As I mentioned to you, this morning, I want
to talk to you a little bit, more like a sort of a personal lecture than a sermon, about
the emphasis that we have here on the exposition of the Word of God. This church is known all over the world for
the fact that we are committed to Scripture, that we are known because of the ministry
that we have had here for well into five decades now of explaining the Bible. And this is the best thing that a church can
be known for, the explanation of Scripture. It is what we do. It is what we train men to do. It is what the men who go out of this church
and there are people who go out of this church to other places do and expect to be done,
and the Lord by His mercy and grace has allowed us to spread this emphasis and this vision
across the face of the earth with our missionaries and their wonderful ministries and training
centers all over the globe. They continue to emphasize the exposition
of Scripture and to train people to do the exposition of Scripture and to train men and
women in the church who will never exposit the Word of God from a pulpit to expect it
to be done by whoever is in the pulpit. So we raise the awareness of Bible exposition,
we train men to do that and we encourage people to expect that in their churches. Christian ministry comes down to one clear
duty essentially, 2 Timothy 4:2, "Preach the Word. Be instant in season and out of season." In other words, do it on the spot, do it immediately,
and do it all the time. In season and out of season, that's the only
possibilities. Whatever that means, it's all there is, you're
either in it or out of it. Do the same thing, preach the Word. Bring the truth of God's Word to the people. This is a very simple command. Our responsibility is then to explain the
meaning of Scripture. It was a number of years ago now, I don't
remember exactly how many years ago, that we were having a pastors seminar here for
a week and I was asked to give reasons why we do Bible exposition, reasons why we exposit...the
verb is to exposit, to explain the meaning of Scripture. And my responsibility is going to take two
or three days and talk about that. And so I thought I'll make a list the reasons
we do this. And so I started. And I kept going, and going, and going. And by the time I showed up on a Monday, I
had 63 reasons why we do what we do. Well, I've sort of brought that together,
reduced it a little bit, combined some things and come up with about fifteen reasons why
we do what we do. Whatever the form of ministry may take, the
purpose of ministry is for people to understand the Word of God. There's only one instrument by which the Spirit
redeems, "We are begotten again by the Word of Truth." Scripture, there's only one instrument by
which we are sanctified. Jesus in John 17:17 said, "Sanctify them by
Thy truth, Thy Word is truth." The concern obviously of God is that the truth
of Scripture, His holy revelation, be brought, first of all, to His own people and then through
them to the world. My task is simple. The task of anyone who preaches or teaches
in the church is to explain accurately the meaning of Scripture. That is why we are commanded to be diligent,
to be diligent...one, the Old Authorized says, "To study to show ourselves approved unto
God, workmen that need not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of truth, handling
the Word of God accurately." This is our responsibility because the truth
essentially is everything. And wherever I go in the world, whether it's
in a Shepherds Conference here, or whether it's in another country, or it might be a
sort of random question and answer event with the spiritual leaders here and there, I always
go back to this foundational responsibility, to explain the meaning of the revelation of
God in Scripture. That is the heart of all ministry because
that is the truth that saves, the truth it sanctifies, and the truth that gives the hope
of glory. The 63 that I came up, I unloaded on those
poor, unsuspecting pastors, I think there were about a dozen of them that week, and
it was like drinking out of a fire hose, I admit that. And over a period of time, I kind of condensed
it and the little list that I developed them has showed up in various places in print. But I wanted to bring it to you because most
of the time it is something that is heard by or read by those who are in pastoral leadership,
but I want you to understand why we do what we do, why our missionaries do what they do,
because it's important for all of us to be supportive of this most essential enterprise. A good place to start. Turn in your Bible to the two little epistles
that are after 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and you have in these two little epistles a kind
of a final emphasis in the New Testament. Just to touch lightly on this, a kind of final
emphasis, here is the final Word, instructive Word coming from the Apostle John who is the
last living Apostle, closing out the first century, and he's writing this at the end
of the first century, maybe around 90 or so, the year 90 A.D., and all the other Apostles
are gone and John has a final message for us. And that final message is very clear. The first letter that I want you to look at
is written to a lady. She's unnamed but she is a believing lady
and her children. John is the elder to the chosen lady and her
children, unnamed. But I want you to notice the emphasis. He speaks of her in this endearing way, "Whom
I love in truth, and not only I but also all who know the truth." There is a bond here that John talks about
that stretches from himself as an Apostle and an intimate companion of the Lord Jesus
Christ when He was alive on earth, all the way to a lady who is unnamed and her children,
and everybody else who is in Christ, and it is a bond around the truth. It is a love connected to the truth. There's no such thing as a legitimate thing
that is disconnected from the truth. John loves this woman in the truth and not
only John but all who know the truth. The core of our love, what defines the reality
of our loving relationship is a common understanding of the truth. And he carries that out into verse 2, I am
writing this, I'm expressing my love for the sake of the truth which abides in us and will
be with us forever. We are forever, now and forever a fellowship
of people who are tied together with the truth, a common love for one another based upon a
common understanding of divine revelation. Then comes a greeting in verse 3, "Grace,
mercy and peace will be with us from God the Father, from Jesus Christ, the Son of the
Father, in truth and love." And again he's emphasizing this same great
reality. Now I understand that you hear a lot about
love and everybody needs to love each other in the church, and we don't want to talk about
things that divide us. But the Bible never allows us to have a legitimate
spiritual loving relationship apart from a common understanding of the truth. And so in verse 4 he follows it up again.
