The Controversial Christ (II)
This is a transcript. It may contain small inaccuracies.
One of the most disturbing things about what is known as the church growth movement—I'm not sure if you've heard it described this way or not—the church growth movement, it's also been described as the seeker-sensitive movement. Others would talk about it as the purpose-driven model, the purpose-driven church model, and even there are elements of this thinking contained in what is now called the emerging church movement. But when you talk about all of these movements and any other takeoff of that same basic concept, there's one thing that really is quite troubling, and it is this: if you follow their teachings, if you follow their concepts, if you follow their methods, you can't find one single example among those kinds of churches of the kind of conflict between the church and the culture that you see in the Gospels, that you see in the book of Acts.
You won't see that. You can't see any of these churches coming under attack. You can't see one of these churches being maligned and hated because of their stand for the truth of the Word of God. In fact, that kind of conflict between the church and the culture is almost viewed by the church growth movement as the problem. They say, well, that's the problem. There is the barrier to evangelism. What we have to do in order to reach lost people, they say, is get rid of the conflict, get rid of the enmity.
I want us to remember that the apostles faced conflict on two fronts. They faced conflict from those who had the Scriptures in their day. They faced conflict from Judaism, apostate Judaism, and I think there are some in the church growth movement that would sort of identify with that. They would say something like this, “You know what, we're just going through what the Lord Jesus went through. We're just going through what the apostles went through. We're new. We're different. We're innovative. We're trying new ways, pragmatic ways, and those are the sort of, you know, the people who are really religious and starchy, they don't like that.”
They try to identify with the apostles in that way, but we've got to remember something: that the apostles faced conflict not only from those who were religious legalists of the day, but they also faced conflict from the pagans around them. There was a clear recognition among the pagans that the disciples, the apostles, were preaching another God—the one true God, the living God—and they understood that to follow the Christian God was to have a completely different lifestyle, and that requires a radical, tectonic shift transformation. There was a clear recognition that if the message the apostles were preaching, if it is true, then it meant that their world would be turned upside down, and you find that language in the book of Acts.
Far from this being the case with the church growth philosophies, the Christian mission from their standpoint, from their worldview, the Christian mission is not a confrontation with the world and with its philosophies. No, no, they say. Rather, it is a communication of ‘sameness’ with a twist—sameness with a twist. This is how you reach the world, they say. This is how you reach the world of lost humanity. We have to tell them that we're basically the same, but then with a gospel twist.
We say to the world, we really like you. We like what you like. We enjoy what you enjoy. We're about fun and entertainment and excitement and activity and individuality and independence and all sorts of things. We're no different from you. We've just found something that makes it all more fulfilling. And so we're not going to preach about sin. We're not going to preach about the judgment of God, the wrath of God. We're not going to preach about hell. We're not going to preach about any of it. In fact, we're not going to preach. We're not going to preach the Scripture. We're going to stay positive. Positive all the way—fashionable, comfortable. We're going to win you with our winsomeness, and then we'll deal with the rest at some point in time later, perhaps, maybe.
That's the church growth philosophy in a nutshell. And all the while, when you look at the testimony of Scripture concerning the time when our Lord was on this earth, you don't find that He was considered very motivational, fashionable. You don't find Him avoiding the subjects that many of these church gurus avoid, and you don't find the absence of conflict or suffering. Our Lord suffered, didn't He? He was maligned, wasn't He?
And then you move from His ministry on the earth—after His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension—then you look at His disciples, you find that they face the same opposition that He did. Not just from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles, the pagan world. Last week we began to look at verse 19 by making the point that in verse 19 you see clearly the reality of division, and it wasn't something that was just a one-time thing. The Scripture says, "A division occurred, ‘palin’-again-among the Jews because of these words," and not just more than once on this occasion, but if you go through the Gospel of John, you will see it again and again, many occasions.
In fact, it's getting more and more intense, and it's going to eventually lead to His arrest and His mock trials in Calvary, Golgotha. Here you have the Prince of Peace, and yet wherever He goes, there's what? Division. And so we talked last week about what is our understanding of this peace. He's the Prince of Peace. What is our understanding of this peace? We know that the Word of God teaches that we are to be a people who make peace a priority. We are to strive after that which makes for peace, and we saw that Christians are people characterized by peace.
We're supposed to be peacemakers. And we saw that this is because our God is the God of peace, and our Savior is the Prince of Peace. In fact, the Gospel we preach is the Gospel of peace. It's the good news of peace with God. Why is it, then, that there's so much division whenever the Gospel, this Gospel, is truly and boldly proclaimed and declared? And how are we to think about our responsibility to preach the Gospel and to confront the culture with its lost condition and our responsibility to pursue that which makes for peace? How do we fit these two things together?
We saw last time that the enmity cannot be removed in some artificial way. It cannot. The reason why there's enmity between the world and the church, if the church is being what the church is meant to be, the reason why there's this enmity there is the cause of the truth. It is because of the light. Lost men do not love the light. They don't like the light. They don't love the light. In fact, lost men love sin and they hate the light because the light exposes their sin. And so they hate the light, anything associated with the light.
So we talked about the fact that the church has to come to grips with this: that if we're going to faithfully proclaim the Gospel, we have to expect that there will be opposition, division. We have to know that we have to expect opposition. We have to know that the message of the cross is a message that is hated in a world that is broken and full of sin. And we said that when we don't understand that, when we don't grasp that, and when we think that peace means that all men will love us and all men will speak well of us, when we think that we have a responsibility to remove enmity apart from conversion, the new birth, that the enmity can somehow be removed apart from men and women coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, when that is the case, then all of a sudden the church begins to fall into errors and sins.
And the first error we touched on last Lord's Day, we considered last Lord's Day, is this: that the church, when it misunderstands this peace, the church misunderstands the profound nature of the problem we're addressing. What has the Lord called us to address with His Word? What has He commissioned us to go after with the Gospel? What is the real problem? It's not that the world doesn't have enough entertainment. We saw that last week, right? That's not the issue. That's not the problem. It's not that the world just needs a little, you know, psychological fix. No, no. It's not a matter of, you know, let's try a different philosophy. No. Just a little bit more positive thinking? Absolutely not. Or just a few little words of advice about how to have a good marriage or how to raise children and how to have a better job and how. No, beloved. That is not what Christ sent us to proclaim.
Rather, the problem in this world is that men and women are sinners. They are estranged from God. They are alienated from God. They do not have fellowship with God because of their sin. Because of their sin. And in their sinfulness, they are blinded. They are darkened in their understanding. And so they don't look at anything in this world the right way, not God, not themselves, not marriage, not raising kids, not work, not anything. And they're under the wrath of God. And if sinners die in that state, being estranged from God, they will perish for eternity in a place, in a real place called hell.
And so the church has been sent out not to deal with the peripheral issues that are symptomatic of the disease. The church has been sent out to declare the one and only message that gets to the root of the disease, and that is the Gospel. And the Gospel is a person: the Lord Jesus Christ, His doing and His dying on Calvary's cross. We've been sent to preach the Gospel. Now the Gospel in all of its fullness includes all that we have in God's words. Now I'm not saying that God doesn't have truth for marriage and raising children and all of that, but it all begins, beloved, with this fundamental truth: a man and a woman must be reconciled to God through faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
There it must begin. It must begin at that level. Because until someone has been reconciled to God, they cannot live what the Bible teaches. They can't. They have no power to do that. They're unable to do that. Their nature is turned in the opposite direction of God's truth. They don't have the understanding of God's truth. They have no power to live God's truth. And so it all begins with reconciliation with God, conversion, new birth.
