Devotion • Word & Doctrine

We are in this sermon series called Anatomy of a Healthy Church.

And what we've been talking about is Missio has a vision.

We want to grow.

We want to make disciples.

We want to see God's name be glorified in our city.

We want people to be brought into the kingdom of God through the preaching of the gospel.

And we want to see lives radically transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We want to see this happen.

In fact, we've talked about that our 10-year vision is to reach 1% of the Mason Westchester area.

And for some of you, that might seem like a really low bar, right?

Who in the world puts 1% as their vision for the next 10 years?

Well, when we understand that Mason Westchester area has about a hundred thousand plus people in it, we're really looking at trying to reach 1,000 over the sermon series, but according to we want to go after them.

We want to go after the 43% who don't know Jesus, who haven't trusted the gospel.

We're not trying to grow our church by attracting other Christians into it.

Does that need to happen sometimes?

Sure, absolutely, because unhealthy churches do exist.

But we really want to go after the 1% of the 43% that are unchurched.

We want to reach them to bring them into the kingdom through evangelism, gospel preaching, bringing them into community.

Like a lot of part of what we do as a missional church doesn't look like what you might be accustomed to with evangelism and door knocking, right?

You see the little Mormon with his tag and he's pulls up on his bike and he's, can I tell you something?

No, you can't tell me anything.

Get out, right?

That's what we do.

No, what we want to do is we want to do mission through just opening our homes, inviting people around our table, sharing meals with them, doing life together with people in our city.

And it's gonna be messy, it's gonna be hard, it's gonna be difficult, but we have to ask ourselves are we creating a culture where we're closed in, barricaded because we're afraid that we'll be stained and marred by the culture outside of our doors?

Are we creating this open space where we're inviting the culture into our home so that they're actually shaped by the gospel and the way that we live it out with one another?

That's what we want to do.

We want to see lives radically change through hospitality, through gospel living, through just being a good neighbor.

So we want to reach 1%.

And we said, if we're gonna grow, we've got to make sure that we're healthy when we grow, because not all healthy things grow, right?

Some unhealthy things grow and some unhealthy things grow really quickly.

And if we're not cautious and we're not really understanding how do we measure health, we can find ourselves five, seven, ten years down the road in places we never wanted to be, never thought that we would actually go.

We talked about a mega church in USA.

They did 20 years of ministry.

And at the end of those 20 years of ministry, they spent over a million dollars on a research project just to assess did we do what we set out to do?

And the results were that they failed.

20 years of labor, 20 years of work, tons of resources and money to set forth what they tried to accomplish, and what they discovered at the end of that was they failed.

We don't want to be that.

And so we want to, at the beginning of this, understand what it means to be healthy.

So we've been developing four metrics of health that we're gonna hold as primary to assess if what we're doing is good and faithful and fruitful.

Not that we're gonna be dismissive or throw away other metrics like growth and membership and baptisms and all these other good things, but those can't be our primary, because when we chase those things, we might neglect true health.

And so the first Sunday we looked at this metric of health, that if we are a healthy church, then Jesus would be first and foremost.

If we are a healthy church, Jesus would be first and foremost, and we would seek to make Jesus the focus in every aspect of our lives.

This is what we want every person at here, Christ Jesus, in the transforming gospel of which he brings to us.

On that, the second mark of health that we talked about last week was transformation, obedience, and righteousness.

Working with the Holy Spirit to restore God's image in us.

And we talked about one of the fundamental markers of a Christian is obedience to Jesus.

And we challenge that.

Like some of us might think, if I said, hey, what makes a good Christian?

If we talk to our culture today and say, what is the mark of a true Christian?

Some people might say, Well, if he's very loving, or if he gives generously to the poor, or if he is humble, or whatever, whatever characteristic.

But when we look at the scriptures, the identifying marker of a Christian is obedience to Christ.

And that obedience brings transformation.

We talk about it, miss you all the time, this kind of language, it's okay to not be okay.

And while that's true, it is okay to not.

We love messed up people, right?

You're just in the presence of good company if you come up here messed up.

But it's not okay to stay that way.