"I was very glad to find some of your children," he says to this lady, "walking in truth." Again, not only do we love in truth but we
walk in truth and the verb walking is the most familiar verb to express daily spiritual
conduct. So here is a lady and her children who conduct
their lives in line with the truth as revealed from God. In verse 5, "I ask you, lady, not as though
I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we've had from the beginning
that we love one another. And this is love that we walk according to
His commandments." And then comes a warning. "Many deceivers
have gone out into the world." What do they do? "They tamper with the truth. They adulterate the truth. This is a deceiver, an Antichrist." He even says, verse 9, "Anyone who goes too
far doesn't abide in the teaching of Christ which is the truth, doesn't have God, the
one who abides in the teaching, he has both the father and the son." So if someone comes to you, doesn't bring
this teaching the truth, don't receive him into your house, don't give him a greeting
for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds. Of all the things to sign off the apostolic
era, isn't it amazing that John is consumed with this idea of truth which he mentions
five times in the opening handful of verses? It is about the truth, and then he follows
it up with a warning about those who corrupt the truth. And then comes that third letter from John,
this one not written to a lady but written to a man who is named, his name is Gaius,
and again John says, "This is a man that to which I write whom I love in truth." That is the common bond. This is not sentimental affection, this is
not something that overlooks error, this is love in truth. Verse 3 he says, "I was very glad when brethren
came and testified to your truth." What do you mean? "That is how you are walking
in truth." And again, like the children of this woman
who are walking in the truth, this man is also walking in the truth, conducting his
life consistently with the Word of God. Or in the language we just read, being obedient
to the commandments of God which is the essence of living in love. And John sums it up in verse 4, "I have no
greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth." That's his supreme joy because that's the
fulfillment of his supreme duty. That is what we do; we give people the truth
so that they may live according to the truth, so that they may love according to the truth. There is further instruction in this little
epistle in verse 8, that we ought to support such men. What men? The men that went out, the missionaries that
went out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles for the sake of
the name of the Lord. We ought to support such men so that we may
be fellow workers with the truth. Now there's a mandate for missions. There's a mandate for what we do. We have many faithful missionaries who have
gone out for the sake of the name. They have made great sacrifices, life-long
sacrifices to go out for the sake of the name. They have gone accepting nothing from the
people that they take the message to, being supported by us, we support such because we
want to be fellow workers with the truth. There's a warning again in this epistle in
verse 12. "Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself, and
we add our testimony, and you know that our testimony is true." The warning is, you...you want to make sure
that you can give a full testimony as to the legitimacy and the integrity and the truthfulness
of those who represent Christ. "Beware," he says in verse 9, "of a Diotrephes who loves
to be first. Don't accept what he says." And again, the emphasis here, just so that
you understand it, is all about the truth. In the epistle of Jude which is the final
little postcard letter before the looming book of Revelation, there is a further emphasis
on the truth. This is truly a warning, verse 4 tells us
that there will be certain men creeping in unnoticed who long beforehand were marked
out for condemnation, ungodly persons who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness
and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Get ready, false teachers are on the horizon
all the time." The rest of the epistle talks about them,
defines them, describes them. Now how do we cope with that? We cope with that by backing up into verse
3, "I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation," maybe a celebratory
kind of letter, affirming the wonders of salvation, but he never could do that because he felt
the necessity to write to you appealing that you earnestly contend for the faith. That's the content of the Christian faith,
that's divine revelation, that's the truth which was once for all handed down to the
saints. That's the body of inspired revelation that
we know as Scripture. Fight for it, battle for it because it's going
to be under assault by false teachers and deceivers. In verse 17 he reminds them to remember the
words of the Apostles. In verse 20 he says, "Build up your most holy
faith." That's not faith as a subjective reality,
that's a faith as an objective content, a body of truth. So the concern of a New Testament is with
regard to this body of revealed Scripture that we know as the Bible, and that we have
the responsibility to know the truth, to love in the truth and to live in the truth. Obviously then, ministry comes down to proclaiming
the truth. And I want to give you a number of reasons
why we do that, and they should be obvious. One would be enough because we're commanded
to do it, "Preach the Word." And I will confess to being a little bit of
Johannine here. John likes to kind of circle around his argument
and hit it from another angle repeatedly; at least he does a lot of that in his first
epistle, and even some of that in his gospel. So I may sort of weave my way around some
of these points and they will overlap a little bit. The purpose of this is for you to understand
that we're not just out there doing all the kinds of things that we can think of, or all