We've got to stop thinking about the world's problem as being something superficial that can be healed superficially with some sort of a superficial balm. No, the problem gets to the very root of man's nature, and only salvation in Christ can set people free to experience the Creator's purpose for mankind so that men and women can glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
But there's a second error I want to point out this morning that the church falls prey to when we misunderstand these things. Not only does the church misunderstand the profound nature of the problem we're addressing, In the second place, secondly, the church misunderstands, as a result, the weapons of its warfare, the weapons of its warfare. The church misunderstands the weapons of its warfare as a result. If we underestimate what is really wrong with the human race, if we get that wrong, then we will also find ourselves relying upon insufficient means to reach them. Mark it down. If you misunderstand the gravity of a problem, then you will also misunderstand what the solution is, what the remedy is.
Let me illustrate. If you hear that there's a fire somewhere and you run out of your house or whatever, if you run out and with your own individual little fire extinguisher and then you find out it's a three-alarm blaze—I mean, this is massive—well, the means you've chosen to try to fix the problem you'll discover is what? Totally insufficient. You won't get the job done, right? And when we forget what's really wrong with the human race, with men and women, is that they don't have fellowship with God, that they're alienated from God, they're under the wrath of God, and what they need is not just some external reformation, some external fix. What they must have is nothing less than a new creation, new birth, the *from above* birth, a transformation wrought by the Spirit of God in their soul. Nothing less will do. Nothing else will get the job done.
When we forget that, then we can imagine that we can go forth with weapons that won't get the job done, won't do it. Let me put it this way. If we think that the real key to reaching the lost for Christ is the style of our music, if we think that the thing standing between sinners and Jesus is the way the pastor dresses—I mean, just put on a Hawaiian shirt, or sneakers, or baseball cap, and then people will like him, and will be drawn to him—I mean, if that's the issue, if offering dazzling effects along with our sermonettes, if it's the elimination of expository preaching, if it's the promotion of the arts, if that's what we think is really wrong, then we don't really understand what we're dealing with, do we?
The question is: what are the God-ordained means? What are the God-ordained weapons for the spiritual work that we're to be engaged in? What has God chosen for us to use? I don't get to come up with my own weapons. What is sufficient for such tasks as reaching lost men for Christ, and for discipling those who have been saved? What has God Himself ordained? Let me put it this way. Here's the answer: righteousness and truth. Righteousness and truth.
Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 10. This is an incredible passage, 2 Corinthians 10. So, righteousness and truth. It says, verse 3, "For though we walk in the flesh,”-we in a battle, we're fighting, we're fighting this battle 24 hours a day, seven days a week-”we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but,"-now listen to this-"divinely powerful for the tearing down of strongholds." But beloved, if you're taking hold of God's weapons, then you have this assurance, this blessed assurance: those weapons that God has ordained to go into the battle with—what? They have what? Divine power.
How much power is that? Omnipotent power. Infinite power. I mean, God's power is at work when you are in the war with His weapons. When you use His weapons, God's power is at work.
God's power. An omnipotent God. An all-powerful God. "Is there anything too difficult for Me," says the Lord? "What is impossible with man is possible with God." God's power.
He says, verse 5, “as we tear down speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” What are you doing when you're engaging this culture around you? What are you doing? What am I doing? You are addressing high lofty opinions that argue against the knowledge of Jesus.
Question: what weapon has God given us that will expose the false thoughts of a world like this, where everything is turned upside down, wrong side up? Good is evil, evil is good, right is wrong, wrong is right, and bitter is sweet, sweet is bitter. What weapons has God given us to address how people think? What weapon is it? Here's the answer. It's His Word. It's His Word.
Look at 2 Corinthians 6, two chapters back. It's His Word. 2 Corinthians 6, let's start [at] verse 3. Paul says, "giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited," - now watch this - "but in everything commending ourselves as ministers of God."
What commends a minister of God? What commends a minister of God? How do you recognize a minister of God, a servant of God? What do they look like? He tells us. Look, he says, "in much perseverance"—that's what they look like—"in afflictions, in distresses, in hardships, in beatings, in imprisonments, in disturbances, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unhypocritical love, in the word of truth, in the power of God."
Now let's just stop here for a moment. And, I want to ask this question: how did these apostles get into so much trouble? How? Why did they need great endurance? Why did they experience afflictions, hardship, calamity, beatings, imprisonment, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger?
What got them into so much trouble? It was the preaching of the Word, wasn't it? It's the preaching of the Word of God, wasn't it? It wasn't because they put on a bad performance and people rebelled and want their money back. No. They were preaching the Word of God. That's what got them in trouble. And what commended them, though, was not just troubles. They were also commended—look at the text—by purity and knowledge and patience and kindness and the Holy Spirit, unhypocritical love, and the word of truth. And you know what attended their ministry? Verse 7: the power of God.
And then he says this, "by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left." The weapons of righteousness. Mark this down, beloved, this morning and never forget it. The powerful church will be the Holy Church. The powerful church will be the Holy Church. Not necessarily the most creative, ingenious, but the one, the people who walk after righteousness and make use of the weapons of righteousness.
Romans 1, verse 16. Paul put it as simply as this: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the"—what? We get the English word "dynamite" from this Greek word ’dunamis’—"the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." What is the gospel? It is the power of God unto the salvation of dead sinners.
Shy away from it, not declare it, apologize for it, make it more palatable, make it more comfortable. No, no, no. He says, "I am not ashamed." Not ashamed. "I am not ashamed of the gospel," which declares to sinful dead men that he is lost, that he is in sin under the judgment of a Holy God, the wrath of a Holy God. But there's also—that there is also—a forgiveness of sin. There's a Savior given among men by whom we can be saved.
You're dead, you're alienated, you're under the wrath of God—that's your problem. But here's the good news: there's a Savior who's able to save to the uttermost those who come to Him. And I'm not ashamed of this message, for "it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."
What is sufficient for such a task? God's Word. God's Word. God did not ordain, beloved—and you will not find it in Scripture—that God ordained men and women to be brought to faith in Jesus Christ through concerts. He didn't ordain that. Through entertainment. It's not there. It's through the preaching of the Word, through the Word of God. And yet, if we look at the church of our generation, if we're being honest, where's the greatest emphasis put? Concerts, entertainments, drama.
2 Timothy 4:2. 2 Timothy 4:2: "preach the word." Timothy, preach the Word. Preach the Word. "[B]e ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and teaching." “Preach the Word, Timothy. And you don't do it, son, selectively. You do it. You preach every part of it, every part of it. Preach the Word, every part of it. The whole counsel of God. Where it calls for reproof, you reprove, Timothy. Don't shy back. Where it calls for rebuke, you rebuke, Timothy. Where it calls for exhortation, you exhort. And you do this, son, with patience, with endurance—I mean, stay at it—and you do it with careful instruction. You teach the Word.”
And here's why I'm laying this down for you, he tells Timothy, with such clear terms. Verse 3: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths."
Beloved, what is going on in our generation is serious, serious business. It's not a small thing. All around us. If we believe that there's to be no hatred for the church, if we believe that God has called us to a life of being loved by all men, if we believe that the real problem between the sinner and salvation is simply one of the church coming off as negative, then what happens is, we will abandon whatever is causing the problem.
