Transcript

Message 2 in our exposition of this New Testament book and I call it “The Minister’s Mission.” The minister’s mission. We begin in 1 Timothy 1:3 and I will read down through verse 7.

3 As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, 4 nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation [or questionings] rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. 5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. 6 For some men, straying from these things, have turned aside to fruitless discussion, 7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

So here we have Paul writing to Timothy and saying, “I left you behind in Timothy to take care of this local church, to function, in effect, as the pastor of this local church.” Church history records that Timothy actually spent many years there and they would use the word “bishop,” it’s the same word as “pastor” in the New Testament, as the bishop of Ephesus over the local church in Ephesus, but Paul first of all makes very clear to Timothy and this is something they really didn’t have to talk about, they didn’t have to debate about it or really exhort one another about it, because this was settled in their minds and that’s I.: make sure you remain local church centered. Local church centered. The man of God called by God doesn’t have several ministries and the local church. The local church is the foundation, it is the center of God’s work, and it is the foundation and the center of a God-called minister’s ministry.

He very says very clearly here, “Remain on at Ephesus,” the implication is clear, “and take care of the church there.” Not the church and three other ministries, the church. I’m not implying other ministries are wrong but they are at best secondary and they should extend out from your devotion to a local church, and those other ministries go and come, they may rise and fall, but the church remains for time and eternity. That’s why if you’re involved in we have lots of folks, I’ve talked to church members recently involved in wonderful ministries but I haven’t run into a church member in years that didn’t have this understand. They know that secondary to their commitment to the local church and it must flow out of their devotion to and under the authority of the elders of their local church, and that’s just the way it ought to be, a local church centeredness.

So, again, to the Apostle Paul and the entire canon of New Testament Scripture, there is only this ministry, preaching the word to plant local churches and preaching the word to build up existing local churches. That’s what Paul did and that’s what he told Timothy to do. There is no other New Testament ministry. Again, not saying others are wrong or evil but they’re secondary, they come and go. The church is what matters.

I’m so glad as a young Christian and I’m telling you, I had so many fanciful ideas of all the ministries I might be involved in to serve the Lord and win people to Jesus and disciple people, and God spoke to me. As I’ve said before, he didn’t speak audibly, it was louder than that. It was as if God said, “Look, I have thoroughly given you the way I want to do My work in the world, now why don’t you just hush about all the creative, clever and wonderful ideas you have and just do what I told you to do?” And I said, “Lord, have you looked at Your local churches?” At that time, it wasn’t here, it was in another state, I was attending a local church, small town, knew everybody well, I could look across the room and look at the people living in adultery, looking at the people who swapped their wife out for another wife in the last two or three years, look at the sin. I’m not talking, look, we’re all sinners who have to repent, amen? I’m not talking about people that never repented, people that didn’t try to get right, they just lived in open sin. And I thought, “We’ve got to get around the church. I’ve got to minister somewhere else because the church isn’t even trying.” And God spoke to me again and he said, “I have no Plan B. If you think you’re a man of God, if you think I’ve called you to do My work, then you do your work, My work My way. Why don’t you produce a solution to the problem instead of reinventing something else?” And God transformed my life in the first few years after my conversion to be rabidly, tenaciously, unrelentingly local church centered. That’s all we do. We preach the word, preach the Gospel, help plant new churches and help existing churches be built up and be solid because that’s all I find in the New Testament. Nothing wrong with the other stuff but at best it’s secondary.

He says to Timothy, “Remain on at Ephesus,” implication, “and take care of the local church at Ephesus.” Let me remind you this morning that at the inauguration of Christ’s ministry he was all about the local church. In Matthew 16, he said, “Upon this rock I will build My ekklesia, My called out ones, My church.” It was about the local church. That’s at the inauguration of his ministry. In the culmination of his ministry, the highest point when he died on the cross, the Bible says in Ephesians 5:25, he gave himself up for her, the church, his local churches, the called out and assembled ones that he would save. And then at the coronation of his ministry when he’s glorified and unveiled in the last days, it’s gonna be all about his church. Revelation 21:9, ” Come here and I will show you the bride of the wife, or the bride rather, the wife of the Lamb.” And Revelation 21:2, “And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” So in the inauguration of his ministry, at the culmination of his ministry and finally in the coronation of his ministry, Christ is centered on his church and so must we.

