G3 2020 | Thursday Q&A Session

well good afternoon we are going to begin our question and answer time as you can see we obviously have quite a robust panel with us here I'll just go down the list here you're familiar I would imagine with most that's not all of these men we have Steve Lawson John MacArthur Bodhi Bachman we have paul Washer Josh bytes and Tim chalice so some of our questions were provided through different mediums some of them are going to be precise and others more general this is more of a general question and it goes along with the theme of our entire conference but we've been asked what a we're at a conference on worship so how would you define worship of theologically and practically and obviously we're not dividing theology from practicality but I think they're getting at theology being the reason the substance the object of worship practically being how it personally works itself out in daily life or in the context of the church very broad but maybe overly broad so how would you precisely maybe beginning with the some of you could speak to the home church context and some of you if you could speak to family we don't want to lose sight of the fact that worship is not exclusively a public thing or is there a place for private worship or are we being too broad too precise how does that work itself out what's the rationale for your your the biblical rationale figure address me I would consider worship first of all never separate worship from Sola scriptura when you do you're putting your soul in Dane so worship is an outward expression of an inward estimation of God now but you but you need to understand this that right there in itself is is dangerous that that estimation must be cultivated by the study of Scripture and that expression must be guided and submitted to the scripture if it's any other thing well you're a braver man than I am you're rushing in where angels would fear to tread that's a simple way to understand worship and I affirm what Paul just said the simple way to understand worship is any act thought or word that brings honor to God from the part of one who knows him and loves him so as a follow-up to that with a failure to be intentional throughout your life be if you're not worshiping are you sinning are you are you and disobedient so if you're not intentionally worship yeah any spot word or act that includes all forms of obedience all obedience to God conformity to his will in his word is worship anybody else would anybody like to speak to matters of even on the so we're very familiar with the church context that's probably going to be preached about fairly exhaustively but what about family we hear the is it a cliche to talk about family worship is it a trending thing or is that something this should be expressed in our homes as well as in our church context my favorite definition of worship was from Bruce leaf blood he says true worship happens when we set our minds attention and hearts affection on the Lord praising him for who he is and for what he has done and one of the things that's so appropriate about that is that that it can happen should happen must happen regardless of the context and so when we're gathering together family devotions what are we doing we're setting our minds dissonant arts affects it on the Lord we're praising the Lord for who he is and for what he's done but also because it's backed up to Paul's point how do we know who he is how do we know what he's done that always drives us back to the word so it's not it's not just how we feel right it's not just where we are it's not just us around things it's not just if any of those things it's who God is as he's revealed himself and what he's done as has been revealed in the word and in the history of God's people I think if you just look at the Book of Psalms the hymnal of Israel you would understand that that the Book of Psalms is a constant recitation of the attributes of God and the acts of God attributes and acts attributes and acts and the more of his attributes we know and understand them the more praise we can offer the closer we can get to what he deserves the more acts of his we know from Genesis to Revelation as God has revealed himself in history through the Scriptures and then beyond in the history of the church the more of God's acts we know in in the narrative of the text of the Word of God and throughout the rest of history under the power of the Holy Spirit and spread of the gospel the nobler our worship becomes but it is never connected to an emotional stimulation it is always connected to knowledge to the understanding of who he is what he has done and for that we continue to give Him glory and that's essentially what the character of the whole Book of Psalms does now there's a incredible diversity of churches here we don't have a necessarily a polling of what kind of churches denominations and otherwise they're represented but even if we were we're here in the heart of Atlanta so we're we're surrounded by Southern Baptist churches but you can have one Southern Baptist Church the worships in this this style and another and this be at the preaching the music and otherwise there seems to be a culture to different churches and then you go overseas and there's certainly a different culture to worship and so that being said one of the questions we were provided is when it comes to worship this person would ask many of my friends and family members attend churches that place great emphasis on pleasing the audience with a specific type of music or other cultural things so what advice would you give when addressing those things with their family is it a matter of culture is it a preference manner or as their threshold when it's just satisfying the interest of man and it's post the threshold of failing to worship well it's a fundamental inversion of what worship really