The Bible challenges us and calls us to change and transformation.

So while you may come into the presence of the gospel utterly train wrecked, the gospel hope is that he will put you back together to renew the image that our sin marred and perverted that he gave to us in creation.

And this week we're looking at devotion, word and doctrine.

Devotion, word and doctrine, knowing God authoritatively through his word and in honor to the ancient church.

So when we talk about this metric of help, right?

Knowing God authoritative through his word in honor to the ancient church.

So devotion, word and doctrine, we look at this as a metric of health.

What we're really trying to establish here is a base, a foundation.

We've been kind of talking about like uh weightlifters and athletes, when we're looking at everybody has the same goal, right?

Every NFL team, we talked about this last week, that went into the season had the same goal win the Super Bowl.

But not every team accomplished it.

What it takes to get there and what systems to put in place and what markers to look for as they progress throughout their season.

And a lot of times they don't have a base.

They don't have a foundation because ultimately we're trying to build something here, and we have to build it on the right foundation.

And so this metric establishes our base.

This makes me think about my kids.

So I have four children, and they love to just be kids and play with stuff, right?

Legos and duple blocks and stuff like that.

And what we'll find all the time is like we'll be sitting in the living room and we hear this like blood-curdling scream from upstairs.

Something's probably happened, tragic, right?

So you as a parent, your heart starts to rush, and you run upstairs to see what's going on, and you just look at the floor, and there's just a crumbling pile of blocks.

And you say, Okay, well, what happened?

And they're like, Well, he knocked down my blocks, right?

Liam is usually the one, they have this like thing for him called Liam Smash, and he just comes in and just destroys everything like a three-year-old boy should, uh, to all of his older sisters.

Uh, but when we watch them build these towers, they're horrible towers in the first place.

Like, my kids are not architects, they're not structural engineers.

I would never trust anything that they built for me to stand on.

Like they try to build forts in the backyard and say, Come on, daddy, come in.

No, I will, I'll stay out here and then I'll appreciate the work that you do as you risk your own life enjoying it.

Uh but when you look at them and watch them build this tower, they typically will put one block on the bottom and then they build straight up.

This thing, at any gust of wind, right?

Any sometimes Liam just walks by it and the floor just moves a little bit and it just topples over.

There's no base, there's no foundation.

And a lot of times in our Christian lives and our spiritual working, we try to build on a foundation that is not going to last for us.

And then we wonder, well, what happened?

When our life comes toppling down, when when things uh attack us or when circumstances challenge us, and it seems like all of our life.

What happened?

And sometimes, if we discovered honestly and humbly, we would see a very weak foundation.

We built it on what the Bible calls sand or a shifting foundation rather than a solid rock.

And so this metric, devotion, word, and doctrine, I would argue really is the foundation and base for every other metric of church health that we're trying to establish here at Missio.

It is the one, when rightly executed, will authenticate and fuel all the other metrics of health that we're trying to establish.

And so when we talk about God's word, when we talk about engaging God's word and using it to build a base and a foundation, what does it mean when I say if it's rightly executed?

I've got five things, five points of what I mean when I say rightly executing, building this foundation of God's word.

Number one is a belief in its inerrancy and sufficiency.

So what do I mean by this?

Inerrancy means that the Bible is truth.

It's absolute truth, that the Holy Spirit, through men, divinely orchestrated every word that would be spoken to us about God.

So we fundamentally believe that we serve a God who, through his own will and love for his creation, chose to reveal himself to us.

This is who I am.

If you want to get to know me, I will tell you who I am so that you can rightly know me.

He didn't choose to leave us in mystery and speculation, making guesses that, oh, I think God might be a.

God said, No, I am.

And so we have this authoritative, inerrant truth in the scriptures that this is who God is because it is his word.

And then when I talk about sufficiency, the Bible is sufficient for knowing God.

The Bible's not exhaustive in knowing God, will not exhaust your pursuit of knowing God.

In fact, he is infinitely transcendent, he is infinitely complex that we would use all of eternity to know him.

But the Bible is sufficient for us.