Let me challenge you. I know I’m preaching to ministers but can I say something to you here? It’s important for you to understand this truth because you must stand with your ministers as they stand on these things. It’s not enough for just him to get it, you’ve got to stand with him or all of them, the elders of the church.

Now one thing you don’t want to do in your Christianity is have a pie-shaped view of your life. You know, each slice of the pie is a different area of your life, like one slice of the pie would be your family life, and another slice of the pie would be your social life, and another slice of the pie would be your work life, and another slice might be your recreation and, oh, so many people and life coaches and the like will teach you how to have a proper pie-shaped life. That’s not Christianity. That is totally unbiblical. Christianity says it’s more like a circle and the core circle is a circle that has the individual Christian or the Christian family, then outside of that circle is your local church family because everything you are as an individual Christian or or or as a Christian family must go through and be a part of the local church family, and then beyond that, the next outer circle is the world at large and we have to go out in the world, we should do things in the world. Paul said in Romans that if you don’t associate with ungodly people, you’d have to leave the world. So he says, “I know you’re gonna have to go in the world, you’ve got to work with people, you play ball with people, you live in the neighborhood with people who are not Christians, but you take everything you are as a Christian and weave it and dovetail it into your local church family and ministry and then you go out into the world. You take all of that with you.” It’s not separate pieces of the pie, it’s all one thing that starts with your individual Christianity, your walk, your maturation, your edification, your growing, your service in your local church, and then your work in the world or your involvement in the world. Let’s remain at Grace Life Church of the Shoals rabidly, intentionally, unrelentingly local church centered. That’s God’s idea and we just can’t improve upon it. How about an amen right there? Thank you.

II. under the minister’s mission, he says to Timothy, “Understand the unrelenting battle to preserve sound doctrine in the church. I say unrelenting battle because when the Apostle Paul died, he said, “I fought the good fight.” He didn’t say, “I finished the fight,” he said, “I finished my course,” but there’s always the battle to preserve sound doctrine in the church.

The very first thing he says to Timothy in verse 3 is, “I want you to stay at remain in Ephesus for this primary and first purpose, so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrine.” Actually, the idea there is, “I want to urge you. I want to bear press this upon you, Timothy. You’re to instruct these men not to treat teach strange doctrine.” The idea of “strange” means “other,” other than the doctrine Paul had given them when he established the church. There’s just this endless proneness for some to come into the church, now sometimes these are Christians who just get off-base, sometimes they’re satanic false teachers themselves, but either way there’s just a proneness for the church to constantly be infiltrated by people who in fact say something like this, “Oh yeah, you’ve gotta believe on Jesus and, oh yeah, you’ve gotta belong to the church, but you also are gonna need these teachings here.” Or, “You also need this this law, these laws over here. And if you add that all that together, then you’ll really have a strong family or you’ll really raise your kids right, or you’ll really be a spiritual Christian if you add on these other things.” It’s in addition to the doctrines once-for-all delivered to the saints. So he says, “I urge you, Timothy, that you’ll stay on in Ephesus and you’ll instruct.” The word “instruct,” the original Greek word actually has the idea of charge or order or command. In other words, be firm about it. Preacher, be real firm, real straightforward, get this fixed.

Now just to show you how weighty this is in the Bible, I’m gonna run through some verses pretty quick. I just want you to pick up how often the apostle exhorts younger men in the ministry to be faithful in this area of fighting for sound doctrine.