isn't worship is intended to please it's it's not for the congregation per se or primarily and nor for visitors or seekers it is for God does this bring pleasure to God we're worshiping God and he has given us instruction in his word both old and new testaments what these parameters are and we want our worship to be directed by scripture to God himself and if you're trying to be culturally relevant you're taking the wrong cues you don't want your worship to be as much like the world as it can possibly be you want it to be as much like heaven as it can possibly be so you need to look into the courts of heaven and even see what worship is taking place there and dr. MacArthur has just mentioned the Book of Psalms which was the hymnal in the Old Testament it is so co centric it is so god centered and there's nothing really sensitive about imprecatory songs in fact that would shock an unbeliever who was to come into the temple and here these imprecatory psalms being sung and being taught so that there is a great need for us to get this right that it's directed to God and God has already given us the basis and the guidelines for which this worship is to take place and so I remember once I asked dr. MacArthur so what how do we go about this and so I just lob him a softball I said do we do we pull the neighborhood do we survey the neighborhood and find out what they want in a worship service and John said yes you do that and then do the total opposite so I mean that's basically it the natural man the carnal man does not want a high truth of God he just want wants what God can give but not what not who God is so that this has got to be directed to those who are believers that's what a worship service is it is believers coming together to worship God we do want unbelievers to come but we're not catering at that level that there's a much higher level with which our worship is to take place and even the tone of the worship should reflect the the awesomeness of who God is not nothing cavalier our our flippant about this and dr. MacArthur one more time we don't do junior high worship in the adult service it's adult worship and and so that puts it at a much higher level you know I think it's some 86 where david says unite my heart fear you this is the single-hearted reality of worship it is directly about at God alone and if there's any division in the heart and that worship is not pleasing to God it is wholehearted look it's the premise of it is love the Lord your God with all your heart all your soul all your mind all your spring that is the United heart that has love or God and God alone when we define love and it's ultimate sense and make companion of worship with it so I think we we don't see that today we don't see hearts completely united in the fear of God and the praise of God we see a bunch of distracted people a bunch of people who are looking for an experience and are given that and I think what Steve said is true if you think the congregation is the audience or worship you do not understand worship at all God is the audience sometimes you hear people say I don't go to that church because I don't get anything out of it really you thought it was for you so yes please in missions you know I've been to grace community I've seen the acquire the orchestra the strings the brass it's beautiful then built from there to maybe the setting in Zambia with the bode or the agua de una tribe in the middle of the jungle of Peru there will be some variation but but here's the key you know we need to be very careful we're not attacking the symptom we need to attack problem the problem always comes back to the preaching and the preacher if that preacher is preaching the attributes of thought if he's treat if he's preaching the depravity of man the Magnificent work of redemption in Christ if they screeching who we are now and how we are to walk even though there will be slight variations in culture you will see God honored so it always comes back to that the main problem is what is being preached from the pulpit and and pastors that has to do also with how much time will we pull away to do the primary task they thought has given us that is to proclaim his word if you'll do that so many other problems we'll just sort of go away well Paul is saying something very profound the guy with the guitar is not the worship leader the pastor is the worship leader he is the one that informs the people of the truth that becomes the base foundation in the basis of their worship if you're a pastor you are the worship leader God has called you to inform those people about God and in every possible way fill up their knowledge the knowledge of the Lord is critical the foundation of worship look you can only go as high in worship as you can go down deep into the truth of the word of God where God Himself is revealed so pastors are worship leaders other people with guitars or musical instruments are facilitators of the worship of the people that is basically being produced in their lives by the input of the Word of God coming from that pulpit and from other teachers in the church when we when we plan worship services at Grace Fellowship Church we want unbelievers to be welcome but we don't want unbelievers to be comfortable we think there's a significant difference we want to welcome them in but we're welcome them in as spectators of distinctly Christian worship if they're comfortable it probably means we're not worshiping in a distinctly Christian way because we've we've watered it down in some way we welcome them in so they can hear some very hard truths like the hard truth that you are an enemy of God and the hard truth that you will go to hell if you don't turn to to Christ Jesus and repent of your sin so we do welcome people into our worship but we work we welcome them not to be comfortable anyway I don't want to be comfortable in