And what is it that is the cause of the problem? The truth. Speaking the truth. That's what causes the problem. The light exposes sin and the wicked deeds in darkness. That's the problem. And so what have churches done? They've abandoned the truth in the name of making friendship, in order to “make” disciples. This is the very thing the Apostles refused to do. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 2. Paul writes, "but we have renounced" - we've renounced - ”the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God." We have renounced - ‘apeipon’ - we have denounced, we have disowned, we have utterly rejected, we've sworn off - what? what, Paul? - disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with the Word of God, adulterate the Word of God, water down the Word of God in order to appeal to the multitude.
Is it tampering with God's Word when you refuse to preach portions of it? Is it tampering with the Word of God when you refuse to use the very words that the Scripture uses and you want to replace them with something more palatable, friendly, soft on the ears? Paul says, "We refuse to tamper with the Word of God," verse 2. We refuse to tamper with the Word of God. “[B]ut by the manifestation”—’phanerósis’—revelation, disclosure - “by the manifestation of the truth” - disclosure of the truth, the plain manifestation of truth - "commending ourselves,” he says, "to every man's conscience in the sight of God." He says we're preaching to the conscience, and he says we're doing it with the open statement of truth.
The church forgets the profound nature of the problem she's dealing with, and the church, as a result, misunderstands the weapons of its warfare and imagines that it can get the job done with weapons never ordained by God. They come up with their own version. This leads to a third error that I want to make mention of today, and that is when this happens, the church imagines herself to be superior to her past. The church imagines herself to be superior to her past. That is, the church begins to be filled with pride. Pride.
In other words, it's leaning on the arm of the flesh. It's leaning on its own ingenuity. It's leaning on its own ideas and activities and programs to produce spiritual results that require divinely powerful means. And when the church, then, is confronted with the character of her ministry and someone says, “Well, that's not the character of the Apostles' ministry,” and when she's confronted with the fruit of her ministry and someone says, “Well, that's not the fruit of ministry seen with the Apostles of Jesus,” and when someone questions the methods and the means for her ministry and they say that it doesn't match that of the Apostles, she imagines that she's actually discovered a better way.
“Yes, it's true. That's not how the Apostles did it. We acknowledge that much, but listen, listen carefully. You see, we're living in a different time. We're facing new challenges, new culture, and a post-Christian culture, and the means of ministry used by the Apostles—well, that just won't get the job done anymore. Preaching - expository preaching - just won't do the job anymore. Preaching on subjects like the wrath of God won't do the job anymore. We've discovered a better way, and the proof that it's a better way—and I'll deal with that in a moment—is that it's working. They say it's working. That's the proof.”
Now we better define working. We better define working. Question: are the church growth experts of our generation better peacemakers than our Master was, the Prince of Peace? Where are the reproaches that fell on Him on their life and ministry? Where are they being hated because of their Master? How do they suffer for the message that they proclaim? What is in their message that would ever call for this division? Why is it that their pathway is a smooth way, all the way, when His pathway and the pathway of His disciples was a hard one? Are they smarter? Are they more congenial, just more friendly than He was? Are they more organized? Did they just do a better job of projecting a positive image and positive thinking?
Or could it be, could it be, that in reality they're like the church in Laodicea? The Lord Jesus addressed that church—you remember Revelation 3—and He said to that church in verse 17. Chapter 3 of Revelation, He said, "[Y]ou say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," He says, "and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked."
Oh beloved, when our ministry isn't becoming more and more like the ministry of our blessed Lord, like the ministry of His disciples, including opposition and division, it is not a sign that we're doing well. It is a sign that we're doing poorly. The church must avoid this error—feeling like we've discovered something new, that we're really superior to those who have come before us. “Yes, it's true they suffered, they had hardship, they were opposed, they were maligned, and people hated them, but we found a new and better way.” God forbid. God forbid. It's a lie.
It leads to a fourth error: the church misunderstands whom it's seeking to please. The church misunderstands whom she's seeking to please. You see, one of the reasons she feels superior and good about herself is that she's pleasing so many—the approbation of the crowd. So many people who find this approach to ministry, an approach - I mean, this kind of approach, is an approach that guts the preaching of anything that might hint at being controversial or confrontational. So let's gut it out.
An approach to ministry that guts the preaching of anything that might be considered overly theological or difficult or challenging so that the whole counsel of God cannot be proclaimed, cannot be declared. An approach to ministry that strives to be so inoffensive that they don't declare anything that might upset some people. So they strive to keep everyone happy. Let's hold hands and sing Kumbaya and we're a happy family. So the church glories in her positive reviews. I mean, if we believe that that is really our goal—for all men to speak well of us—then when they speak well of us, we feel what? Justified. “How could you say we're on the wrong path? I mean, look. Look around. So many people love us. We're so popular, including outside the media and everybody else.” And the church becomes content with her approval.
But Paul was very straightforward about the fact that was never, ever his ambition. It was never his ambition to be pleasing to men. Turn to Galatians 1. He never measured his ministry by the applause of the people, by the approval of the people. Galatians 1 [verse 8], right off the bat, I mean, he was dead serious. He didn't mince words, right? He said to them, "If [I], or an angel from heaven were to preach to you, to proclaim to you a gospel - an ‘heteros’ gospel - another gospel of a different kind, let him be” - what? - “Let him be damned to hell. Let him be ‘anathema’." He repeats it twice. You get to verse 10 of chapter 1. Look at what he says: "For am I now” - he says, “am I now seeking the favor of man, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ." No, no.
Look at verse 11 of chapter 5, same epistle: "But I, brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross would have been abolished." In other words, Paul says, I know all along how to stop the persecution. Just preach the version of the gospel that the Judaizers are happy with. I'll just preach circumcision and the offense of the cross will dissipate, will go away.
Back up to chapter 4, look at verse 29. He puts it this way: "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh was persecuting him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also." I know we're flipping back and forth. Fast-forward to chapter 6 and look at verse 12. Galatians 6:12: "As many as are wanting to make a good showing in the flesh, these are trying to compel you to be circumcised,”—now watch this—”simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ."
Do you know why some of these Judaizers teachers, why they were teaching what they were teaching? Paul says they knew that if they taught otherwise, they would be persecuted, and they wanted to avoid that. So, they caved in. They don't want their boat to be rocked. They wanted to stay positive.
What happens when we misunderstand these issues? We forget that the church exists not to get positive reviews from the world, but to hear one day, "Well done, good and faithful servant," from our Lord and Savior and Master and our Chief Shepherd. To do His will, to do His will—that's our goal. Beloved, mark it down and never forget it. We have one ambition, one towering ambition, one overarching ambition. What is it? To please Him. To please Him.
2 Corinthians 5:9, "Therefore we also have as our ambition,"—that is the towering ambition—"whether at home or absent," whether in life or death, what is it, Paul? "[T]o be pleasing to Him." That's all. That's all. To live your life and my life with this ambition: to be pleasing to Him.
This leads to another error. When the church forgets these things, the church also misunderstands that her ministry—now follow closely—her ministry is for the elect. Whoa! Her ministry is for the elect. Do we realize that today? Do we realize that all that we do in ministry, in the ministries, is ultimately for the glory of God and for the sake of His chosen people? You say everything? Everything.