Ephesians 4:14, ” As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming.” There’s always those that come in and they’re crafty and they’re deceptive and they’ll say a lot of things that those of us who hold to sound doctrine will say, “Well, yes, and amen. Well, yes, that’s right.” Then they’ve got a little twist here and then they’ve got a little twist there and when they get through, we think they’re thinking saying sound things but they really twist it off into strange doctrine. You know what the great order and the great need of the day is? John MacArthur says this a lot and he’s right, discernment. Discernment.

Now, one of the joys of being at Grace Life Church now for going on 38 years, actually I’ve been here 38 years, haven’t been on staff quite 38 years. One of the joys is after a while the strong core of your church gets quite mature, not arrived but you get quite mature, and I don’t have to fight to keep you on track like I used to have to, and praise God I don’t have to fight and keep repenting to keep me on track to the degree that I used to. We’re just kinda gotten settled on what really matters and we don’t have to pull people in off of strange avenues and strange doctrines as much as in the past, and I say that because there are a lot of young pastors out there, or I should say younger pastors, and they’re in year five or they’re in year 12 or they’re in year 22, and they’re still fighting and they’re getting tired and they want to quit and they ask me sometimes, “Does it get any better?” And I say, “Yes, after year 20 it starts getting easier.” And I literally mean that. I tell every one of them, “Have a 20 year vision or you’ll quit at year 15.” You’ve got to tell yourself, “Well, I haven’t got 20 years in so I can keep going. Brother Jeff said you’ve got to have a 20 year vision.” Because if you don’t, even after that you fight but the fight’s an easier fight to preserve and guard sound doctrine.

Now he writes to Timothy, this same guy, in a second letter to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4:2- 3, “preach the word,” Timothy, “be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. Timothy, just keep on reproving them. Keep on rebuking them. Keep on correcting them and just keep on and keep on and keep on. It’s an unrelenting battle.” That’s what he’s saying. This is strong and very clear.

Verse 3, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.” The word “endure” means they won’t have the discipline in their heart like a mature adult Christian.

They won’t have the mature Christian discipline to say, “I’m not about feelings and emotions and wow factors, I’m about the truth. Give me the truth, pastor.”

He said, “Timothy, the time will come you’ll have a congregation that will have a lot of people in it who are silly in their emotions, they’re immature in their whims. They want this and they want that, they want this excitement and that excitement. They’re just not gonna be disciplined to say, ‘Give me God’s truth and if it wows me, fine, if it doesn’t wow me, fine. I want true doctrine.’ Timothy, it’s not always gonna be like that, though. As a matter of fact, that’s the minority of the time so you just keep on preaching, keep on correcting, keep on reproving, keep on rebuking, until the Spirit of God grows you up a more mature congregation so that you don’t have to do this quite as much as you used to.” Am I making this clear?

Titus 1:9. Titus was a young preacher. Paul left him on the island of Crete to straighten out a very messed up church and here’s what he tells Titus on the island of Crete, “holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching,” that is, the right or sound doctrine, “that he,” that’s the preacher, “may be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and refute those who contradict.” That’s the endless project. If I live to be 95 and I’m still preaching and that’s the only reason I’d want to live to 95, if God’s still using me, I’d ask you to join in my prayer, I’m asking God to make me effective for him in my old age. I’m not asking for health. I’d like to have good health. I’m not asking for a number of things but I am asking God, “Would You let me be effective for You in my old age,” and everything else will be okay. But however old I’m preaching, up to that end I’ll still have to be teaching sound doctrine and correcting those who are in an error. That’s what a preacher has to do. The unrelenting battle to preserve sound doctrine in the church.

Titus 2:15, says it again, “These things,” that means the sound doctrine of the truth, “speak it and exhort and reprove with all authority and let no one disregard you.” There were some powerful men in the church on the isle of Crete who would challenge Titus and take him on and Paul said, “You just be stronger.” In Southern Middle Tennessee vernacular, you be strong as dog’s breath. Don’t let up.