the things that many other folks think need to be done. We do one thing, we tell people what Scripture
means and we train other people to be able to tell people what Scripture means. We train expositors of Holy Scripture and
we train lay people in the Scripture as far as we can and with the expectation that whoever
shepherds them and pastors them will have the same commitment to Scripture that is to
those who are called to minister to them. Now, let me give you some reasons, okay? Number one, the exposition of Scripture establishes
the authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer. The exposition of Scripture establishes the
authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer. It is a question of authority. It is a question of who is sovereign, who
has the right to speak. Whose words are pure, whose words are perfect,
whose words are convicting, whose words are saving and sanctifying? This is the basic issue. Who is the authority? Every time a preacher enters into a pulpit,
he establishes in the minds of his people who the authority is. And if you were to line preachers up and say,
"Do you believe in the authority of the Word of God?" certainly all the ones that we know
would say absolutely I believe in that, I believe in the inspiration of Scripture, I
believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, believe in the veracity of Scripture, believe in the
sufficiency of Scripture. We adhere to the Scripture, we love the Scripture. And that's fine, I'm happy for that confession. But I will tell you, when I listen to a preacher
whether or not that's genuine because I will be able to discern and so will you where his
authority comes from. If it comes from his own insight and his own
cleverness and his own experience, if it comes out of his own illustrations and his own stories,
then we know where the authority is in his mind. If it relentlessly comes out of the pages
of Scripture, then we understand that he knows who the authority is. That is the essential foundation in all preaching
and teaching is the reality of the authority. I've heard a lot of interesting preachers. I've heard a lot of preachers who are clever,
a lot of preachers who had some good stories and some nice points, and very rational, reasonable
preachers but that's not the authority. When you exposit the scripture, when you systematically
explain the meaning of Scripture and the doctrine that Scripture affirms and declares, you are
establishing in the mind of the hearer that God is the authority. The issue is what God has said. Now, is there room for some personal insights? Sure. Is there room for some kind of an illustration? Of course. But that is the exception that is not the
rule that is not the norm. That might have a role to play in clarifying
Scripture but it should become obvious to anybody who is listening where the authority
lies, and that will only be true if what is being preached and being taught is literally
yielded up by the Scripture itself. That is why when I teach you, when others
teach you, we explain to you not only what the Scripture means but we show you how that
is the only way to understand what it means. In other words, you become part of the process. It's not enough to say, "This is what it means,
let's go to the next point. This means this...this means this." You've got to see the reasonableness of that. You've got to see the validity of that. You've got to see the truthfulness of that
by being led into the context. There should never be a question about the
authority in any church. A number of years ago I was in a Scottish
Presbyterian church in London, and there was a little ceremony that surprised me, Patricia
and I were there together, and I've never forgotten it. The service began with the playing of an organ
and then we stood up. And we weren't quite sure exactly what was
going to happen. But when we stood up, there was a man who
came in the back door, we were sitting near the back, came down the aisle and he had the
Word of God lifted up like this...held high. And everybody stood at attention while the
organ played a great hymn as he walked down the aisle and placed that Bible open then
when he reached the pulpit on the pulpit and then we sung a hymn and sat down. And the man eventually got up and preached
and said absolutely nothing from the Bible. It was a nice ceremony signifying absolutely
nothing. The one who has a right to be heard is God. He is the one who must speak. After all, it is the church of God which He
purchased with His own blood. It belongs to Him. And following that up, let me give you a second,
and it's the parallel to the first, really. Exposition of Scripture affirms the lordship
of Christ over His church...it affirms the lordship of Christ over His church. I continue to be amazed at this whole issue
of Christ's lordship in the church. You know me; I've been on this lordship emphasis
for decades of my life and will continue to be there. It is unquestionable in the New Testament
that Jesus is the head of the church, right? But, boy, is that an embattled doctrine. I was reading again this afternoon some more
of this biography on John Knox and I was reading about how this poor little beleaguered preacher
in Scotland who was the meek and mild and weak little guy until he started to preach,
and then he would preach three hours a sermon and he would preach at least three sermons
a week, and each lasted three hours. And he had no notes, he just had an open Bible. And he would make people shudder under the
power of his preaching. And the theme of his message was a denunciation
of all the Popes, and all the monarchs, and all the people in the clerical garb who thought
themselves to be the officious ones who ran the church. He just...he just went after them with a vengeance. And then he would pray the imprecatory Psalms
on their heads essentially saying, "God kill them, kill them, send them to hell." You know, he was a fireball. And, of course, they all wanted him dead. But it came...you know, it was God's care