On behalf of the maturity of those who have already been saved, Colossians 1:28—I love that. Paul concentrated his effort as he ministered to these churches. He says, "Him we proclaim," referring to Christ. We proclaim Him. We proclaim Jesus. "Him we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that"—this is the end in view—"we may present every man complete in Christ." That's the aim. That's the goal. To present those who belong to Him complete in Christ. That's the goal of pastors, elders.
What was Paul's goal regarding believers? Not just to gather more and more into the building, but that he might see every single one brought into maturity in Christ. Christ-likeness. Is that the goal of our churches? To see people brought to maturity in Christ? Beloved, if this is the case, then you'll have a discipling pulpit. You'll have a discipling pulpit. The Word of God will be taught because that's how people come to maturity in Christ. "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth." And, so, regarding the saved, what's our goal? To see them come to maturity. To see them come to Christ-likeness more and more and more, progressively.
But now listen to how Paul describes his ministry regarding the lost. You say, what about the lost? Maybe you're sitting here and saying, “what about the lost though? You're talking about the saved. What about the lost?” Well, listen to what he writes. I'm going to give you a chapter and verse—2 Timothy 2:10. Please turn there and read it. Let your eyes see the words, inspired Word of God. This is the inspired Word of God. It's not my opinion. This is God's Word.
2 Timothy 2:10, Paul writes, "For this reason I endure. I endure all things." Stop right there first. "For this reason I endure all things." Think about what he endured. We read a little bit of it a moment ago—the beatings, the imprisonments, the persecution, all that he went through, you know, right? All of it. Why would he go through all of this? Why would he endure all of it? Paul, tell us why.
Listen to what he says: "For this reason I endure all things for the sake of the elect." Why? Why, Paul? "[S]o that they also may obtain the salvation, which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." You see that? Paul says, “I know this: out in the world there are people chosen before time by God the Father, given as a love gift to His Son for redemption, and I know this—that through the preaching of the gospel they will come to faith in Christ.” That's why I go through all that I go through, because I know this: that as I preach the Word—God's means—the elect of God will be gathered in. I endure it all for the sake of the elect. All of it. That they too may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
We must never forget that when we preach the Word of God, when we proclaim the gospel, when we preach the Word of God, the voice of the Shepherd is going forth. "My sheep hear My voice. They follow Me." What is this book that you hold in your hand today? What is this book that you hold in your hand? It is the very Word of God, breathed out by God, penned by men who were moved along by the Holy Spirit in such a way that while they recorded their thoughts, they were recording the very words of God—the inerrant, infallible, inspired, all-sufficient Word of God.
And when this Word is declared faithfully, studied accurately, read reverently, the voice of the Shepherd, Almighty God our Savior, His voice goes out. And we know this: the sheep will hear His voice, as our Lord taught us earlier in this chapter, and will follow Him. They follow Him. They know His voice. They don't know the voice of a stranger. They won't follow a stranger, but they know the voice of their Shepherd.
And when men say things like this—"You know, did you really have to highlight sin and wrath? People won't listen to it. People won't listen to that. You can't preach that. That's hard. I mean, election? Sovereign election? You can't preach that. You shouldn't preach that, because people won't listen to that.” When people say this, we need to immediately ask the question: which people won't listen to that? Which people won't listen to it? Are you telling me that the elect won't listen to it? Or are you telling me that the goats won't listen to it?
You see, you and I haven't been called to offer goat food. We've been called to offer sheep food. We've been called to offer the Shepherd's food. And when the Shepherd, the Good One, calls His sheep to pasture, they hear His voice and they follow Him. Who's our ministry for? Did God leave us here on earth after He saved us to entertain goats? Or did He leave us here on earth to preach the Shepherd's message so that all of the elect of God might be gathered in, then be brought to maturity and become complete in Christ?
And has the church forgotten what we're here for, tragically? Well, this gets to the last thing that I'll share this morning. We'll close with that. When we forget that there's going to be a division and we forget that God's peace is not a peace that has no conflict, but rather the presence of righteousness, then something else happens. We'll close with this. We'll pick up where we left off next Lord's Day on this really important passage.
Something else happens, and that is this: the church misunderstands what is success and what is failure. That's what happens. The church misunderstands what is success and what is failure. See, we're living in an age—this is undeniable—even among many who would say otherwise, we are living in a time when success in the church is measured simply by the size of the crowd that gathers. How many people come?
I can't tell you how many times I see people I haven't seen maybe for ten years or five years or three years. They ask first, "How many people, now, come to your church?" It's the mentality that says, “These are the men we ought to listen to—you know, mega church pastors across the board without any distinction or qualification—because after all, they have the measure of success.” You know the three Bs: the budget—how much is your budget, how big is your budget—how many buses you have, and how big is your building. Budget, buses, and buildings.
What is the measure of success? How many people show up? Is that really the measure of a church? Beloved, I ask you this morning, is that how you measure a church? What's the answer? No, of course not.
Turn with me to Revelation 2. Revelation 2. I'm going to read a couple of portions here. I want you to see something. Revelation 2, beginning with verse 8. This is Smyrna, the church in Smyrna. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the living Head of the Church, instructs John to write this:
"And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: This is what the First and the Last, who was dead, and has come to life, says: 'I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will never be hurt by the second death.'"
Fast forward to the next chapter. Pick it up, verse 7: "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: This is what He who is holy, who is true, and who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says: 'I know your deeds. Behold, I have given before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name. Behold, I am giving up those of the synagogue of Satan, those who say that they are Jews, and are not, but lie. Behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and make them know that I have loved you. Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the sanctuary of My God, and he will never go out from it anymore. And I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'"
Now, here's the question that I want to ask. Do you notice something about these two churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia? These two churches, contrary to the others, did not receive one word of correction, rebuke, or condemnation. They both received nothing but commendation. Commendation.
Do you notice something else these churches have in common? They both were little. And here's what I mean. The church of Smyrna had little money—poverty. Little money. The church in Philadelphia is described as having little power. Little power. Little strength. And what they also have in common is that they were both suffering from those who claim to be the people of God, but were not. And they both were going to be rewarded.
Two churches—characterized by little money, the other little power—and both received nothing but commendation from the Son of God, the living Head of the Church, because they were faithful to His truth. They had not denied His name. They had not denied His word. They were faithful to the end.
And I wonder, beloved, I wonder what the great day is going to reveal one day. I wonder how many successes will be revealed as failures. In fact, beloved, I wonder how many successes will be revealed as not even believers sitting in the pews. And I wonder how many failures, by worldly church's estimation, will be revealed one day as having been faithful to Christ.
Where do you want your praise to come from? From men? Or from God? What kind of success do you really want? What does it mean to be successful? What kind of success do you really want? Success measured by a superficial, false standard? How many people show up? How big is the budget? How many activities do we have? Or success as it is pronounced by God?
Beloved, where there is truth, there will be peace. Where there is truth, there will be peace. But it won't be a false peace. It will be a righteous peace. And, until the Prince of Peace returns, it's also going to be a divisive peace. Jesus came to bring a sword, and that sword is the truth, and it divides. But blessed be God, praise God, it also saves. It saves.
Do you know Him today? Do you know Christ? Do you love Him? Is the bend of your heart that you really want to please Him above all else? Above all others? Is that the one towering ambition of your life? Who have you been living your life to please? Whose praise have you been seeking? Whose praise have you been satisfied with? Is it enough for you that people speak well of you? Is that it? Or do you desire the praise that comes not from men, but from Him?
Spurgeon - and I'll close with this - said, "To please God even a little is infinitely greater than to have the praise of all mankind."
