done: Christ the sum and the substance. Lastly, we must be so convinced that true preaching of the word in spiritual power reveals the true Christ and convinces men of him that they would believe on him and be truly converted. Real quick, John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” “The spirit of God,” Jesus says, “comes to tell you what comes from me. It’s about me.” He’s the sum and the substance. John 15:26, “When the Helper,” that’s the Holy Spirit, “comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify about Me.” John 16:13-15, “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He will glorify Me.”

The ministry of the pulpit must be that it is a Christ-centered ministry. It makes much of Christ, not a Christian-centered ministry. You don’t see this as much anymore but you used to see some posters. They’d put them on telephone poles and store windows and I’m not denying that some of these are very genuine brethren and I understand people grow and learn, I’m still growing and learning. But the poster would say something like this: “Healings. Talking in tongues. Prophecies. Signs. Wonders. Miracles.” Then at the bottom: “And the Gospel preached.” It wasn’t Christ-centered at all. It was all about all these things God’s Spirit is going to do to help you and it was Christian-centered, not Christ-centered. It was centered on us, not on Christ. The primary ministry of the Spirit of God through the Word of God is to reveal and glorify Jesus Christ.

I went with my youngest daughter on her school trip to New York and we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I was fascinated. I literally could stay there 2 or 3 days and just look at the paintings. I mean, 3 and 4 and 500 year old paintings and they were just bursting with brilliant colors and I thought, “Well, where did they even get paint back then?” Have you ever thought about that? It was amazing the artwork. But what I didn’t notice except one little brief time was the lighting because in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you don’t go to see the lights, you go to see what the lights illumine. You’re not to notice it and that’s the way the Holy Spirit is. He’s not here to be noticed, he’s here to make Christ noticed. The sum and substance of true preaching in the Spirit of God should leave your people with a deeper, richer, more joyous, more genuine, treasuring, loving, enjoying of Jesus Christ. So only you can answer that about my ministry. Do you know him better? Do you understand him better? Do you understand what he’s done for you better? Do you treasure him more? That must be the end result.

John 16:14, Jesus said, “He,” the Holy Spirit, “will glorify Me.” Make no mistake about it: Jesus will be the sum and substance of the Spirit’s work of empowering sound, biblical preaching. One quick quote from that book I was reading. “Evangelicals must cease to think of the Bible as an inspired book of virtues. It is not primarily a God- breathed manual for piloting our way through life successfully. Rather, it is a book that is concerned to make known the plight of humanity and the purpose of God to save humanity through his Son. Jesus Christ is the promised one within the early pages of the Bible. The middle of the Bible provides the historical account of his coming and his accomplishments. And the end of the Bible, Jesus Christ is set forth as the glorious object of worship for all the created order throughout all of eternity. To be sure, these are great and mighty pillars upon which the whole of biblical revelation rests. It must be recognized with equal verve, however, that every other portion of sacred Scripture reinforces this redemptive superstructure. The Bible is a record of the redemption of God’s people by his Son, Jesus Christ.”

The rich man in hell says, “If you guys would just use better methods, I might not be here and my family might get saved and they might not come to this terrible place. If you’ll just raise somebody from the dead.” And father Abraham representing God’s conviction and God’s wisdom said, “Listen, if they won’t hear Moses and the prophets, the word of God, they’re not going to be converted by anything else.” Spurgeon used to say, “If God is not going to convert them with the truth, he’s certainly not going to do it with a lie.” Amen.

Church, are you saw log strong convicted this church whether I’m here or not will always stand for the Spirit empowered preaching of the Word of God period? And if God doesn’t save men and build his church that way, we will fail but we pray and believe that he will. Amen? Let’s stand together.