of him to protect him and he was in Europe safely in the care of John Calvin for a while,
and then he was sold as a slave in a French Galley for almost two years. He pulled an oar and the Lord was doing some
refining in his life then, but the whole issue with Knox was the same issue that it was with
all those other reformers. It was who is the head of the church? Who's in charge? Who's Lord? You know, we blithely talk about Christ being
the head of the church but we don't think about the fact that that doctrine which we
all affirm has sailed down to us in this generation on a sea of blood. Massive number of martyrs perished over that
very issue. Bloody Mary herself killed 270-some over the
issue of who is the head of the church, and the fact that they wouldn't bow to the Catholic
view of the Mass, transubstantiation, they wouldn't bow to the Papacy. This issue of Lordship is critical, crucial
issue. Written a lot of books on Christ as the Lord
of the church. But what it comes down to is, look, whoever
is lord of the church has the right to speak to the church, right? To command. What does it mean to be lord? It means you're in charge, your will is done,
your voice is heard. And Christ is the unilateral single and only
sovereign in His church. We are battling for that even today...as strange
as it is. There's a wonderful passage on this that I
would just point out to you. Ephesians 1...Ephesians 1, it's such a rich
statement on Christ is the head of the church, and there are other portions of Scripture,
Colossians 1, Colossians 2 that said similar things about Him being the head of the church. If you look...we won't go through all of it,
but just look at Ephesians chapter 1, down to verse 20, we'll pick it up there, talks
about how God raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in heavenly
places. And then it says this, that Christ when He
was seated in the heavenlies after His resurrection and His ascension, was seated in the heavenlies
far above...far above...not just above, but far above...a strong verb is used to describe
this with a preposition. Far above all rule and the "all" is implied
all the way across, "All authority, all power, and all dominion." All forms of authority. All forms of power. All nobilities, all lordships. There's even a word kuriotes here which means
lordships, dominions, monarchies, sovereignties. He's above them all; He's far above them all. That is all institutions, all monarchies,
all governments, all sovereignties. He's far above them all and all persons, every
name that is named. Names are for persons whether they be angelic
or human, He is far above them and all times. Not only in this age, but in the one to come. And not only is He over all sovereignties,
all kingdoms, all dominions, all persons that is human and angelic, in this age and the
age to come, but He's over all things, verse 22. He's put all things in subjection under His
feet. So here is the establishment of the absolute
overarching sovereignty of Jesus Christ, over everything. And then it says, "He gave Him as head over
all things to the church." That's a very important statement. He gave the church to be its head, the one
who is already the head over all things. You remember when Christ is exalted in Philippians
2, it says He's given a name which is above every name, and that name is not Jesus, Jesus
is just a name, the name above every name is the name Lord, that at the name Lord, every
knee would bow in heaven and in earth and things under the earth. In other words, He's the absolute and total
sovereign over everything and everyone. And then it says in verse 22, "He gave that
one who is sovereign over everything to the church to be its head." Amazing. He didn't give us Michael, He didn't give
us Gabriel, He didn't give us a coalition of great angels, He didn't give us Apostles,
He didn't give us prophets, they were foundation stones in the church, but they're not the
head of the church. He didn't give us great preachers and great
scholars, great intellects. He gave us Christ to be the head of the church. He gave us the one who is Lord over everything. It seems to me that the one who is Lord over
everything has the right to speak in His church. How can Christ be heard in His church? He can only be heard in His church if His
will is expressed. In 1 Corinthians 2:16 it says, "We have the
mind of Christ." Where do we have the mind of Christ? We have the mind of Christ right here. In Romans 10 it's called the Word concerning
Christ. It is the Word concerning Christ and it is
the mind of Christ. Does the church want to know His mind? Do you want to know what He thinks about anything
and everything? That's what the church needs to know. You don't need to know what I think. Why do you care what I think? What I think doesn't even matter. It's pointless, useless, temporal. Do I have opinion? Sure, but are they worth communicating? Maybe in a casual conversation, but when anyone
stands up behind a sacred desk and opens his mouth with a Bible in hand, the church needs
to hear from the head of the church. And here is where He has spoken in His Word. Here His mind is revealed. It's an amazing thing to think about that,
that we have the mind of Christ. People don't really understand that. I...you know I'm always staggered by the fact
that I, along with you, and everybody else who has the Bible in hand and knows what's
in it, literally knows how Christ the head of the church thinks. This is what's such a wonderful thing about
sending out these people around the world, they know the mind of Christ and they bring
the opportunity for churches all over the planet to hear from the head of the church. When I was in Russia, or Ukraine rather, in
the Kiev, having a wonderful time, a young pastor came up to me and he said, "Pastor
MacArthur," he speaks kind of broken English, "I have to tell you some good news." I said, "Great, what is it?" Standing in a little hallway in the central