It's sufficient for us to know God, it's sufficient for us to know his plan of redemption and salvation, it's sufficient for building the church, making believers, the Bible is sufficient.

And so Mystio is gonna take a posture that the Bible is inerrant, it's truth for us, for all people, and it's sufficient.

So we're not gonna use it as some tag on, right?

Where we do some sermon series and we say, oh, by the way, to help support my point, here's this scripture verse.

No, we're gonna use it as the central focus of our life as a church because we believe in its sufficiency for us as believers.

Number two, acknowledging its authority over feelings and experiences.

Now, I want to say this very clearly.

We do not dismiss feelings and experiences.

You can know God in measure through your feelings and through your experiences.

God is a God of emotion.

We talked about this in our sermon series going through the Psalms, and so there's a measure to where you can know God through those things.

Just like the Bible's very clear that we can know God just through his creation.

It says that no man is without excuse to not serve and obey the living God because he can look out at the trees and out of all creation and see his power and glory and majesty.

So we can know God simply through creation, but we can't fully know him or intimately know him that way.

We definitely can't authoritatively know him that way.

And so what we want to acknowledge is that the scripture helps us interpret and discern our feelings and experiences that we have in this life.

What I'm experiencing, the emotions that I'm having and interpreting that for me, or do I allow my feelings and experiences to interpretate and have authority over who God has revealed Himself to be?

We have to make sure that God's word is authoritative in our feelings and experiences.

Number three, pursuing the truth and communicating it in love.

Pursuing the truth and communicating love.

We love truth at Missio.

We love robust theology, we love sound biblical doctrine, we love truth.

But if we only have truth and we don't communicate it in love, we are going to just beat people over the head with our uh pride and with our arrogance.

No one is going to want to listen to what we have to say.

And we live in a culture where we think we have to actually change the truth to get people to listen to what we have to say, but I don't believe that that's true at all.

I think that what we have to do is we have to look at the posture and the way in which we're communicating the truth to others.

And so we don't want to be arrogant, we don't want to be prideful as we have obtained this truth, as we seek to understand God through his word and through sound theological teaching.

We want to be able to communicate these things in love and in grace.

Because at the end of the day, we can win the argument, but that doesn't mean we've won the person.

And so we have to balance that.

And I'm very guilty of being a person who pursues truth but not communicating in love.

I have a very hard time processing my emotions.

My wife, my family is going through some interesting things right now, my kind of extended family, and uh, I mean my wife have these conversations constantly of uh, well, they should, this is how they should feel.

Logically, if you do A, B, and C, this is should be the way that they should feel.

And my wife goes, no one processes emotion like you.

You're like some kind of robot that puts some kind of logical thing.

And I always ask myself, do I have the right to feel this way?

No, I don't.

Okay, moving on.

Uh but uh, but so so usually when I speak and say something hard to you, I love you.

But it's very difficult for me to get you to believe that.

And so I'm working on that.

Help me, pray for me.

So pursue the truth and communicate it in love.

For honor the ancient church in understanding.

We want to honor the ancient church and understanding.

Look, we are not doing anything new at all.

In fact, we are boringly doing old stuff.

That's the goal here at Mystio, to be as boring as we possibly know, that's not true.

But we are doing things in honor of the ancient church.

We're realizing that we don't have this arrogance or pride that we're the smartest generation to ever live.

That's a fallacy, that's a false belief.

If you think that we've got it all figured out and we're leaps and bounds beyond the other generations that have uh uh lived before us, we are believing a lie.

So we have to look back, and we're gonna dive into this more as we work down, but we have to look back to see what has the church always believed.

You would be shocked at how much some of your belief system was only developed within the last 150 years.

And you're dismissing 2,000 years of church doctrine and confession.

We just read a confession this morning that was developed in 325 AD, and you would not believe the amount of churches that would reject that confession.

Do you think they've got it right?

Or maybe the person who was closest to the time of when Jesus actually walked this earth might have it a little bit better than we do.

Now, while we don't look at the ancient church as infallible, we don't look at the ancient church as one who cannot make any mistake at all, they should be critiqued, they should be rightly critiqued, but they should not be dismissed simply because of where they landed in this time-space metric.