the world I don't want the world to be comfortable in the church these these are different spheres and so come in and watch our worship spectate see it and hopefully be changed by it but but hopefully don't be comfortable and I think yeah I think the point is this we want them to feel welcome and secondly we want them to know they do not belong there [Laughter] and they're not part of the worshiping community so in this particular context there's probably a lot of pastors in the pews as it were so we've extolled the place of preaching and worship and we've made it clear that you're not a sufficient worshipper until you know the scriptures and you're applying them to your lives so how does a pastor sitting out here as self evaluate evaluate the worship service so as to gear it they may a man what you're saying but now have no clue in terms of how to effectively put it into place in their church context so what would you encourage them any of you that would be a help to them in terms of they would all say yes we're preaching the scriptures but how do we become that intentional as intentional as you're saying worship service needs to be in alignment with the Word of God and with the truth and sound doctrine so therefore the music the songs the hymns choruses the anthems it must all be truth base and and not really even experience oriented but but the truth of God's Word being sung the scripture should be read and you can make a case from the New Testament for the scripture being read to the entire congregation certainly the preaching of the word of God and then certainly the prayer a pastoral prayer that where the pastor is leading the congregation upward to the very throne of grace and the prayer should be laced with scriptures and scripture allusions and I think of even the sermons of John Calvin when he came to the end of his sermons they all ended basically with the same paragraph where he would conclude his sermon with what would be really a doxological prayer but he would put his arms as it were around the congregation and lift them up to the throne of grace and leave them court corn deo in the very presence of God so so it is the whole worship service is to bring people before the throne of grace through the preaching through the singing through the reading of scripture through the pray and and from start to finish it should be God exalting Christ centered spirit empowered scripture driven all of that for the glory of God what one practical thing and this is something that did it wasn't original to me but I had a mentor of mine to suggest to me that it was important to be as purposeful about the songs that we sing as we are about the sermons that we preach and what he was getting at was oftentimes we'll schedule out preaching for six months or a year and making sure recovering this that and the other but oftentimes we don't think about what things were confessing when we sing what doctrines are we covering when we sing what doctrines are we not covering when we sing and how is this fitting in and our prayers and all these other things that we're doing how that we're doing how are all of these things fitting into the overall diet that we're serving to God's people and I think when we do that we changed from I have to create an experience to this is just another part of the way that we're feeding God's people and all of these different elements have to come along so that we're feeding them a balanced diet so that we're feeding the kind of things that will as we've already heard deepen our understanding of the world of who he is and of what he's done and make sure that we're broadening as we're deepening and not just going through doing the same things on repeat you know Stevie you would know this from your study of the reformers in church history pastor picked hymns oh you know throughout the whole history of the church essentially the pastor picked him he also wrote they have as many pastors were the hymn writers there wasn't a role for the pastor to preach and then a bunch of people completely independent of him and deciding what kind of music is going to go on the companionship as bori says between whoever's directing that and the theology of those hymns that reinforces what the whole sermon is about is critical and it's when you're of course if you're teaching the Word of God with depth and sound doctrine and richness you know seven eleven choruses seven words repeated eleven times don't work so the pastor has to train people or in a smaller Church that's part of your pastoral beauty pastoral prayer to me is is as important as the sermon its thought-out it's planned because it I'm acting as a priest lifting the people before God asking the Lord to cleanse our hearts to forgive our sins it's not about praying for sick people and issues that are temporal it's about bringing as like a priest the people before God that's the pastoral prayer that's a vital act of confession contrition affirmation and expressing worship as well as petition all of that that's parallel to the to the preaching the preaching with the praying you bring the people to God with preaching you bring God's Word down for the people serious prayer and careful thoughtful somewhat extended meeting of Scripture will deepen the seriousness of any services there was an evangelist you guys may remember named John Blanchard from England member John Blanche we have probably thirty years ago he came to our church and we read the scripture protracted portion of Scripture he said I've been coming to America I think we said for ten or twelve years this is the only church I've ever been in where scripture is read and what does the the Apostle Paul say to Timothy until I come read the scripture read the scripture but but but that's so boring people don't want to read the scripture so turn all the lights out turn it into a nightclub