church there, he said, "I brought a whole group of pastors to come and hear you." And I said, "Well great, thank you." He said, "Yes, it's great," he said, "they
didn't used to like you but now they like you." I didn't even know what to say to the guy,
like what is that? What do you mean now they like me? I think I knew what he meant. They appreciated what you said. But the point is not to be liked, I was a
little disappointed on that frankly, that...although it is interesting that I would be able to
preach repeatedly and have anybody like me because sometimes the message is pretty strong. But that's not the point. The point is that the Lordship of Christ over
the church, but even among pastors, preachers can be sort of something you sort of taste
and, you know, we call it sermon tasting. It's not about being liked. Did you hear the Lord of the church speak
to His church? Well the only way that's going to happen is
when you open the Word of God to the church and the mind of Christ is revealed. Now this is...I don't know where along the
line the Lord embedded that into my mind, but if there's anything about me that has
stuck in my life, it is that, that I am consumed with the truth, I'm literally consumed with
it all the time. I live, eat, breathe, sleep the truth, the
knowledge of the truth, the accuracy of the truth, the proclamation of the truth, the
loving in the truth, the living in the truth, the walking in the truth...it's everything
about the truth, that is what consumes my life. Let me give you a third point and this again
is an overlapping point because we're talking about the Trinity. First of all, Bible exposition establishes
the authority of God over the mind and soul of the hearer, and secondly, it affirms the
Lordship of Christ over His church. Thirdly, it enables the work of the Holy Spirit...it
enables the work of the Holy Spirit. Nothing in the Bible promises the Holy Spirit
is going to use my clever ideas, my insights, my illustrations, my spiritual stories, my
technique. Nothing...there's no promise about that. There's no promise that my style is going
to be used effectively. In fact, I always think about the parable
of the sower. When you think about evangelism, the sower
goes out to sow and he sows and he got some soil, nothing happens, no fruit and you've
got some soil where you get fruit 30-fold, 60-fold, a hundred fold. And you ask the question, "What's the difference?" And you say, "Well maybe it was the way the
sower sowed." No. It doesn't say anything about the sower at
all, nothing, nothing whatsoever. And you remember the Apostle Paul who said,
"I didn't come to you with words of human wisdom. In fact, I came to you just the opposite,
trembling and in fear, no brash boldness. And I was determined to know nothing among
you except Christ and Him crucified so that your faith might stand not in the wisdom of
man but in the power of God." The Holy Spirit uses the Word of God as the
means of saving people. "We'll begotten again by the truth," 1 Peter 1:23, I say that so
often as I go around. John 17:17, "Sanctified by the truth." The Spirit uses the truth...uses the Scripture.
"The Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword," Hebrews 4:12. It is the most powerful weapon. Now people will say, "I believe that, I believe
that." And then you listen to them, and you...where's
the Scripture? If you believe the power's there, then that's
what ought to be the source of everything. The knowledge of the Word is what the Spirit
uses. Faith comes by hearing the Word concerning
Christ, Romans 10 says. There's a fourth point that I will give you. These are obvious, I know, but it's good to
think them through and kind of sort them out. And this sort of pulls the other three together,
in a sense, and it is this, expositional ministry, ministry that explains the meaning of Scripture
manifests true submission to the Bible...true submission to the Bible. Which is what we're all called to do...to
submit, to obey. It would be unthinkable, would it not?, for
a preacher to demonstrate anything other than submission to the Scripture? If that is to be the responsibility of every
believer. I mean, just take Psalm 119, we won't go through
it, you know the 176 verses there. Just take Psalm 119, and listen to David talking
about the virtues of Scripture over and over and over and over and over and saying it's
my love, it's my delight, it's my joy, etc., etc., 175 times and a 176 times he confesses
his own inadequacies and his own spiritual failures even in spite of his love for Scripture. But that is an entire Psalm that is laid out
to emphasize the role the Scripture plays in the life of a believer. Or Psalm 1 which in some ways is connected
to Psalm 119, "How blessed is the man who doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked
nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is
in the law of the Lord. In his law he meditates day and night." Day and night he meditates in the law of the
Lord, that's his food. You know, Job says, "I have considered Your
Word more than my necessary food." We live by every word that proceeds out of
the mouth of God. You know, as a pastor what I want for you
is that kind of submission to Scripture. Why? Not because it's some kind of bondage, but
because it's the path of joy. "These things I write unto you," 1 John says, "that your
joy might be full. Whoever hears My Word and keeps it experiences
joy. Blessed is the man who hears My Word and does
it. Happy is the man who obeys Me." That's both Old Testament and repeated by
Jesus in the New Testament. What I want for you is blessing. What I want for you is joy. What I want for you is usefulness and that
comes by obedience to the Word of God, submission to Holy Scripture. I'll tell you, that is a great delight to
me because that is a kind of congregation we have, that's the kind of people you are
and that is a tremendous joy. You don't fight against the truth of Scripture. You embrace the truth of Scripture, you seek