Let's pray.
You won't see that. You can't see any of these churches coming under attack. You can't see one of these churches being maligned and hated because of their stand for the truth of the Word of God. In fact, that kind of conflict between the church and the culture is almost viewed by the church growth movement as the problem. They say, well, that's the problem. There is the barrier to evangelism. What we have to do in order to reach lost people, they say, is get rid of the conflict, get rid of the enmity.
I want us to remember that the apostles faced conflict on two fronts. They faced conflict from those who had the Scriptures in their day. They faced conflict from Judaism, apostate Judaism, and I think there are some in the church growth movement that would sort of identify with that. They would say something like this, “You know what, we're just going through what the Lord Jesus went through. We're just going through what the apostles went through. We're new. We're different. We're innovative. We're trying new ways, pragmatic ways, and those are the sort of, you know, the people who are really religious and starchy, they don't like that.”
They try to identify with the apostles in that way, but we've got to remember something: that the apostles faced conflict not only from those who were religious legalists of the day, but they also faced conflict from the pagans around them. There was a clear recognition among the pagans that the disciples, the apostles, were preaching another God—the one true God, the living God—and they understood that to follow the Christian God was to have a completely different lifestyle, and that requires a radical, tectonic shift transformation. There was a clear recognition that if the message the apostles were preaching, if it is true, then it meant that their world would be turned upside down, and you find that language in the book of Acts.
Far from this being the case with the church growth philosophies, the Christian mission from their standpoint, from their worldview, the Christian mission is not a confrontation with the world and with its philosophies. No, no, they say. Rather, it is a communication of ‘sameness’ with a twist—sameness with a twist. This is how you reach the world, they say. This is how you reach the world of lost humanity. We have to tell them that we're basically the same, but then with a gospel twist.
We say to the world, we really like you. We like what you like. We enjoy what you enjoy. We're about fun and entertainment and excitement and activity and individuality and independence and all sorts of things. We're no different from you. We've just found something that makes it all more fulfilling. And so we're not going to preach about sin. We're not going to preach about the judgment of God, the wrath of God. We're not going to preach about hell. We're not going to preach about any of it. In fact, we're not going to preach. We're not going to preach the Scripture. We're going to stay positive. Positive all the way—fashionable, comfortable. We're going to win you with our winsomeness, and then we'll deal with the rest at some point in time later, perhaps, maybe.
That's the church growth philosophy in a nutshell. And all the while, when you look at the testimony of Scripture concerning the time when our Lord was on this earth, you don't find that He was considered very motivational, fashionable. You don't find Him avoiding the subjects that many of these church gurus avoid, and you don't find the absence of conflict or suffering. Our Lord suffered, didn't He? He was maligned, wasn't He?
And then you move from His ministry on the earth—after His crucifixion, resurrection, ascension—then you look at His disciples, you find that they face the same opposition that He did. Not just from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles, the pagan world. Last week we began to look at verse 19 by making the point that in verse 19 you see clearly the reality of division, and it wasn't something that was just a one-time thing. The Scripture says, "A division occurred, ‘palin’-again-among the Jews because of these words," and not just more than once on this occasion, but if you go through the Gospel of John, you will see it again and again, many occasions.
In fact, it's getting more and more intense, and it's going to eventually lead to His arrest and His mock trials in Calvary, Golgotha. Here you have the Prince of Peace, and yet wherever He goes, there's what? Division. And so we talked last week about what is our understanding of this peace. He's the Prince of Peace. What is our understanding of this peace? We know that the Word of God teaches that we are to be a people who make peace a priority. We are to strive after that which makes for peace, and we saw that Christians are people characterized by peace.
We're supposed to be peacemakers. And we saw that this is because our God is the God of peace, and our Savior is the Prince of Peace. In fact, the Gospel we preach is the Gospel of peace. It's the good news of peace with God. Why is it, then, that there's so much division whenever the Gospel, this Gospel, is truly and boldly proclaimed and declared? And how are we to think about our responsibility to preach the Gospel and to confront the culture with its lost condition and our responsibility to pursue that which makes for peace? How do we fit these two things together?
We saw last time that the enmity cannot be removed in some artificial way. It cannot. The reason why there's enmity between the world and the church, if the church is being what the church is meant to be, the reason why there's this enmity there is the cause of the truth. It is because of the light. Lost men do not love the light. They don't like the light. They don't love the light. In fact, lost men love sin and they hate the light because the light exposes their sin. And so they hate the light, anything associated with the light.
So we talked about the fact that the church has to come to grips with this: that if we're going to faithfully proclaim the Gospel, we have to expect that there will be opposition, division. We have to know that we have to expect opposition. We have to know that the message of the cross is a message that is hated in a world that is broken and full of sin. And we said that when we don't understand that, when we don't grasp that, and when we think that peace means that all men will love us and all men will speak well of us, when we think that we have a responsibility to remove enmity apart from conversion, the new birth, that the enmity can somehow be removed apart from men and women coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, when that is the case, then all of a sudden the church begins to fall into errors and sins.
And the first error we touched on last Lord's Day, we considered last Lord's Day, is this: that the church, when it misunderstands this peace, the church misunderstands the profound nature of the problem we're addressing. What has the Lord called us to address with His Word? What has He commissioned us to go after with the Gospel? What is the real problem? It's not that the world doesn't have enough entertainment. We saw that last week, right? That's not the issue. That's not the problem. It's not that the world just needs a little, you know, psychological fix. No, no. It's not a matter of, you know, let's try a different philosophy. No. Just a little bit more positive thinking? Absolutely not. Or just a few little words of advice about how to have a good marriage or how to raise children and how to have a better job and how. No, beloved. That is not what Christ sent us to proclaim.
Rather, the problem in this world is that men and women are sinners. They are estranged from God. They are alienated from God. They do not have fellowship with God because of their sin. Because of their sin. And in their sinfulness, they are blinded. They are darkened in their understanding. And so they don't look at anything in this world the right way, not God, not themselves, not marriage, not raising kids, not work, not anything. And they're under the wrath of God. And if sinners die in that state, being estranged from God, they will perish for eternity in a place, in a real place called hell.
And so the church has been sent out not to deal with the peripheral issues that are symptomatic of the disease. The church has been sent out to declare the one and only message that gets to the root of the disease, and that is the Gospel. And the Gospel is a person: the Lord Jesus Christ, His doing and His dying on Calvary's cross. We've been sent to preach the Gospel. Now the Gospel in all of its fullness includes all that we have in God's words. Now I'm not saying that God doesn't have truth for marriage and raising children and all of that, but it all begins, beloved, with this fundamental truth: a man and a woman must be reconciled to God through faith in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
There it must begin. It must begin at that level. Because until someone has been reconciled to God, they cannot live what the Bible teaches. They can't. They have no power to do that. They're unable to do that. Their nature is turned in the opposite direction of God's truth. They don't have the understanding of God's truth. They have no power to live God's truth. And so it all begins with reconciliation with God, conversion, new birth.
We've got to stop thinking about the world's problem as being something superficial that can be healed superficially with some sort of a superficial balm. No, the problem gets to the very root of man's nature, and only salvation in Christ can set people free to experience the Creator's purpose for mankind so that men and women can glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
But there's a second error I want to point out this morning that the church falls prey to when we misunderstand these things. Not only does the church misunderstand the profound nature of the problem we're addressing, In the second place, secondly, the church misunderstands, as a result, the weapons of its warfare, the weapons of its warfare. The church misunderstands the weapons of its warfare as a result. If we underestimate what is really wrong with the human race, if we get that wrong, then we will also find ourselves relying upon insufficient means to reach them. Mark it down. If you misunderstand the gravity of a problem, then you will also misunderstand what the solution is, what the remedy is.