Now look, there’s 1,001 secondary things that don’t matter, amen? They just don’t matter. We can all disagree on a 1,001 secondary things. Some people will go to these kind of movies, another person says we ought not go to those kind of movies. We’re not fighting that battle. Now there’s certainly there’s some movies no Christian should go to but I you know what I’m saying. There’s 1,001 things we’re not gonna fight over but, brothers, you listen to me, there are some once-for-all, settled, thoroughly-taught, systematic truths in the word of God. We are not compromising on them ever. As long as God gives me breath and if he doesn’t give me breath, whoever takes over this pulpit better have the same passion and commitment. If not, I’ll pray God kills them, burn this whole place down. This is not gonna be a bastion of error and worldly compromise. Not gonna do it.

Titus 1:13. Have we done this one yet? “This testimony is true. For this cause reprove them severely,” severely, “that they may be sound in the faith.” He’s, well, the testimony is true is that they’re a bunch of hellions and they’re a bunch of renegades and a bunch of independent, spirited, arrogant men in that church. I say men because the ladies usually did their fighting through their men. You know that, don’t you? A lot times Tom’s making the noise, not Tom Clay, whoever it is. I’ll just leave it there. The guy makes the noise, the man makes the noise but momma’s pulling the strings, buddy. It’s called a Jezebel spirit and matter of fact, the church in Revelation was rebuked for tolerating the Jezebel spirit in the church. All these things are to be reproved, corrected, taught against.

2 Timothy 4:7. Paul talking about himself to motivate Timothy to keep on doing this very thing, fighting for sound doctrine, says, “I fought the good fight.” What is the fight he’s talking about? The fight to keep the church anchored in truth. I like that phrase, anchored in truth. The fight to keep the church grounded in sound doctrine. And always, now listen to your pastor, always when we talk about holding to sound doctrine, it means it also means we function methodologically in sound doctrine. Your belief and your behavior, your message and your methods must flow together. Always, doctrine guides everything in the church. Never pragmatism. Never what works. Never what the culture presently is crying for. Doctrine. True doctrine.

Jude 1:3-4, “Beloved, while I’m making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing,” notice the strength of this, “that you contend earnestly for the faith.” That’s not talking about the individual faith of a believer, it’s talking about the doctrines of faith, sound doctrine, “which was once for all delivered to the saints.” In other words, the doctrines we stand on are the same doctrines the first century church stood on, and the same doctrines the next century church ought to stand on. They never change. Our message doesn’t change and our methods do not change. We may use electricity because they didn’t have it, that changed, but that’s not has anything to do with sound and fundamental doctrine. Those things shouldn’t change.

He goes on in Jude 1:4, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed,” in other words, they’re hard to it’s hard to pin these guys down sometimes. They come into your church and they sound so solid, they seem so spiritual, they have an outward air about them that seems so humble and unworldly and sanctified, that they’re kinda unnoticed. They’re hard to get your hand on about where they really are. They’ve crept in unnoticed. This one guys said they’re creeps.

“Those who were long beforehand,” now notice what he says about that, they were long before “marked out for this condemnation.” Now this isn’t a Christian who’s gotten off- track. Let’s be balanced. There are some Christians who get off-track and they lean into some unsound doctrine. These right here at not Christians who got off-track, these are wicked, apostate impostors, counterfeits, fakes, fake teachers, fake pastors, fake spiritual leaders and they’ve been marked out beforehand by God for condemnation, “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness.” It’s amazing. When you find these people that always want to veer away from sound doctrine and they’ve got all their little insights on what they can do, that always seem to have sins they’re trying to condone in their lives, always have some compromise they’re trying to get okay. “And deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” “Timothy, your mission is to be local church centered. Timothy, your mission is to stay in the unrelenting battle of preserving sound doctrine in the local church.” The structure or fashion and the methods, her functions, that is of a local church, must flow out of sound doctrine and when we properly function or fashion ourselves according to sound doctrine and we properly function as a local church according to sound doctrine, then we are tools in God’s hands to beautify his bride. That gives me great joy to get in on that. I don’t know what, what else do you want to get in that’s better than that? That’s the most wonderful thing to get in on and I know you’ve gotta do other stuff, you gotta pay bills, etc. etc., but get in on this whatever else you do. Your children are gonna grow up one day and get married and all this time you spent in children worship is gonna go away, but when you devote yourself to something that matters for eternity, that’s worth giving your life for, beautifying the bride of Christ, getting in on that.