and entertain them with quasi Christian and a cheesy music that is not worship you set the tone when you pray the prayer of the priests that lifts the people to the Lord and asked him to cleanse their sins you you make the service serious service when you reverently carefully bottlee cheer the Word of God being read and then when you speak the Word of God preach his word there's just no way trivial worship can partner with that I think that's not talking about style either I'm just talking about the content I think something's extremely important is to remember our heritage and the Reformation in being Protestant and there's something as a spirit of Roman Catholicism and what I see today Roman Catholicism went out into the world looked at culture and then determined how can we conform Christianity to culture I see the new church plant strategies and everything doing basically the same thing for example the people can't take long sermons the people can't listen to two chapters of Scripture being read they can't bear with long pastoral prayers but the fact of the matter is is we see in Calvin we see in the Reformers we see in Christianity in general that it comes into a culture that is basically in bondage to all this kind of ignorance and lifts it up so that it can listen to a two-hour sermon it can learn to listen to the reading of Scripture and I had had the great privilege of being part of but it's now a church for a church plant and the first elder there Anthony Matheny and others and that was the attitude they took in the very beginning said we are going to read scripture we are going to have pastoral prayers we are going to have congregational praying and the people learned now it took a couple of years but they learn to do it and now they could find no other way to do church and then what's amazing is we started having all these young college students coming because they were just tired of superficiality so we need to believe in the power of the gospel and the power of the word of God to go into a culture and take people who can only play video games and turn them once again into people at the capacity to use their mind but worship God so how does it work that's that you say we believe in the Bible at our church and where the Bible explicitly defines a worship service and the elements of that service you don't care about that really and supposed to believe you're serious about the Bible and you expect me to be obedient to the Word of God when you're not even doing that until I come read the scripture I I command that prayers be offered about the lord's table is that is that an important thing a serious thoughtful time at the table of the Lord contemplating our sinfulness and the work of the cross you do that do you do that is baptism a priority is the exposition of the Word of God with conviction and clarity what about moral issues you say you believe the Bible you confront moral sins in the culture are you explicit about those or are you afraid to offend somebody if all of that isn't happening in your church at the level of leadership and corporate worship why would anyone believe that it was important to follow the Bible when you don't even do that now obviously the authority as we've plainly established that this is the scriptures that's where we'd say you want to learn how to worship better you want to know how to do Church better but the Lord has gifted his church with teachers and in the form of writing specifically so if we could just go down the list or down the panel here start with Tim chao-li's if is there a particular book or resource that has informed or better enlightened these principals and just refine them in your own thinking III think the book that's informed my view of worship more than any other maybe this is cheating a little bit is our Sea Scrolls the holiness of God no book did more to me to show me the utmost transcendent holiness of God and then reframe my worship from there once you understand who God is you'll understand how we ought to be worshipped you'll know you can't be you can't be messing around with trite and silly worship our God is very very serious and worthy of serious worship say the same exact thing that tilma said as far as the the holiness of God by sprawl was one that I read years ago that really helped me think in terms of the fact that we are worshiping a holy sovereign God and he is worthy of worship but I also read worship the ultimate priority by dr. MacArthur that's been extremely helpful for me and then also reading aww pink on the attributes of God has been extremely helpful to me so I gave three because he took mine my first one you know they stole my fire but it was as a young man I was in Peru I was a just in my twenties and someone gave me this big I guess it was some sort of eh tape thing of RC sproule and the holiness of God and I had a little TV with a screen about ten inches and a little chair and I put that in there and I found myself within a few minutes paying great attention then I found myself city seating on the edge of the seat by the time it all finished I found myself laying on the floor it was who is this God and then that led me to the scripture to say I'm going to spend the next few years looking at the attributes of God brethren I can't tell you how many problems that solves in every aspect of your personal life ministry Church everything my people perish for a lack of knowledge of um I'm an insane there's a couple for me one lectures to my students really that whole idea of the the the preacher and the role of the preacher of the role of the man handling the Word of God there's a recent one I'm going beyond the five points which gets to the idea of applying our theology and the Reformation doctrines beyond the tulip and getting at our ecclesiology and our understanding of of what what worship truly is I would