Last thing is seeing Jesus bigger and ourselves smaller.

If we love God's word and we dive into understanding and knowing Him through His scriptures, look, the Bible is not God's love letter to you.

The Bible is the declaration of his glory and majesty and his plan of redemption to extend to you mercy and salvation through the death, burial, and resurrection of his son.

The Bible is about God, not about you.

And so when we read it rightly, we will see God magnified more in our hearts and lives, and ourselves will just decrease and diminish.

So let's dive into the text.

We're looking at Ephesians 2.

And then the first kind of section of this passage, we look at Ephesians 2, verses 17 through 19.

Ephesians 2:17–19

And the way that I would try to summarize this passage of scripture would be that gospel preaching builds the house of God.

Look at what it says.

It says, and he came and he preached, right?

He preached peace to you who are far off and peace to those who are near.

And what did that accomplish?

It accomplished making us fellow citizens, saints, members of the household of God.

It's the preaching of the gospel of peace that makes us his.

Gospel proclamation forms the bricks of God's house.

And so we want to be faithful to understand that it's this word, it's this message, it's this declaration of truth that actually makes us his.

It's a message of truth that inherently has power to change us in to something new, something which we were not.

Those who were strangers, aliens, those who were at arms with God, who those who were his enemies against him, the gospel of peace was preached.

We received it, and it made us bricks in his house.

It made us members of his household, it made us citizens and saints along with the other brothers and sisters.

You see, it's through gospel preaching we have been made able to be known, gospel preaching, that we have been made able to be known and finally know God rightly.

Because we need the Spirit to believe truth.

We need the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts and make us new again so that the truth of God's word would be like honey on our lips, that it would be the sweet, savory taste of the goodness and joy and pleasure of what God brings to his people.

We need the spirit to do that because without the spirit, God's word, God's truth is vile to us.

It's not sweet, it's condemning, it's damning.

It's the power of the word that enables our new reality, carried through by the power of the Spirit.

And so you and I, if we are believers in the gospel of Jesus, then we have been brought into the household of God to become the house of God.

So we've been brought into the household of God to become the house of God.

First Peter 2, 4 through 5 says it this way: As you come to Him, a living stone rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

And so it is through him, through Jesus, by the hearing of his gospel being preached to us, that we are being built into a house for God.

You see, even the salvation, while we are great beneficiaries of the mercy and grace of God, its end purposes are for him.

It's for his glory, it's for his majesty.

It's so that the temple of which our sin sought to destroy and and to and to um deconstruct can be built back up again for his glorious name.

And then when we look at verses 20 through 22, the way that I would summarize this passage is that God's house is built on God's word, and it made us something when we heard it.

It made us these bricks, these stones to be erected a new house, a new temple for God.

And then here we see that this temple is going to be built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

You see, we as living stones are built upon a foundation of God's word.

The scripture declares one congruent narrative from Genesis to Revelation.

Revelation, all of Scripture is telling one story.

And the prophets foretell the redemption plan of God through Jesus, and the apostles explain the redemption plan of God in Jesus.

You see, we must strive to protect the sound doctrine of the historical church established through the apostolic teaching.

So here's what I'm trying to say.

We're being built up.

We've been made bricks, and we're being built into a house for God.

And God says, here's the foundation, here's the base, here's what you're building it on.

The prophets and the apostles.

What he's saying, he's you're building it on my word.

Because it is the word of God which never fails.

It is the word of God which is the rock of which we're supposed to be established upon.

It is the word of God that when the waves come and the wind blows and all of life comes crashing it at once, the structure will be able to stand.

Because we have to build this upon his word.

And so what we want to do is we want to look very closely at this.

If anybody had the teaching of Jesus most correctly, it was the apostles.

They were his disciples.

They did ministry with him.

They ate with him and they communed with him and they traveled with him and they were with him in some of the most intimate conversations that was never recorded in the scriptures.

They were the ones who he was imparting this message.

He needed to hear.

And so they are the ones in eternity past, he would reveal his nature and character through their writing, through their teaching.

And so we have to stand on the apostolic teaching of the church.