Let me illustrate. If you hear that there's a fire somewhere and you run out of your house or whatever, if you run out and with your own individual little fire extinguisher and then you find out it's a three-alarm blaze—I mean, this is massive—well, the means you've chosen to try to fix the problem you'll discover is what? Totally insufficient. You won't get the job done, right? And when we forget what's really wrong with the human race, with men and women, is that they don't have fellowship with God, that they're alienated from God, they're under the wrath of God, and what they need is not just some external reformation, some external fix. What they must have is nothing less than a new creation, new birth, the *from above* birth, a transformation wrought by the Spirit of God in their soul. Nothing less will do. Nothing else will get the job done.
When we forget that, then we can imagine that we can go forth with weapons that won't get the job done, won't do it. Let me put it this way. If we think that the real key to reaching the lost for Christ is the style of our music, if we think that the thing standing between sinners and Jesus is the way the pastor dresses—I mean, just put on a Hawaiian shirt, or sneakers, or baseball cap, and then people will like him, and will be drawn to him—I mean, if that's the issue, if offering dazzling effects along with our sermonettes, if it's the elimination of expository preaching, if it's the promotion of the arts, if that's what we think is really wrong, then we don't really understand what we're dealing with, do we?
The question is: what are the God-ordained means? What are the God-ordained weapons for the spiritual work that we're to be engaged in? What has God chosen for us to use? I don't get to come up with my own weapons. What is sufficient for such tasks as reaching lost men for Christ, and for discipling those who have been saved? What has God Himself ordained? Let me put it this way. Here's the answer: righteousness and truth. Righteousness and truth.
Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 10. This is an incredible passage, 2 Corinthians 10. So, righteousness and truth. It says, verse 3, "For though we walk in the flesh,”-we in a battle, we're fighting, we're fighting this battle 24 hours a day, seven days a week-”we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but,"-now listen to this-"divinely powerful for the tearing down of strongholds." But beloved, if you're taking hold of God's weapons, then you have this assurance, this blessed assurance: those weapons that God has ordained to go into the battle with—what? They have what? Divine power.
How much power is that? Omnipotent power. Infinite power. I mean, God's power is at work when you are in the war with His weapons. When you use His weapons, God's power is at work.
God's power. An omnipotent God. An all-powerful God. "Is there anything too difficult for Me," says the Lord? "What is impossible with man is possible with God." God's power.
He says, verse 5, “as we tear down speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” What are you doing when you're engaging this culture around you? What are you doing? What am I doing? You are addressing high lofty opinions that argue against the knowledge of Jesus.
Question: what weapon has God given us that will expose the false thoughts of a world like this, where everything is turned upside down, wrong side up? Good is evil, evil is good, right is wrong, wrong is right, and bitter is sweet, sweet is bitter. What weapons has God given us to address how people think? What weapon is it? Here's the answer. It's His Word. It's His Word.
Look at 2 Corinthians 6, two chapters back. It's His Word. 2 Corinthians 6, let's start [at] verse 3. Paul says, "giving no cause for offense in anything, so that the ministry will not be discredited," - now watch this - "but in everything commending ourselves as ministers of God."
What commends a minister of God? What commends a minister of God? How do you recognize a minister of God, a servant of God? What do they look like? He tells us. Look, he says, "in much perseverance"—that's what they look like—"in afflictions, in distresses, in hardships, in beatings, in imprisonments, in disturbances, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in unhypocritical love, in the word of truth, in the power of God."
Now let's just stop here for a moment. And, I want to ask this question: how did these apostles get into so much trouble? How? Why did they need great endurance? Why did they experience afflictions, hardship, calamity, beatings, imprisonment, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger?
What got them into so much trouble? It was the preaching of the Word, wasn't it? It's the preaching of the Word of God, wasn't it? It wasn't because they put on a bad performance and people rebelled and want their money back. No. They were preaching the Word of God. That's what got them in trouble. And what commended them, though, was not just troubles. They were also commended—look at the text—by purity and knowledge and patience and kindness and the Holy Spirit, unhypocritical love, and the word of truth. And you know what attended their ministry? Verse 7: the power of God.
And then he says this, "by the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left." The weapons of righteousness. Mark this down, beloved, this morning and never forget it. The powerful church will be the Holy Church. The powerful church will be the Holy Church. Not necessarily the most creative, ingenious, but the one, the people who walk after righteousness and make use of the weapons of righteousness.
Romans 1, verse 16. Paul put it as simply as this: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the"—what? We get the English word "dynamite" from this Greek word ’dunamis’—"the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." What is the gospel? It is the power of God unto the salvation of dead sinners.
Shy away from it, not declare it, apologize for it, make it more palatable, make it more comfortable. No, no, no. He says, "I am not ashamed." Not ashamed. "I am not ashamed of the gospel," which declares to sinful dead men that he is lost, that he is in sin under the judgment of a Holy God, the wrath of a Holy God. But there's also—that there is also—a forgiveness of sin. There's a Savior given among men by whom we can be saved.
You're dead, you're alienated, you're under the wrath of God—that's your problem. But here's the good news: there's a Savior who's able to save to the uttermost those who come to Him. And I'm not ashamed of this message, for "it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek."
What is sufficient for such a task? God's Word. God's Word. God did not ordain, beloved—and you will not find it in Scripture—that God ordained men and women to be brought to faith in Jesus Christ through concerts. He didn't ordain that. Through entertainment. It's not there. It's through the preaching of the Word, through the Word of God. And yet, if we look at the church of our generation, if we're being honest, where's the greatest emphasis put? Concerts, entertainments, drama.
2 Timothy 4:2. 2 Timothy 4:2: "preach the word." Timothy, preach the Word. Preach the Word. "[B]e ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and teaching." “Preach the Word, Timothy. And you don't do it, son, selectively. You do it. You preach every part of it, every part of it. Preach the Word, every part of it. The whole counsel of God. Where it calls for reproof, you reprove, Timothy. Don't shy back. Where it calls for rebuke, you rebuke, Timothy. Where it calls for exhortation, you exhort. And you do this, son, with patience, with endurance—I mean, stay at it—and you do it with careful instruction. You teach the Word.”
And here's why I'm laying this down for you, he tells Timothy, with such clear terms. Verse 3: "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths."
Beloved, what is going on in our generation is serious, serious business. It's not a small thing. All around us. If we believe that there's to be no hatred for the church, if we believe that God has called us to a life of being loved by all men, if we believe that the real problem between the sinner and salvation is simply one of the church coming off as negative, then what happens is, we will abandon whatever is causing the problem.
And what is it that is the cause of the problem? The truth. Speaking the truth. That's what causes the problem. The light exposes sin and the wicked deeds in darkness. That's the problem. And so what have churches done? They've abandoned the truth in the name of making friendship, in order to “make” disciples. This is the very thing the Apostles refused to do. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 2. Paul writes, "but we have renounced" - we've renounced - ”the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God." We have renounced - ‘apeipon’ - we have denounced, we have disowned, we have utterly rejected, we've sworn off - what? what, Paul? - disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or tamper with the Word of God, adulterate the Word of God, water down the Word of God in order to appeal to the multitude.