it, you love it, you desire it, you long for it, and that is a profound delight to me. The heart of preaching then has to be love
for the truth. If that's not in the preacher's heart, if
he's not consumed with love for the truth and the desire to see that submission to Scripture
that produces profound blessing in the lives of his people, then there is something seriously
wrong. The truth is not in a church, it's not in
a man, it's not in an experience, it's in a book...all of it in one book. We talked about Martin Luther because we were
listening to "A Mighty Fortress" and Luther's conviction was that the Roman Catholic Church
didn't speak for God...only Scripture did...only Scripture. And that everyone had to absolutely and completely
submit to Scripture. Well that was more than people could handle...far
more. But that's the truth and that's what you want
people to do. If I'm not around and that's going to happen
sooner rather than later, and if nobody else is around, the Word of God will always be
around, won't it? His Word will never pass away. Men will come and go, preachers will come
and go, the Word of God remains. R. L. Dabney, kind of an American come-lately Puritan
said this, "All the leading Reformers were expositors." And again, I was reading about John Knox today
and it was saying about him, and this is in a day...you have to understand what preaching
was like in the day of John Knox. There was no such thing. They're not talking about anything that you
would be familiar with. The clergy of the Roman Catholic Church were
abysmally ignorant. I mean, they didn't know anything about the
Bible. They couldn't tell you anything at all about
the Bible. One historian says, they weren't interested
in the Bible; they were too busy chasing the lassies. They were Godless. There was no such thing as preaching. And whatever they did they did in a language
that nobody understood and it was all ceremonial ritual. Here comes a man preaching and what's he doing? He's explaining the Scripture and he's calling
hell-fire and damnation on the heads of the religious elite. Knox was true to his fellows in the Reformation,
like the rest of them, he was one who explained the meaning of Scripture. Dabney has some interesting insight into that. He said there are three stages through which
preaching has repeatedly passed. It cycles through these. He says the first stage of preaching, when
it comes to the front, is Scripture truth, Dabney says, in Scripture dress? What does he mean by that? All the truths of the Bible presented from
the Bible as the Holy Spirit presented them. And Dabney says that in history that's always
the golden age. Biblical truth in biblical garb. Biblical truth in biblical dress. That is biblical truth from Scripture itself. Out of the Scripture, illustrated from the
Scripture, compared with the Scripture. Then comes the decline and you get Scripture
truth in cultural dress. That is the truth of the Bible molded into
conformity to cultural moods. God's truth is now stripped down, it is shorn
of its total power. You say, "Oh, well I believe in those doctrines. I believe in those things." But you've just stripped the garments off
them that the Holy Spirit revealed and clothed those doctrines with in Scripture. So you go from Scripture truth in Scripture
dress to Scripture truth in cultural dress. And third step is cultural philosophy and
no Scripture, contradicting the Bible. And Dabney for his day and I guess I would
do the same today would plead for Bible truth in Bible dress as the Holy Spirit gave it
to us. You hear people say, "Well, yeah, we have
to do those truths that are in the Bible. But want to get them out of the Bible, get
them into contemporary settings and get them into things that people can understand, can
identify with. And they stripped part of the Bible because
not only is the doctrine in the Bible, but it's dressed in the biblical context which
is inspired by the Holy Spirit, everlastingly true and by God's own design the best way
to communicate the truth. There's a fifth reason we do exposition. The first three have to do with honoring the
Trinity and submitting to Scripture. Number five, and this is a very important
one and very personal one. We do Bible exposition because it connects
the preacher personally to the regular sanctifying grace of Scripture...it connects the preacher
personally to the regular sanctifying grace of Scripture. Look, I'm just like you. All preachers are. We're just Christians on the same journey
that you're on. That's why Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy
4:15, "Let your progress be evident to all...let your progress be evident to all." People ought to see you being sanctified. You need to be an example to the believers,
he says to Timothy. They should be able to follow you. Show yourself an example to the believer. Let me tell you something. If you don't do the hard work all the time
of digging out the meaning of Scripture, you will forfeit the most powerful tool for your
own sanctification. And an unsanctified preacher is on all fronts
a tragedy. Not that any of us attains perfect sanctification,
we press toward the mark. Not that any of us is what we should be, certainly
I'm not. But I will tell you this, week by week by
week by week, year after year, decade after decade of studying in the Word of God with
a diligent effort to dig down as far as I can go to draw out the glories of its truth
is the most sanctifying enterprise that any person could ever engage in because the work
of the Word is wrought in the preacher's heart. You wonder why somebody like John Calvin say,
what was such a profound Christian, "Well, maybe there are some ways to understand that. Every two weeks he preached ten sermons, all
of them expositions of Scripture...every two weeks, ten of them, different from 1536 to
1564. He had a three year hiatus when he had to
get out for his life, go to another city. And when he came back, he picked up at the