But we aren't just New Testament Christians.

We aren't just ones who said, Well, I'm just going to read the New Testament and try to understand that in my life.

No, we have to understand the Old Testament as well because it informs and speaks and shapes to the person of who Christ is making us to be through his word and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

You see, all of the scripture, old and new, is telling the same story.

We just have to look for it.

And so while the foundation is this teaching of the prophets and the apostles, it says that Jesus himself is the cornerstone.

You see, the cornerstone when we're building this foundation, when we're building this whole structure, the cornerstone is the stone laid first.

It's the stone that the rest of the foundation is built off of.

And as I was studying about this thing, cornerstone, right?

Because we're not really familiar with that in our context, the way that we build structures today.

But in ancient time, what they used to do is when they were building a structure, they believed that this cornerstone was so powerful and so purposeful in making sure that the rest of the foundation was going to be secure, that whatever they built upon it would be established, that they would actually sacrifice an animal, either a goat or a lamb, and they would put its blood over top of that cornerstone and bury the animal beneath it, because they believed that that sacrifice brought power and stability to the whole structure.

Now look at that through a New Testament lens.

When Paul says Christ Jesus is the cornerstone, it's him who was laid, it's his blood who was poured out over it, it's him who was buried underneath it, but yet he resurrected again and he establishes the entire foundation of our faith.

He's the one that holds all of this together.

All of it, from Moses to now, declared me.

Look at Luke 24, 25 through 27.

He says this.

And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe, all the prophets have spoken.

Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Imagine that.

Imagine Jesus resurrected, right?

The people that he is interacting with still are struggling to believe that it's actually him.

And what does he do?

He stops, he sits down, and he shows them everything was about me.

Everything from creation through the Noah flood, through the Exodus, through all of the establishment of the kingdoms of Israel, everything that the prophets proclaimed was about me.

And so we want to fight to find Jesus in every passage of Scripture.

We're gonna labor and grow weary at times trying to uncover and discern, God, where are you revealing Jesus in this passage of Scripture?

Every sermon at Missio should be fundamentally about Jesus.

We've said this before, but I think it's worth mentioning over and over again.

If you ever come to Missio and this passage, the the the the sermon is not about Jesus.

It's not declaring that he lived a perfect life of obedience to the Father, that he died in our place as our atonement, that he was buried but rose again to new life, and we have eternal life in him.

If we don't proclaim that every Sunday, go find another church.

Because in my opinion, we've already strayed too far.

These beautiful beneficiaries of his finished work.

And what joy that is for us, the church.

What joy and celebration that should bring to our hearts that because of his accomplishments, because of his victories, because of his work, we get to participate in God's kingdom.

We get to be saved from our own condemning state.

We get to be inheritors of eternal life and treasure everlasting in the kingdom.

What glory, what joy should fill our hearts in knowing that.

But another thing that I think we have to understand is we're looking through this whole passage of scripture, and we talked about this a little bit last week.

We're too prone to read the Bible for ourselves.

And we're not, we're not accustomed or trained to read the Bible communally.

It's actually about us when we're reading this, because it's speaking to us.

It's not just speaking to you.

You see, when they got this letter to the Ephesians, it wasn't addressed to one person in that church.

It was addressed to the whole church.

And the church would sit much like this, and they would get the letter out and they would read it to the entire church.

And this is how they interpreted the scriptures.

This is how they understood God's word, this communal aspect of working all things together for our good.

You see, we are being built up together into a unified temple.

And that unified temple is being built on God's word.

We are all contenders of the faith.

It's not just my responsibility.

It's not just the other pastors at Mystius' responsibility to fight for sound doctrine and contend for the faith, though primarily that is the responsibility of our job description according to the scriptures.

We are to fight for sound doctrine and contend for the faith.

But it is your responsibility also.

You must fight for sound doctrine.

You must contend for the faith.

And how were we built together?

It's accomplished through the word.

You see, listen, the how has the church been able to stand for 2,000 years?

Through all kinds of attempts to destroy it.

Right?