Is it tampering with God's Word when you refuse to preach portions of it? Is it tampering with the Word of God when you refuse to use the very words that the Scripture uses and you want to replace them with something more palatable, friendly, soft on the ears? Paul says, "We refuse to tamper with the Word of God," verse 2. We refuse to tamper with the Word of God. “[B]ut by the manifestation”—’phanerósis’—revelation, disclosure - “by the manifestation of the truth” - disclosure of the truth, the plain manifestation of truth - "commending ourselves,” he says, "to every man's conscience in the sight of God." He says we're preaching to the conscience, and he says we're doing it with the open statement of truth.
The church forgets the profound nature of the problem she's dealing with, and the church, as a result, misunderstands the weapons of its warfare and imagines that it can get the job done with weapons never ordained by God. They come up with their own version. This leads to a third error that I want to make mention of today, and that is when this happens, the church imagines herself to be superior to her past. The church imagines herself to be superior to her past. That is, the church begins to be filled with pride. Pride.
In other words, it's leaning on the arm of the flesh. It's leaning on its own ingenuity. It's leaning on its own ideas and activities and programs to produce spiritual results that require divinely powerful means. And when the church, then, is confronted with the character of her ministry and someone says, “Well, that's not the character of the Apostles' ministry,” and when she's confronted with the fruit of her ministry and someone says, “Well, that's not the fruit of ministry seen with the Apostles of Jesus,” and when someone questions the methods and the means for her ministry and they say that it doesn't match that of the Apostles, she imagines that she's actually discovered a better way.
“Yes, it's true. That's not how the Apostles did it. We acknowledge that much, but listen, listen carefully. You see, we're living in a different time. We're facing new challenges, new culture, and a post-Christian culture, and the means of ministry used by the Apostles—well, that just won't get the job done anymore. Preaching - expository preaching - just won't do the job anymore. Preaching on subjects like the wrath of God won't do the job anymore. We've discovered a better way, and the proof that it's a better way—and I'll deal with that in a moment—is that it's working. They say it's working. That's the proof.”
Now we better define working. We better define working. Question: are the church growth experts of our generation better peacemakers than our Master was, the Prince of Peace? Where are the reproaches that fell on Him on their life and ministry? Where are they being hated because of their Master? How do they suffer for the message that they proclaim? What is in their message that would ever call for this division? Why is it that their pathway is a smooth way, all the way, when His pathway and the pathway of His disciples was a hard one? Are they smarter? Are they more congenial, just more friendly than He was? Are they more organized? Did they just do a better job of projecting a positive image and positive thinking?
Or could it be, could it be, that in reality they're like the church in Laodicea? The Lord Jesus addressed that church—you remember Revelation 3—and He said to that church in verse 17. Chapter 3 of Revelation, He said, "[Y]ou say, ‘I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," He says, "and you do not know that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked."
Oh beloved, when our ministry isn't becoming more and more like the ministry of our blessed Lord, like the ministry of His disciples, including opposition and division, it is not a sign that we're doing well. It is a sign that we're doing poorly. The church must avoid this error—feeling like we've discovered something new, that we're really superior to those who have come before us. “Yes, it's true they suffered, they had hardship, they were opposed, they were maligned, and people hated them, but we found a new and better way.” God forbid. God forbid. It's a lie.
It leads to a fourth error: the church misunderstands whom it's seeking to please. The church misunderstands whom she's seeking to please. You see, one of the reasons she feels superior and good about herself is that she's pleasing so many—the approbation of the crowd. So many people who find this approach to ministry, an approach - I mean, this kind of approach, is an approach that guts the preaching of anything that might hint at being controversial or confrontational. So let's gut it out.
An approach to ministry that guts the preaching of anything that might be considered overly theological or difficult or challenging so that the whole counsel of God cannot be proclaimed, cannot be declared. An approach to ministry that strives to be so inoffensive that they don't declare anything that might upset some people. So they strive to keep everyone happy. Let's hold hands and sing Kumbaya and we're a happy family. So the church glories in her positive reviews. I mean, if we believe that that is really our goal—for all men to speak well of us—then when they speak well of us, we feel what? Justified. “How could you say we're on the wrong path? I mean, look. Look around. So many people love us. We're so popular, including outside the media and everybody else.” And the church becomes content with her approval.
But Paul was very straightforward about the fact that was never, ever his ambition. It was never his ambition to be pleasing to men. Turn to Galatians 1. He never measured his ministry by the applause of the people, by the approval of the people. Galatians 1 [verse 8], right off the bat, I mean, he was dead serious. He didn't mince words, right? He said to them, "If [I], or an angel from heaven were to preach to you, to proclaim to you a gospel - an ‘heteros’ gospel - another gospel of a different kind, let him be” - what? - “Let him be damned to hell. Let him be ‘anathema’." He repeats it twice. You get to verse 10 of chapter 1. Look at what he says: "For am I now” - he says, “am I now seeking the favor of man, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a slave of Christ." No, no.
Look at verse 11 of chapter 5, same epistle: "But I, brothers, if I still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? Then the stumbling block of the cross would have been abolished." In other words, Paul says, I know all along how to stop the persecution. Just preach the version of the gospel that the Judaizers are happy with. I'll just preach circumcision and the offense of the cross will dissipate, will go away.
Back up to chapter 4, look at verse 29. He puts it this way: "But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh was persecuting him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also." I know we're flipping back and forth. Fast-forward to chapter 6 and look at verse 12. Galatians 6:12: "As many as are wanting to make a good showing in the flesh, these are trying to compel you to be circumcised,”—now watch this—”simply so that they will not be persecuted for the cross of Christ."
Do you know why some of these Judaizers teachers, why they were teaching what they were teaching? Paul says they knew that if they taught otherwise, they would be persecuted, and they wanted to avoid that. So, they caved in. They don't want their boat to be rocked. They wanted to stay positive.
What happens when we misunderstand these issues? We forget that the church exists not to get positive reviews from the world, but to hear one day, "Well done, good and faithful servant," from our Lord and Savior and Master and our Chief Shepherd. To do His will, to do His will—that's our goal. Beloved, mark it down and never forget it. We have one ambition, one towering ambition, one overarching ambition. What is it? To please Him. To please Him.
2 Corinthians 5:9, "Therefore we also have as our ambition,"—that is the towering ambition—"whether at home or absent," whether in life or death, what is it, Paul? "[T]o be pleasing to Him." That's all. That's all. To live your life and my life with this ambition: to be pleasing to Him.
This leads to another error. When the church forgets these things, the church also misunderstands that her ministry—now follow closely—her ministry is for the elect. Whoa! Her ministry is for the elect. Do we realize that today? Do we realize that all that we do in ministry, in the ministries, is ultimately for the glory of God and for the sake of His chosen people? You say everything? Everything.
On behalf of the maturity of those who have already been saved, Colossians 1:28—I love that. Paul concentrated his effort as he ministered to these churches. He says, "Him we proclaim," referring to Christ. We proclaim Him. We proclaim Jesus. "Him we proclaim, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that"—this is the end in view—"we may present every man complete in Christ." That's the aim. That's the goal. To present those who belong to Him complete in Christ. That's the goal of pastors, elders.