next verse that he had left three years before. IN the meantime, through all of this, his
wife died, he was sick, very sick, spitting blood, gout, kidney stones, persecution. He had nine children to raise without a wife,
some of them not even his own. He was trying to run the city, solve all the
issues. But the Word did its work in his heart. It was the diligence in the study that made
him what he was. I think about Luther. A Sunday at Wittenberg went like this, for
Luther. At five A.M. he exposited an epistle. At 10 A.M. he exposited one of the gospels. At five P.M. he exposited a passage from the
Old Testament. In a four-year period, from 1520 to 1524,
Martin Luther wrote 700 different works on the Scripture. This is where the preacher must be if the
preacher would be sanctified in any measure because that's what the Word does in his life. I love what it says about Ezra, Ezra 7:10. Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of
the Lord and to practice it and to teach its statutes and ordinances in Israel. First to study it and then to do it and then
to teach it. And I was saying this to somebody somewhere
on this trip in some language that I don't remember at the moment that if I never preached
a sermon in my life, I wouldn't change the way I was able to live my life. If I never had the opportunity to preach,
I still would want to have spent my life in the study of the Word of God. If I never had anything to say to anybody
because of its own work in my life. I think one of the reasons we have to many
disappointments in ministry with men is because they have the position but they do not discipline
themselves in the study of the Word of God so that the Word of God can do its sanctifying
work. All right, let me give you a sixth and I don't
know how far we'll go. This is an important one and I've thought
about saying this a lot of different ways but I'll give you what I've got. Another reason to do Bible exposition is because
it...it provides spiritual depth and transcendence for the souls of people. It provides spiritual depth and transcendence
for the souls of people. If I were to spin that negatively, it would
sound like this. A failure to do Bible exposition removes spiritual
depth and transcendence from the souls of people. Another way to say it would be this, unless
you have a deep understanding of the Word of God and therefore the God of the Word,
your worship is crippled. We hear a lot about worship today and I just
want you to know music doesn't produce worship. Music does not produce worship. No kind of music will produce worship. Worship is a heart attitude. What produces worship is understanding of
the truth. Whatever you know to be true about God, whatever
you believe to be true about God is what informs your worship. And so a superficial view of God will produce
superficial worship no matter how loud it is, no matter how many attending accoutrements
are added, smoking mirrors and microphones and loud speakers and you can crank it up
like the proverbial rock concert...that's not going to produce worship no matter what
you do. Worship is not produced by music. Worship is produced by understanding. It is what I know to be true that sets my
soul on fire. And worship is from the heart, boiling over. Music is simply a vehicle but it will never
be anything more than I bring to it. So I say, the continual faithful systematic
exposition of the Scripture produces depth...depth of understanding about God, about Christ,
about all things revealed in Scripture. And it is that depth that produces the transcendence. In other words, the further down you go in
your understanding, the higher you go in your worship. And most people just kind of live in the flatland
in the middle. They have a sort of a minimal view of the
Word of God and consequently their worship is little more than an orchestrated event. While people would say, "Boy, we had a great
worship time tonight because it was loud and because it was well done and because it was
in the vernacular that people liked...that is not how you evaluate worship. True worship is a heart exercise, it doesn't
need music, it doesn't need other people, it doesn't need a leader, it doesn't need
an orchestrator. But we love corporal worship, we're lifted
up. We need that expression. We'll explode if we don't have that. This church sings and it sings loud. And why? Because it understands deeply the things that
it sings about. People say, why do you sing the hymns? Why do you sing the hymns? Because they convey theology. Look, I'm not in to the 7/11...seven words
repeated eleven times. That doesn't do anything for me. I like a hymn that's got some nuance, some
subtlety, some expressions of theology. The reason those things are around is because
they've been good in a lot of generations, because they convey things. We're still singing what Luther wrote because
we understand it and it gives expression to what we know to be true. When you're taken down deep into the Scripture
and you understand the revelation that comes from the Scripture, you will be taken high
in your worship. And I'll tell you something else. You'll be more drawn to the kind of worship
that is elevated and dignified and high quality because that's how you understand God. The more lofty your understanding of God,
the more exalted your understanding of Christ, the more exalted will be your worship, the
more lofty will be your expression. I see a lot of things that are called worship,
but they are highly emotional, feeling induced experiences that may be a far cry from being
in awe of God's glory, in awe of Christ's majesty, in awe of the wonder of the work
of the Spirit, in awe of the glories of Holy Scripture. But when you do Bible exposition, when the
Word of God is explained and the revelation of God is then unfolded to the soul, it's
the depth and richness of that knowledge that causes the transcendent elevation of worship. Well, I'll give you one more. That's good. I got 15, we'll go to seven. Doing Bible exposition causes the preacher