Throughout periods of time, we've been slaughtered, we've been fed to beasts, we've been hung, we've been uh uh decapitated, we've been, whatever means possible, tried to quench this fire, tried to destroy this establishment, tried to tear down this structure called the church.

For 2,000 years, the world has fought against it to distinguish it.

What's it stood on?

Did it stand on feelings and experiences?

When they were being fed to lions, did they rejoice?

Yes.

Why?

Because that was a good experience when they were being persecuted, when our brothers are being imprisoned in other countries in this world, are they rejoicing?

Yes.

Is it because of their experience and what they're feeling?

No.

It's because the word.

They have a greater truth, a greater promise.

The church has been able to stand for the last 2,000 years because it stood upon the word of God and the apostolic teaching of the faith.

It has not stood on feelings and experiences, but it stood on the unfailing word.

That is the church.

And so we have to look back in honor of the ancient church to understand what have we always believed?

What is the essence of our faith?

What is the apostolic teaching?

What is the historical doctrines being taught?

Because it is this foundation of which we will continue to stand here on out.

Some of you might say, Well, uh I don't really love theology or I don't consider myself a theological person, but you are.

The reality is we all are.

We are all theologians because everything that we believe is built on theology.

Who is God?

Vitally important for us to answer.

And the answer to all of those questions is fundamentally theological.

When we look at this interaction between Jesus and Peter and the Gospel of Matthew, we'll see this kind of truth.

Says this in verse uh chapter 16, verses 15 through 18.

He said to them, But who do you say that I am?

Jesus speaking.

Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

This is a theological and doctrinal statement that Peter makes.

You are the Son.

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

The theology packed into that small little statement is mind-blowing when you start to unpack it.

You're saying that this man is God's son.

God is not one, but he's many now.

He's maybe three in one, because he even says that it wasn't flesh and blood that revealed this to you, but my Father.

So Jesus is affirming Peter's statement that he is the Son and says that you are the Christ, what does this mean?

It's what the prophets foretold of that the Messiah would come, the chosen one of God would come to save and redeem his people.

And so he's the fulfillment of this prophecy.

You see, if we throw away theology, if we throw away doctrine, ultimately we throw away all of our understanding of who God is.

So Peter's statement of which Christ said, on this rock, on this confession, on what you say about me, Peter, I will build my church is his word.

I'll build my church on my word.

So what's our main idea this morning?

You see, we must strive to know God authoritatively through his word in honor to the ancient church.

This is this metric of health that we've been talking about this whole morning.

Strive to know God authoritatively, not solely.

I want you to understand that.

I'm not saying that this is the only way we can know God, but this is authoritatively the way we should strive to know God.

And in honor to the ancient church.

But we often fail to do this.

You see, some of us know the God of our feelings and experiences more than the God of the Bible.

Some of us know the God of our feelings and experiences more than we know the God of the Bible.

While we can know God through these methods, we cannot authoritatively and solely know him this way.

You see, many of us, we just choose to remain in speculation.

That's our choice.

God has given us his word, and we have not honestly and humbly sought to know him through it.

You see, this is a blessing that God has given us.

That he has divinely revealed himself to us.

But many of us reject that and we remain in speculation.

And we question or we make assumptive statements.

Well, I think God is A, or I think God is B.

And when we remain in speculation, when we're choosing to do that, rather than humbly submit to the authority of the Scripture, what we're actually doing is seeking to make an idol of a God of our own image.

You see, you're the one that's dictating truth.

You're the one that's dictating what God should be like.

So when you say, well, I think love is A, and I, so if God is love, then he should be B.

You're the one who's dictating who God is and what he should be like.

You're placing yourself.

This is the, this is the oldest deceit and temptation in the book.

You're trying to be like God.

And you can't.

You won't.

You will just form a false image and you will worship it to your own condemnation and destruction rather than submitting yourself to who God has actually revealed Himself to be.

And so fundamentally, all of that's the that is Christianity you are, if journey of faith, no matter what age and maturity of Christianity you are, if you're still an unbeliever and think Christianity is a joke or you've been saved for 50 plus years and you're ready to go into glory, right?

Whatever it is, you still have to answer the question: is this book true?