suggest if you want to start at some point absorb the depth of the character of God there's a really rich wonderful new volume by Michael Reaves called delighting in the Trinity I will say a little about the Trinity tonight but it really is as insightful and in-depth and heart moving as anything I've ever read on the Trinity it's called the lighting in the Trinity and it draws you in to the reality that God is a Trinity by virtue of the fact that he identifies himself as a father and it's essential that God be a relational God because only if God were relational could he love and oh he could not love if there was no one else to love so the Trinity is essential to understanding that glorious reality of the love of God which was an attribute of God's eternally long before he ever created anything to love of a temporal nature so I would suggest that that's a really fresh insightful place to start I just want to say that that idea was in my sermon before I heard so when I preached my sermon in a little while and that's in there and I was I was already gonna do that I didn't just [Applause] mean sin you're going stop stop yeah well we've all we've all been given bits and pieces but we're likely to say yeah I would say three books that have already been mentioned and so only just to re-emphasize them I first read the attributes of God by aw paint and I guess what flashes to my mind even before I read the attributes of God was I read a body of divinity by Thomas Watson and what struck me when I opened that book I was in seminary pulled it off the shelf I opened it to the table of contents in the whole first page was just the being the attributes and the tri-unity of God the second page was every other area of systematic theology as he preached through the Westminster Confession it was life-changing for me I had never there was more of God in the table of contents than there was in contemporary Christian books I then read aw to a pink on the attributes of God which has a real devotional feel to it the next book and I was at a Shepherd's conference in the 1980s dr. MacArthur and you had just preached a series at Grace Church on the ultimate priority and you had or the books just came and were distributed we were the first ones to get a copy of the ultimate priority at the Shepherd's conference and I remember going out in the patio there at the church and just reading and devouring that book and being given new categories of what is not proper worship what is proper worship it was so well developed expositionally and in our Sea Scrolls book the holiness of God is sealed it so those four books were critically important and I do think I would encourage everyone to read a copy of a body of divinity interestingly enough the the foreword was written by Charles Haddon Spurgeon and he mentions how Thomas Watson died in his prayer closet and that he probably didn't know that he had died I would like that one that he just went from glory to glory he just went from the presence of God to the presence of God so it's worth the book just for Spurgeon's forward to it very good I'm sure that's gonna be very very helpful to many of the folks here Josh by so I'd like to ask you a specific question on the complementarianism being that you've addressed this in writing and in a variety of context but I want to set it up first that obviously we recognize the Lord generously esteems women he very clearly does so in the scriptures and I know everyone here and I specifically know with Josh having our families walk together that our wives strengthen our preaching and teaching they strengthen us as men and pressing us to holiness every sermon I preached is informed in some measure my wife didn't write it but she strengthened my hand in that process and she is a Bible student I trust her input but there's this content with the role that the Lord has provided and women in terms of culture and preaching and teaching in public context could you speak to that please I think that the issue of complementarianism is often confused simply because of emotions the issue is not valued the issue is not worth the issue is not giftedness the issue is very much centered on what does God say and so when we think about these issues that we're facing today questions that were hearing being raised today within denominational circles I think it would do us well to just refuse to be ashamed of what God says in his word a long time ago I remember wrestling through the doctrines of grace and It was as if I was trying every way Under the Sun to find the loophole to explain away divine sovereignty in salvation and then when God finally broke through in my heart and mind and showed me in Scripture what the Bible actually says about salvation how it's it's all by God and for God that it really just took the burden of pressure off of me because at that point I could say this is what the Bible says and so then it just really took the pressure off of me so when I think when we read the Bible we see from the very beginning headship was established by God we see that in the garden you go throughout that the Word of God and you see that that leadership was established and organized by God in specific ways there are roles and relationships for men and women that are just simply distinct they that they do complement one another but at the same time they are distinct and so when it comes to the church I think that we should be willing to put our fingers on the pages of Scripture and say okay what does the Bible say about the qualifications of an elder and then when we come to first Timothy Chuck number 2 verse 11 let women learn quietly well that revolutionary because women were not permitted to learn in that culture so women were too to learn within the Christian context women are to learn theology but then it goes on and says that Paul says I do not permit a