All of this use of worldly elements that we see in the the the so-called church today is in itself a doctrine. This new all these new notions, that’s been going on for decades but it’s come into horrendous full bloom in recent years, this bringing in of the world, bring in the world, bring in the world’s methods, bring in the world’s music. Now no longer do they say, “Well, we just bring in some of the tunes from the world, we still sing the songs or the words of the faith.” Now they don’t even do that anymore, now they’re bringing in literally the world’s music. We gotta a church over in Florence that are watching movies on Sunday morning for their worship service, secular movies. You see, that in itself is a doctrine. That’s a teaching of how to do the Lord’s work, but here’s what it is: it’s a strange doctrine. It’s other than what Paul had given Timothy to build the church upon.

So this bringing of worldly elements into Sunday worship to “make it work,” to “make it successful,” to “bring in the numbers,” to “get a crowd,” this is all a doctrine and I’m gonna broadly generalize but for several decades here’s sort of been this new doctrine: the goal is to get as many people as possible to pray a prayer, to repeat a prayer after the pastor and then we’ll call them all saved whether or not God really saved them. We don’t know but we’re gonna call them saved. And so if worldly elements, if bringing in worldly things in the church helps bring in more and more people and we can get more and more people to jump through our hoop and pray a prayer, then this is acceptable. This is a proper way to do it. There’s just one huge problem with that. God gives you both the means and the goal of your ministry and using worldly elements to get people to fall in love with Jesus is not God’s means, that’s satanic means, and what they do is they embrace a Jesus but it’s not the Jesus of Scripture. That’s why we have 16 million Southern Baptists on church rolls and about 6-7 million even go to church. What about those other millions who don’t even go to church anymore? They all prayed a prayer. They all jumped through a hoop. I’ll tell you what happened, they were “converted” under strange doctrine.

So no wonder Paul tells Timothy, “Be passionate, be aggressive, be unrelenting, be strong when you have to, but teach men to get this strange teaching out of the church. It’s destroying lives. It’s ruining souls. It’s leading to eternal loss. It’s leading to false confessions of faith. It’s leading to people believing they’re Christians and they’re really not. It’s hurting Christians and it’s hurting the church so the church is not beautifying the Lord like it ought to. It’s not the beautiful bride it ought to be. It looks like a horrendous whore, not a beautiful bride.” If a congregation continues to embrace strange doctrines, beliefs and methods other than what’s sanctioned by Scripture and given by the apostles, once for all delivered to the saints, if a congregation continues to embrace strange doctrine, it will come back to bite them. One of the ways it bites them is they find some fanciful, new, exciting thing to do and lo and behold the church across town gets more fanciful and more exciting and they lose half their members to that church. Then somebody else gets more exciting, more fanciful, and they lose half of them to that bunch. I’m glad we at Grace Life Church quite a few years ago stopped church hopping.