Because if it's not, well then just remain in your speculation.

Just fabricate whatever God you want him to look like and serve that all the days of your life.

But if it is true, then we have a responsibility and a mandate to submit to it and seek out its truth for all that he has revealed himself to be to us.

We choose too often to remain in speculation, church, when God has given us divine revelation.

Why?

Why do we do this?

Well, this Bible's a mirror.

We don't want to see the truth.

Often we don't want to see ourselves in it.

Right?

That's harder.

I was praying and thinking on the way today, like, what is it about sin that keeps us falling into it?

And I think, and maybe this is it, so I'm gonna submit this to you, right?

This was just in my prayer time coming up here, having a little talk with the Lord.

And uh I think it might be this sin has two things going for it.

It's easy and it provides immediate gratification.

It's way easier just to make up God who you want him to be.

And usually you're going to make him be someone who gives you more instant gratification.

Right?

Why do we steal?

Well, because it's easier to just take and we get instant gratification.

We have what we want.

Why work hard?

Why work honestly?

Why labor?

Why save?

Why be patient to obtain the things that you want?

Why do we commit adultery?

Because marriage is hard work.

It's easier and it's quicker satisfying to go have an affair than it is to put the work and labor into having a healthy and good marriage.

Why do we sin?

I think it's because it's easier and it's more instantaneously gratifying.

And I think that to know God rightly is hard and it takes long, stable work to know Him.

Some of us, though, some of us chase after new doctrines instead of staying tethered to the ancient church.

Some of us chase after new doctrines instead of staying tethered to the ancient church.

One thing I love to say, I was taught this by one of my mentors, if it's new, it's not true.

If somebody comes out with a new, and look, I went to a Bible college.

And this is here, here, here, here's literally what happened at this uh pyramid scheme Bible college I went to, right?

Literally what happened.

In class the day before, the teacher stands up who was the associate pastor of the church and said, There is no new revelation.

There is only illumination on the revelation.

Now, church, that's sound teaching.

That's good.

However, you get to Wednesday night service the next day, and guess what happens?

The senior pastor stepped up and said, I got a new book, and in it is new revelation God gave me by this book.

The brother sold 5,000 copies that night.

Literally, literally exploited and prostituted the word of God for his own gain.

And when we went back to class the next day, people had some questions, and we were told to shut up and get in line.

So I only stayed there about a semester.

But if it's new, it's not true.

We have to look back to the historic teaching of the faith.

Why do we constantly want to pursue something new?

Because we believe that it's something transcendent.

We believe that it's connecting us to God in deeper and more purposeful ways, but oftentimes it just leads us into destruction.

We have to be tethered to the ancient church.

You see, Jesus is pure doctrine.

And we have to understand that the further we come along through time, the higher risk we are running from straying from the truth.

Just look at this historically.

When you look at Jesus and then works and books written about him, right?

If Jesus is here, it's kind of, it's, you come out in time, it's it kind of grows, kind of grows.

And in the last like 200 years, it's whoo.

Because you know why?

Today, if you write a book that's complete heresy, that's just a joke, that just spits on God's word and tries to develop some kind of new revelation, you can get a$2 million book deal with Oprah and go on tour.

Back then, it was chained to your leg and you were burned at the stake.

Heresy meant something.

God's word was held in such high esteem and such awe and such respect that they treated it with death if it was handled wrongly.

Today, you can get your wildest dreams given to you through writing garbage.

I remember when I first got out of a more prosperity gospel teaching focus.

I ran to the bookstore to try and find a good theology book.

And I found all kinds of books on like diets you should do.

I don't know why that was there.

A bunch of books on how I could live my best life now, right?

That's the old one we understand that.

That's a joke.

Uh, we found all these other books, right?

Of how you can be good at this and that.

And I went to the theology section and church, it was this big.

Out of a whole bookstore.

And by God's grace and providence, I pulled out from that shelf.

Um, in my place, condemned he stood, essays on definite atonement by J.I.

Packer, and it revolutionized the rest of my life to where I am today.

You see, I was always chasing after new doctrine.

I had no regard for the ancient church.