woman to exercise to teach or to exercise authority over a man and then the very next verse he cites the creation account so once again you see that all of this is is God's order and it's for his glory so rather than me trying to figure out if I can attract a certain group of people or if I can maybe grow a conference to have certain you know speakers on a platform to speak to a mixed audience I think we have to ask ourselves the question what does God say in his word and then refuse to blush about that so within the context of the local church as it pertains to the office of Elder Noah a woman should not be preaching to men she is to be engaged in discipleship and not preaching to men and then when it comes to a context like this there are reasons that we have intentionally so gifted women who come and speak to the women here in this in this very conference but we're not going to have women preaching to a general session like this and why is that is it based on the fact that they're not gifted no that's not it that's not the issue is it because they're of lesser value no that's not the issue at all it's what does God say how has God ordered this and so again I'm just going to refuse to blush when it comes to the scriptures I just gonna just say this is an important issues and it's coming around in a different way because of some things that are happening in our culture the two top track athletes as far as the record books in high school in Connecticut for female runners are biological males who right now are just you know when in all sorts of stuff in track and field in Connecticut recently learned maggots not that recently anymore an MMA fight occurred we're in a biological male who had had you know sexual reassignment fought beat and fractured the skull of a woman in an MMA fight the Olympics coming up this year won't be much of an issue but I guarantee you four years from now it's going to be an issue and what's happening is womanhood is just being negated womanhood is being overrun devalued overtaken by this movement and it's interesting that because of the way that things are going now the fact that the church is a place where we're still holding firm to God's word about the distinctions between men and women and we're still holding firm to God's Word about the role of men and women and about the duty of men to protect women and for women to be cherished this this is a safe haven now in the world out there that's been all you know upset with us because of our you know our cane position on women is now allowing them to have their skulls crushed by men in the ring so I think we have an opportunity because of the craziness in our culture to actually be a bulwark against something that is completely and utterly insane and I would argue almost inhuman today yeah let me just suggest a resource this fall dr. MacArthur preached the sermon at Grace Church on why God does not allow woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man and John what was the name of that message but everyone needs to listen to that sermon and it is the best sermon that you will hear it's it's an irrefutable case from Scripture the title of that sermon yes it was a clever title what does the Bible say about women preachers I mean I didn't want to be at all obscure with that subject I wanted to make sure if somebody was looking for that they'd know that's it what does the Bible say about women preachers yeah it's an hour and 14 minutes and it covers the whole of scripture on this issue now just to comment on that a moment further some of you well you probably most of you know that Todd trio asked me a question in a Q&A and I gave a short answer [Laughter] and I don't like that I don't like this short answer idea because then it goes on the internet social media what you have is a free-for-all a food fight that never advances the truth at all you can't win because it's just the pejoratives thrown slung all over everywhere and I got so much blowback from that probably more than anything certainly more than any two words I've ever said in my entire life but I I had so much furor coming from everywhere and I so a few weeks later I gave the message that Steve mentioned and I I haven't had anybody contact me to rebut that because that would be a daunting task to untangle the clear teaching of Scripture if you fight on the soundbite level it's a free-for-all if you stand your ground carefully interpreting the Word of God it's amazing how silent the opposition to that now we have a few minutes left and one of the dangers at a conference is that people they come and they get so excited they hear wonderful teaching and preaching and singing and praying and then they go home and then they look at their churches and they're like why don't you look like that because well it's a local church it's not a conference it's not assembling people giving their best messages but there are some people here that are gonna go home to a local church where they're struggling and the tension is going to be should I stay because my church isn't healthy and so what's the threshold between the merit of a local church and driving 45 minutes to an hour to a healthy church and if two or three if you could speak on that there's a diversity of experience here so I think that'd be helpful because these people are going to disperse they're going to need some measure of wisdom and help with this well if I was given an option between being in a lukewarm cold non-theological Church or driving 45 minutes to go to a church where the word is being preached in power and the worship was authentic that would be a no-brainer for me you want to go to the church not of your convenience but of your conviction and I would ease them it you would drive 45 minutes for a lot of other things why not to worship God in the context of the local church where the Word of