to give full attention to the revelation of God...full attention to the revelation of
God. In other words, you have the mind of Christ
on all matters. It's not just this subject and that subject
and bouncing here and bouncing there and systematic careful exposition lets Christ, the head of
the church, not only speak to His church but to speak to His church on every issue in His
revelation. I wish I had enough years to do the whole
Old Testament. I would love to be able to do that. But I knew I wouldn't be able to do that,
so given the choice I knew as a minister of the New Covenant that it needed to be the
New Testament. I'm so thankful that the Lord allowed me to
do that, to be able to tell you all that the New Testament contains for the church from
the Lord of the church, the head of the church, from the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in
expressing the will and the nature of our God. I'm grateful that I have been able to understand
the full revelation of the New Testament insofar as I've understood it. I'm grateful that I'm not left in the shallows
and there are things about the revelation of Christ that I have not considered. You just wonder about some people who sit
in a church where they hear only a certain message in a certain way, nuanced a certain
way and they never get beyond it. And so they don't hear Christ speak fully
on every issue. So important. And again, that overlaps what we said about
Christ being the head of the church and about us having the mind of Christ. Now, let me close by saying this. What I'm saying to you is this mandate, this
commitment, this approach to ministry is what we do here and it was we train people to do
wherever they go, whether it's our men going out to pastor churches, we have nine men that
went out to start new churches with Grace Advance. And this is what they will do. We have more missionaries heading to the mission
field now, along with all the ones that are out there. I spent time with some of our best missionaries,
and what do they do? They do exactly that. They follow the mandate to preach the Word
and these are the reasons they do it. And, believe me, when they come to the end
of the day and they look back, they're going to be able to understand that whatever happened
happened because they were faithful to the Word of God. And the record will be established on that
faithfulness before God. So it's a joy and a delight. This is what we do; this is what goes on in
all these places. And what is so interesting to me is that they
just reproduce it. They keep doing it, they train other people,
those people go train other people. I met a man who had been trained by our men
who has now gone to Israel to work with Russian immigrants in the land of Israel and establish
a training center to train men there to do what he's been trained to do in Israel and
it just goes and goes wherever they go. We are trying in a small humble way to start
a kind of reformation back to the exposition of Scripture. All that to say that what I do is not simply
cultural mandate, it is not simply a preference on my part, it is a responsibility that I
have before God to preach the Word. It is all I know to do. And I'm so thankful the Lord has raised up
so many and more coming all the time to go and do the same thing. You can pray for them. You know, we have a great ministry here, the
Lord has blessed us abundantly, some of them are struggling in places where it's much more
difficult than it is for me and for us who are here, they need our prayers, they need
our encouragement. Be a real encouragement to our missionaries
every way you can and continue to support them and give to the faith promised whatever
you can trust the Lord for so that we don't lose the opportunity to continue to sustain
them and to send more to do this great work. We're not able to do this in our own strength. We wouldn't say that for a moment. Its dependence on the Holy Spirit that gives
us understanding of the Scripture, no matter how diligently we work at it. We can't understand it on our own, we can
only understand it if the Spirit of God gives us that understanding but He promises to do
that...to lead us into truth. That was not only a promise to the ones who
wrote the Scripture but it is to those of us who are studying it that we would be illuminated
by Him. So we give Him all the glory for what He has
done. It is the Word that does the work, not us. We're humble, we dig down the best we can
in this ministry and all praise goes to the Spirit of God who enables the Word of God
to go forth with power. You are part of a very unusual, unusual ministry
extended around the world. It's the best kept missionary secret on the
planet. All kinds of high promotion enterprises around
the world, this is really a powerful ministry that has gone out from our church and we want
you to know that it needs your prayer and continued support and you need to hold these
missionaries up on a regular basis and pray that God will raise up even more and let's
see what He'll do until Jesus comes. Father, we thank You for our time tonight,
just to talk from the heart on this important issue. We thank You for Your Word and we thank You
that we have it in our hands. What an incalculable treasure it is, without
it we would have nothing. We have no intuition, we have no insight,
we have no wisdom given to man apart from the revelation of Scripture that could ever
lead us to the truth that saves and sanctifies. We thank You for Your Word, we thank You for
faithful men who have preserved it and brought it down to us under the care of the Holy Spirit. Thank You for faithful preachers and teachers
and thank You for especially our missionaries and what a joy it was to be in their presence
and see the great work that You're doing through their faithful efforts. Bless them, protect them, guard them, use
them, empower them, multiply their influence for the advancement of the glory of the gospel
of Christ, we pray in His name. Amen.