What was Paul's goal regarding believers? Not just to gather more and more into the building, but that he might see every single one brought into maturity in Christ. Christ-likeness. Is that the goal of our churches? To see people brought to maturity in Christ? Beloved, if this is the case, then you'll have a discipling pulpit. You'll have a discipling pulpit. The Word of God will be taught because that's how people come to maturity in Christ. "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your Word is truth." And, so, regarding the saved, what's our goal? To see them come to maturity. To see them come to Christ-likeness more and more and more, progressively.
But now listen to how Paul describes his ministry regarding the lost. You say, what about the lost? Maybe you're sitting here and saying, “what about the lost though? You're talking about the saved. What about the lost?” Well, listen to what he writes. I'm going to give you a chapter and verse—2 Timothy 2:10. Please turn there and read it. Let your eyes see the words, inspired Word of God. This is the inspired Word of God. It's not my opinion. This is God's Word.
2 Timothy 2:10, Paul writes, "For this reason I endure. I endure all things." Stop right there first. "For this reason I endure all things." Think about what he endured. We read a little bit of it a moment ago—the beatings, the imprisonments, the persecution, all that he went through, you know, right? All of it. Why would he go through all of this? Why would he endure all of it? Paul, tell us why.
Listen to what he says: "For this reason I endure all things for the sake of the elect." Why? Why, Paul? "[S]o that they also may obtain the salvation, which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory." You see that? Paul says, “I know this: out in the world there are people chosen before time by God the Father, given as a love gift to His Son for redemption, and I know this—that through the preaching of the gospel they will come to faith in Christ.” That's why I go through all that I go through, because I know this: that as I preach the Word—God's means—the elect of God will be gathered in. I endure it all for the sake of the elect. All of it. That they too may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.
We must never forget that when we preach the Word of God, when we proclaim the gospel, when we preach the Word of God, the voice of the Shepherd is going forth. "My sheep hear My voice. They follow Me." What is this book that you hold in your hand today? What is this book that you hold in your hand? It is the very Word of God, breathed out by God, penned by men who were moved along by the Holy Spirit in such a way that while they recorded their thoughts, they were recording the very words of God—the inerrant, infallible, inspired, all-sufficient Word of God.
And when this Word is declared faithfully, studied accurately, read reverently, the voice of the Shepherd, Almighty God our Savior, His voice goes out. And we know this: the sheep will hear His voice, as our Lord taught us earlier in this chapter, and will follow Him. They follow Him. They know His voice. They don't know the voice of a stranger. They won't follow a stranger, but they know the voice of their Shepherd.
And when men say things like this—"You know, did you really have to highlight sin and wrath? People won't listen to it. People won't listen to that. You can't preach that. That's hard. I mean, election? Sovereign election? You can't preach that. You shouldn't preach that, because people won't listen to that.” When people say this, we need to immediately ask the question: which people won't listen to that? Which people won't listen to it? Are you telling me that the elect won't listen to it? Or are you telling me that the goats won't listen to it?
You see, you and I haven't been called to offer goat food. We've been called to offer sheep food. We've been called to offer the Shepherd's food. And when the Shepherd, the Good One, calls His sheep to pasture, they hear His voice and they follow Him. Who's our ministry for? Did God leave us here on earth after He saved us to entertain goats? Or did He leave us here on earth to preach the Shepherd's message so that all of the elect of God might be gathered in, then be brought to maturity and become complete in Christ?
And has the church forgotten what we're here for, tragically? Well, this gets to the last thing that I'll share this morning. We'll close with that. When we forget that there's going to be a division and we forget that God's peace is not a peace that has no conflict, but rather the presence of righteousness, then something else happens. We'll close with this. We'll pick up where we left off next Lord's Day on this really important passage.
Something else happens, and that is this: the church misunderstands what is success and what is failure. That's what happens. The church misunderstands what is success and what is failure. See, we're living in an age—this is undeniable—even among many who would say otherwise, we are living in a time when success in the church is measured simply by the size of the crowd that gathers. How many people come?
I can't tell you how many times I see people I haven't seen maybe for ten years or five years or three years. They ask first, "How many people, now, come to your church?" It's the mentality that says, “These are the men we ought to listen to—you know, mega church pastors across the board without any distinction or qualification—because after all, they have the measure of success.” You know the three Bs: the budget—how much is your budget, how big is your budget—how many buses you have, and how big is your building. Budget, buses, and buildings.
What is the measure of success? How many people show up? Is that really the measure of a church? Beloved, I ask you this morning, is that how you measure a church? What's the answer? No, of course not.
Turn with me to Revelation 2. Revelation 2. I'm going to read a couple of portions here. I want you to see something. Revelation 2, beginning with verse 8. This is Smyrna, the church in Smyrna. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the living Head of the Church, instructs John to write this:
"And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: This is what the First and the Last, who was dead, and has come to life, says: 'I know your tribulation and your poverty (but you are rich), and the blasphemy by those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Behold, the devil is about to cast some of you into prison, so that you will be tested, and you will have tribulation for ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will never be hurt by the second death.'"
Fast forward to the next chapter. Pick it up, verse 7: "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: This is what He who is holy, who is true, and who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says: 'I know your deeds. Behold, I have given before you an open door which no one can shut, because you have little power, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name. Behold, I am giving up those of the synagogue of Satan, those who say that they are Jews, and are not, but lie. Behold, I will make them come and bow down before your feet, and make them know that I have loved you. Because you have kept the word of My perseverance, I also will keep you from the hour of testing, which is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth. I am coming quickly. Hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the sanctuary of My God, and he will never go out from it anymore. And I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.'"
Now, here's the question that I want to ask. Do you notice something about these two churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia? These two churches, contrary to the others, did not receive one word of correction, rebuke, or condemnation. They both received nothing but commendation. Commendation.
Do you notice something else these churches have in common? They both were little. And here's what I mean. The church of Smyrna had little money—poverty. Little money. The church in Philadelphia is described as having little power. Little power. Little strength. And what they also have in common is that they were both suffering from those who claim to be the people of God, but were not. And they both were going to be rewarded.
Two churches—characterized by little money, the other little power—and both received nothing but commendation from the Son of God, the living Head of the Church, because they were faithful to His truth. They had not denied His name. They had not denied His word. They were faithful to the end.
And I wonder, beloved, I wonder what the great day is going to reveal one day. I wonder how many successes will be revealed as failures. In fact, beloved, I wonder how many successes will be revealed as not even believers sitting in the pews. And I wonder how many failures, by worldly church's estimation, will be revealed one day as having been faithful to Christ.
Where do you want your praise to come from? From men? Or from God? What kind of success do you really want? What does it mean to be successful? What kind of success do you really want? Success measured by a superficial, false standard? How many people show up? How big is the budget? How many activities do we have? Or success as it is pronounced by God?
Beloved, where there is truth, there will be peace. Where there is truth, there will be peace. But it won't be a false peace. It will be a righteous peace. And, until the Prince of Peace returns, it's also going to be a divisive peace. Jesus came to bring a sword, and that sword is the truth, and it divides. But blessed be God, praise God, it also saves. It saves.
Do you know Him today? Do you know Christ? Do you love Him? Is the bend of your heart that you really want to please Him above all else? Above all others? Is that the one towering ambition of your life? Who have you been living your life to please? Whose praise have you been seeking? Whose praise have you been satisfied with? Is it enough for you that people speak well of you? Is that it? Or do you desire the praise that comes not from men, but from Him?
Spurgeon - and I'll close with this - said, "To please God even a little is infinitely greater than to have the praise of all mankind."
Let's pray.
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