God is honored I know there are many considerations and I mean it can be an ailing parent it can be whatever so I I can't just universally say this applies in every situation however on the whole I would say I would make every effort to be in a church where my soul was being fed and I was being led to the throne of grace and I worship God and I was growing in the Grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ that would be exactly what I would do I just would say yeah I want to go through a whole list of the pls theological points you can make blister self first you have to decide if it's even a church is together so that the Saints and worship God is that the point this is not some evangelistic event this is not some rock concert this is not some musical thing that calls itself a church does it gather for the purpose of worshiping the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ the triune God Father Son and Holy Spirit does the word of God dominate because there's only one authority in the kingdom and that is the Word of God Christ is the head of the church he mediates his rule through his word so is it focused on God is it biblical does the Bible dominate everything it the hymns prayers the sermons the Sunday School classes is it clear that the Word of God is dominating this assembly of people on a regular basis because that's essential for a church to be a church to hear from the head of the church I don't have any authority my ministry gives me no authority my studies give me no authority the only time I have Authority is when I correctly speak the Word of God that's what you're looking for are they bold about that and will they say what the Bible says and not compromise the message not edit the Bible but be faithful to everything that it says that's why expositional preaching is so important because you can't escape anything those are the questions that you ask it has nothing to do with style and everything to do with the sense that you have come as believers are you gathering with believers for the purpose of worshiping God that worship is being informed by the Word of God which is the sole authority in the church there's another very important thing they're so serious about the reality of these things that they have a church membership and that not everybody is a part of that and that's why I said earlier you don't belong here there's serious about membership to understand that people need to be a part of that church because they confess Jesus as Lord and give evidence of the fact that that is a true confession are they concerned about discipleship and church discipline discipleship positive discipline the protective design of God for the holiness and purity of his church just follow the roadmap of Scripture when you find a church like that no matter how far away it is you need to be a part of it it's not about the style it's not about the personality of the pastor it's does the word of God dominate and is there an uncompromising commitment to that fidelity to that and then I would add this does that church express its Christian worship with joy and love because if the word of god is correctly taught it produces joy and love we need to work toward a conclusion so dr. MacArthur would you mind closing us in prayer and specifically there's going to be people here that they're gonna have heard what we said or what you men were saying they're gonna be challenged and some of them are going to be uniquely burdened with what to do and how to how to seek to honor the Lord in these decisions so if you could close us in prayer with me grace our God and Father we we thank you for fact that we are not left without the knowledge your will but rather we have full document of your divine revelation so that we will know you and know your will know what pleases you we want to offer to you that reasonable service that worship that is a fulfillment of your will for our lives we we have your word we desperately it depend on your word we have no other resource but left to ourselves with your word we would come up short because we need teachers we need shepherds we need pastors that's Oh Lord may we acknowledge that may we find our way to good books good sermons any source we can find them but beyond that Lord I pray for these people that you would lead them to a church which will be completely invested in their sanctification but it's not about an event on a Sunday it's not about making unbelievers feel comfortable but it's a place where qualified men qualified according to the New Testament first Timothy 3 Titus 1 are completely invested in the saint vacation of their flock lead them Lord to such Shepherds and I know that's a that's a bold request and I know it's your desire you want your people have such Shepherds Lord you're going to have to help us to raise up more and more of them all the time protect those faithful schools that are training those men and spread them as you see fit across this country and around the world we're dependent on what you do Lord in the leadership that you are raising up today or what the church is going to look like in the future none of us is perfect help us to understand that if the Word of God is dominant reign supreme in the church that's a good place to be whatever might be missing and may we realize that we may not have all the most excellent curriculum music experiences but if we have your word faithfully being taught that is all that we really need so Lord raise up such churches raise up such pastors strengthen those who do that and draw your people out of churches that are not concerned about their sanctification and get them where they belong so they can flourish for your glory we pray in Christ's name Amen

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Length: 53min 11sec (3191 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 21 2020