Jeremiah 2:19 is a powerful verse that ties in here. I’m not near gonna get through with my message. I’ll finish it tonight. Jeremiah 2:19. Jeremiah talks to Israel and what Israel has done, she’s done a lot of things in her compromise but the core compromise the prophet is referring to is that Israel has turned away from God’s truth and started embracing strange doctrine and they’re doing this by embracing alliances and allegiances to pagan nations. They believed, “If we embrace these pagan nations around us, we know they hate Jehovah God, we know they violate the 10 Commandments, we know they’re wicked idolaters and everything else, but we’ll be safer if we embrace them.” So they brought in a lot of their culture, i.e. Baal worship, one of the main things, Baal worship is centered on worshiping in a way that satisfies your sinful carnal lust. So they brought a lot of Baal worship into Israel and furthermore they made alliances with all these countries to fight with them and for them should they be attacked by another third country, so in effect God said, “You’ve turned away from Me. I told you not to dwell with those nations. I told you not to be like them. I told you not to be infiltrated by them. I told you to be separate from them and trust Me to protect you, but you didn’t, you went apostate.” She turned away from what the Lord said and wanted to be and she turned to something else, so God says, “Your own wickedness will correct you.” The very thing you’re embracing is gonna come back and bite you. “And your apostasies will reprove you.” Given enough time, Israel, this thing you’re doing of turning away and putting your confidence in the other nations will turn out to be its own punishment. Now that’s what we’re experiencing in church life and we have from the beginning of the church. Our own apostasies, our own turning back from God to the world will reprove us.

Now there are two levels I want to talk about and I’m gonna cut this a little short this morning so listen well to what I have to say. I want to talk about a personal level, the way personal individual people turn back on God, then I want to talk about on a congregational level. Now for you moms and dads, primarily to you fathers because I hold you accountable for your wives and I hold you accountable for your children, I hold you accountable for your grandchildren, take that seriously because God does and I certainly do. On a personal level, if you will not listen to and submit to a God-called pastor who warns you, who corrects you, and who instructs you in sound doctrine, if you will not listen to him and primarily, of course, the word of God he preaches, and you begin to embrace strange doctrines, you begin to embrace other things because it feels right, don’t be what Paul calls a silly woman. Silly women, not principled women, we have principled women in this church, but silly women, they follow what feels right. “Oh, it just feels so sweet and so good. It looks so wonderful.” Because it feels right, because it feels better to you, it just seems right but it’s strange doctrine. If you keep doing that, then the day will come when these very things you’ve embraced will turn and bite you and leave you empty and leave you wanting. You will be taught by the strange doctrine you embraced that following your feelings instead of following principled truth, given enough time, will become its own correcter and reprover. Fathers, lead your family according to the word of God, not what your wife or your children feel like is best.

Now thank God for principle women who can admonish their husbands in the truth, but the world and far too much in the church, we have silly women who follow their sentiment and their emotions and they’re all over the place. That’s why the Old Testament says one of the judgments of God is when a nation will be led by women. Well, he don’t mean godly principled women, he means fleshly worldly women who follow this whim and that whim and this feeling and that whim. Is that not where our country is today? Do you ever look at social media? You need to stop looking at so much of it, but what you see is all this feely sentimental junk. Everybody’s everybody’s a victim. Everybody’s got their feelings hurt instead of principled, solid leadership.

Now that’s a personal level, let’s go to a congregational level. I’ll go to something that’s prominent in my life because I’ve experienced this from the time I went into the ministry almost 40 years ago to today. I remember something and though I didn’t start in the ministry in the ’60s, I realize this started happening probably in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and that is somewhere in the ’60s up through the ’80s, there was this strong movement in our youth programs in the church and in our children’s programs in the church, that what we needed to do to reach these kids was to minimize Bible doctrine, true doctrine, and begin to emphasize worldly amusements and entertainments into the youth program because we need to reach them. So things started changing. All of a sudden our youth and children’s programs started becoming very music driven and music that sounded like and felt like the world’s music. It used to be very loud, lots of driving beats in them. Efforts were made to be hip and cool and connect with the culture. It was all to be very entertaining and far too often it was too sensual. Girls helping lead the praise songs were often dressed in ways they shouldn’t be dressed in front of other people, especially in the church setting. They began to darken the room more, technology began to increase, they bought computer controlled special lighting, colored lights, they bought smoke machines, special effects machines. Then technology kept growing and now they’ve got massive LED screens with these fantastic, amazing multimedia presentations they can put on as part of the “youth worship hour.”