In fact, I was under the impression that if you were over a certain age or if you did church at a certain time in our existence, then you were just a joke.

We are the ones that got it right.

And now I look at how foolish I was.

What a false foundation that I was building for me and for my family.

Jesus is pure doctrine, and we and you have to fight to go back to that constantly to understand it and then to interpret it and apply it for our modern context.

Because Jesus' word is still alive, it's still relevant, it still transforms men and women today.

Look at 2 Timothy 4, 2 through 4.

I'm trying to, I told myself this morning I was gonna be short.

We got baptisms.

I'm sorry, y'all.

I'll wrap this up.

All right.

So 2 Timothy 4 2 through 4 says this preach the word.

This is Paul charging Timothy.

Preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Church, this is so true for us today.

Look at and look, just because you're a big church does not mean that you're a bad teacher at all.

But if you look at some of the largest churches of today and the people who have gathered among themselves false teachers to tickle their ears to hear what they want to hear and have wandered off away from the gospel, away from the saving power of God's word, it is astonishing.

It's astonishing to see the truth of God's word being lived out even 2,000 years.

They knew that this was going to happen because this is the propensity of man.

We have to work to be healthy disciples, church, who make healthy disciples.

In the crux of this, the true Jesus.

But the beauty of the gospel is this that Jesus stood on God's word, despite his feelings and circumstances, to fulfill God's redemptive plan.

We see this all throughout the ministry of Jesus.

In the temptation in the wilderness is one of the highlights of where we see this fulfilled.

Jesus had been fasting for 40 days.

He had been fasted food and water in the desert, and he's met with the devil, and he provides to him three temptations to relieve himself of his current sufferings.

All of his feelings and experiences would have told him to take the bait, right?

Feed yourself, give yourself power, give yourself glory.

Look at you, Jesus.

You're scrambling through the desert, parched and hungry.

I thought you were the Son of God.

But what does Jesus answer the devil every single time with?

It is written.

It is written.

Christ Jesus was able to live perfectly because his entire life was built on the foundation of the word.

And we see this all throughout his ministry.

Constantly, Jesus says, You have heard it said.

You have heard it said, you have seen it written.

He constantly is going back.

He's not creating new doctrine, he's not creating new teaching.

Even the Son of God is not coming forth to declare something new, but he's elaborating and explaining all that was told to them from the prophets beforehand to show that he is the Christ.

Even through his betrayal and trial, in the lowest moment of his life, Christ stands on God's word.

When he was tempted to give up, he persevered because he was fueled and established on God's word.

Even to the point of death, Jesus stood upon what his father had declared about him.

He fulfilled the mission through standing on the promises of God.

And our hope for us, church, is that we would be a people who just love God's word.

Seems simple, right?

All this elaboration, all this preaching and work to explain this, and as simple as I can say, man, just that we be a people who love his word.

That God's word would actually be life to us.

Right?

When we're going through hard times, when we're going through trials in our life, when we're experiencing difficulty, what do we run to?

We run to Netflix and the refrigerator, we run to psychiatrist and medicine.

We run to everything but the word of God.

Because we don't fundamentally believe it's life to our very being.

Oh, that we would believe that God's word is life to us.

That we would know God primarily and authoritatively through his word.

If we truly desire to know God, then we must know him here in the scriptures first.

And ultimately, church, that we would teach others to love the true God as he has revealed himself to be.

We will be healthy disciples who make healthy disciples built and established upon the Word of God.

Think about it.

When you try to think about a person you love, but maybe other people don't really like them.

Anybody?

But all of you might have a person who you love, but other people don't really like them.

And you might say this statement all the time.

Well, if you really knew them, if you really just got to know them, you would like them.

You would love them.

That's not what they're really like.

And what I'm saying is, you can't love a person.

You might not is because of how much work and labor you have put in to know them intimately.

Now, praise be to God, Jesus is really easy to like.

But many of us have not put forth the labor to know him rightly, to know him intimately, to know him who for who he truly is and how he's revealed himself to be through his word.

So, church, I pray that as we discover what health looks like for us, that we would be a people of devotion to God's word.