So, in effect, we made Jesus and the Gospel fun and hip and cool and acceptable to the carnal mind, to the carnal heart. Then adding insult to injury, we normally put an older young person in charge of the young people, a person that wasn’t old enough to have the wisdom he needed to have, and typically the criteria for this young person leading the other young people was not are they sound in doctrine, not are they strong preachers, but are they clever, are they witty, are they funny, do the kids relate to them, will the kids follow them. Most of all, can he keep the show going. Can he keep this going? Now the old guard in the church and I’m going up in the 60s and 70s and 80s, the older folks in the church were troubled. I remember it so clearly out here older folks, not just here but as I traveled around and preached and the talk among pastors in pastors’ conferences was that the young people were doing all these new, novel, fun stuff and the old guard was saying, “I don’t know about that. I don’t know. I don’t know if can go along with that.” But finally the old guard just kinda said, “Okay, we’ll go along with it because we’re seeing a lot of kids ‘get saved.'”

Today those children and teenagers are now 30s, 40s and 50 year olds and guess what? You can go all across the church landscape today and what do you find? What you find is now the regular Sunday morning worship service is now mostly music driven with music that sounds and feels like what you’d hear in a secular concert. There’s special computerized lighting. Smoke machines. They’ve darkened the room. They’ve got giant screens with fantastic multimedia presentations to give it the wow factor. Increasingly the preacher is not judged by whether or not he’s sound in doctrine and strong in preaching the truth, he’s more of a weak preacher but he’s relatable. He’s got good communication skills. He’s clever. He has wit. He has humor and the most important thing, he’s just so gifted he can keep the show going.

What’s interesting to me is while this trend is happening, it started with the youth service, now the Sunday morning service looks like this in a lot of places, they started canceling Sunday night worship service. Here’s what I’m saying: if this is just the cat’s meow, if this is God’s new thing for the church, if this is anointed of God in works, why would you pull back from two services? Do it two or three times a week if it’s so wonderful. The reason why you can’t do it on Sunday night is the people who come on Sunday morning aren’t coming because they love Jesus, they’re coming for the entertainment. It gives them a little bit of a band aid for the sin of the week. “I went to my church today.” There’s not a devotion to Christ among many in that setting.

So today what do you see? Today you see a lot of 70s, 80s, 90 year olds sitting in those churches with the music blaring and the darkness and the flashing lights and the fantastic video screens doing all kind of stuff, they’re sitting back there in those churches and they’re thinking, “What happened to the church?” They’re grieved in their spirit. “What happened in our church? I remember when I was a boy what happened in church and it ain’t nothing like this. What happened to the church?” I can tell you what happened: you’re rebuked by your own apostasies; you’re corrected by your own sin. And now we’ve got pastors and I thank God for them, now you’ve got some good brothers and sisters who are in this nonsense who are grieved by it and they’re troubled and they don’t know quite what to do about it, it’s gotten out of hand, and that’s what happens. Why do you think Paul’s telling Timothy, “Get on it, Timothy! Straighten it out! Fix it! Because if they go down that funnel, you can’t get it back.” Not without a WWIII and bloodshed everywhere.

So a big part of my energy and time and a big part of Anchored in Truth ministries is helping. We don’t go after them, they come to us and say, “I’ve got a mess. Help me get back out of it.” And so we start mentoring them and helping them to get out of this carnival and build a church. That’s what Jeremiah told them, he said, “Your apostasies have become your reproofs.” And here’s some of the staggering reproofs for all of us in st Baptist and evangelical life in this 21 century. The statistics are staggeringly clear. Divorce has skyrocketed in the last half century. Divorce has skyrocketed in the church. Fornication, adultery, marriage, divorce and remarriage. Now I know there’s life after that and God can use you after that, but most churches just embrace it and never deal with it. The young people when they get college age, about 85% of them according to every survey, about 85% of our college kids leave the church when they go to college. “What happened? I thought we did wonderful fantastic things that got them all to Jesus.” I’m gonna tell you what happened: they didn’t find the real Jesus, they found a carnival Jesus, one that fit their carnal appetites but not the real Jesus. The statistics tell us, these are our reproofs. Our membership rolls are absolutely meaningless in most churches. A church that runs 300 attendance have 1,000 on their membership roll, 700 people that don’t even come. That’s wrong. It’s wrong. It’s wrong. These are our apostasies reproving us.

We exist at Grace Life Church of the Shoals to prove to the professing church and to prove to the world that God will build his church on his doctrine and his methods. That’s why we exist. You want something else, you need to go somewhere else. I’m not chasing…now look, not every single thing those churches are doing is evil. I know that but here’s what happens: you start adding this, you add this, you compromise here, then you get to leaning on that stuff and then that is evil. I’m convinced – are you listening to what I’m about to say – I’m convinced if we took away all the comforts of what we’ve built here and we had to meet somewhere in a room somewhere and Pam found a pin and Tom led us in a little singing and I preached the word, I’m convinced 95+% of you would stay right there with us because we’re not building this church on that nonsense. And furthermore, you mark my words, persecution and suffering is coming for a true child of God and I want a church that’s here for the right stuff, not for the show.

The prophet said, “Your apostasies will be your reproofs.” Now my challenge to you this morning, we’ll get to the second part tonight, is this. Are you with me? Look, this isn’t new stuff it’s just that this text brought up, I mean, how am I gonna talk about anything else? This is exactly the application to our time. Now I just mentioned one trend of apostasy of turning away from God’s doctrines and methods. There’s lots of them, lots of them, lots of them that’s happening the church. But I want to challenge you this morning as I challenged Jeff Noblit, as I challenged Brother Matt, Brother Steve, all of our elders and staff, all of us, that we will recommit ourselves to be local church centered – now listen to me – and unrelenting in the battle to preserve sound doctrine. Brother Matt takes classes at Louisville Seminary, probably about in 2027 he’ll get done, and that’s our fault because there’s so much work to do he can hardly take a class. He squeezes one in every now and then, but he’s learning more here than he’s learning there, but that’s important. He’ll come home and regularly talk about, it’s a good school. Don’t misunder….some good solid guys there, but there’s another wave of nonsense, another wave of nonsense about what you’ve gotta do in the church. It ain’t got nothing to do with the word of God, it’s gotta do with worldly gimmicks and stuff. Do you know what he has to do? He has to be unrelenting in going to school and taking a pitchfork and a rake, rake some in and pitch some back out, and that’s what we’ve done at Grace Life Church. Do you know, are you listening to your pastor this morning? Do you know how much stuff I have initiated that I later had to come to you and say, “That’s not good. We can’t do that anymore.” So I want to be a repenter and a stalwart in that process and I need you with me. Don’t say anything to me personally, I know your heart but just say in your heart, “I stand with my pastor, I stand with my elders as they are in the unrelenting battle to guard sound doctrine which leads to sound methods in God’s church for God’s glory.” One final exhortation, dads: you’re responsible for your children. Just think about that. You’re responsible for your wife and there’s sometimes when a dad has to have a backbone like a saw log and has to say, “This is how we’re serving the Lord in this family.” Mom can run and scream, the kids can run and scream, bounce off the walls. They’ll settle down in a minute. You just say, “As head of this household, this is the way this family is gonna serve and worship the Lord.” We’re not chasing that nonsense as that stuff comes and goes and it changes every six months. We’re gonna stay anchored in truth and what lasts. And I’m are you listening to me and I’m getting off on something else, I’m trying to stop real hard. Wives are looking for a man to be a man. For a man to be a man. It doesn’t mean you’re harsh to your wife or unkind, but sometimes you just say, “Speak to the hand. I ain’t moving. We’re not changing.” You open this book and find me a solid exegesis that something’s wrong at Grace Life Church, I’ll follow you anywhere but unless that’s true, I’m standing right here. Do you know what I’m blessed with? I’m blessed with an army of good men, an army of principled ladies in this church and I deeply thank God for you.

“Timothy, stay at Ephesus, be local church centered and be unrelenting in the battle to preserve sound doctrine.”