[BBC List] church

Tue Apr 3 10:27:15 EAST 2007

Fundamental Priorities of a Good Church

by

John MacArthur

Selected Scriptures      GC 91-4

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Those of you who know me, know that I am addicted to the church.  I'm a
fanatic for the church.  I love the church, it is my life and breath, it is
the source of my highest joy and my most overwhelming anguish.  It is on my
mind all the time.  I sort of live in the aura of the church, all that it is
and all that it calls for and requires and provides.  It's a real adventure
to be a pastor.  I could not be a president and...I could deal with that.  I
could not be a radio preacher or an author, that would be all right.  But if
I were not a pastor, that would be the greatest loss of my entire life.  The
highlight of my life has been a stint at Grace Community Church.  The church
has never ceased to be an adventure, really an amazing adventure.  The
earliest years of life in the church were almost euphoric.  The church was
growing very rapidly, people were loving the Word of God.  Dynamic
conversions taking place and far more than anybody ever expected.  We
were...we were learning as we went.  I didn't know a whole lot.  I was
discovering during the week, preaching it on Sunday and implementing it the
next week in the church.  So we were all in this big adventure trying to
find out what the church really was, trying to sort out theology, interpret
the Bible, figure out how to apply it and it was just one incredible
adventure.

But always from the beginning, the goal was to...to develop the church in
such a way as to make it what the Lord of the church wanted it to be, to
look at the Word of God and try to discern there what revelation in the New
Testament tells us about the church and what God's plans and purposes and
expectations for the church are, and then figure out how to implement that
and to bring about the perfect will of God in the church through totally
imperfect people.  Therein lies the great challenge.  And they all know that
I am equally imperfect, and that even makes the challenge greater.   But it
has been an immense adventure.

And when I speak about the church, I'm not speaking about something sort of
off the top of my head, or off the cuff, or something I hope might be true,
but when I talk about the church I'm talking about that to which I've given
most attention throughout my entire life.  And I believe that one can
understand what the Bible says about the church.  I don't think that's
intended to be ambiguous.  I don't think the Lord said, "Now go out and
build the church and it's all going to be a riddle and see if you can figure
the riddle out."  I think it's patently obvious what the church is to be.
And so once you discern that in the Scripture, you can move to implementing
that in the lives of people.  And that's what we've been trying to do in all
these many years and God has allowed us to raise up a seminary where we can
train men to do the same thing and to have influence around the world with
pastors and teachers and leaders who want the same thing.  And this has been
the great joy of my life.  And while some people may assume that the church
is somewhat complex, I'm convinced that what really makes the church
effective is pretty simple.  And that's what I want to share with you. I'm
going to unfold some of them and there are going to be things that I don't
think will surprise you.  In fact, there may be a certain amount of
indifference as you hear me say them.  And I understand that because I've
learned something being around for a number of generations in the church.
I...I was there when I was in my twenties so I was there when the young
people really were the heart and soul of the church and now it's those
people who matured and become the elders in the church, who give leadership
to the church...I've seen their children, I've seen their grandchildren.
I've watched the processes of generations in one single place.  And I have
found that with some exceptions it's generally true that the first
generation fights for the discovery and establishment of the truth.  There's
a real exhilaration, there's a real passion in that first generation, new
Christians, people just awakening to the realities of divine truth.  There's
a passion to learn it, to know it and defend it and fight for it.

The second generation tends to sort of try to maintain it, and maybe even
extend it.  The first ten, fifteen years of Grace Church, maybe even heading
toward twenty years, we were really working hard to crystalize and clarify
doctrine.  That's why the church has such an extensive doctrinal statement,
which is also the doctrinal statement of the college and seminary.  We
worked as a staff at writing papers on all kinds of theological issues.
We'd have a staff meeting and I'd assign guys to write papers on various
theological things that we needed to hammer out and discuss and we called
the position papers.  And we still develop those kinds of things.  But that
first generation was primarily committed to the development of...of the
truth, to understanding the truth, to systematizing the truth thoroughly
consistently with Scripture, not imposing it upon Scripture.  Establishing
the truth, discovering it, refining it, and establishing it.  And now we're
in the second generation and what we're seeing now is this desire to
maintain the truth, to guard the truth, to secondly, extend the truth.
There came, I suppose, about year twenty at Grace Church this desire to take
the truth to the ends of the earth, to get books translated into every
imaginable language.  I was talking to one of our guys who graduated from
the seminary, who's just back from Croatia where they planted a training
center in Croatia to take the truth to that part of the world.  We've got
this sort of spiritual young man mentality you find in 1 John where he talks
about the young men who are valiant for the truth.  They...they know the
truth and they want to fight for the truth and they overcome the evil one
who is a liar and the father of lies and tries to, of course, destroy the
truth.  And so I look at that and I think that that's probably
generationally speaking where our church life is.  We are passionate about
guarding the truth.  We are passionate about extending the truth.  In fact,
one of the guys who was at the Shepherds Conference, never been there
before, is from down in Texas, and he said to one of our elders at the end
of the conference, he said, "I get it, I get it, I know what this church is
all about.  It's all about proclaiming and protecting, is that right?"  And
our elder said, "Yeah, you've got it.  It's all about proclaiming and
protecting."  There's a passion at that and I think that's a wonderful place
to be, to know the truth, to have established the truth, affirm the truth,
understood the truth and now to be passionately committed to maintaining the
truth and extending the truth.

But, there's a third phase and historically this is...this is kind of the
way it flows.  The third generation is apathetic.  The third generation is
apathetic.  They weren't a part of the process of discovery.  They weren't a
part of the process of refinement, so they don't understand the pain and the
endurance and the relentlessness that you went through to get there.  And
they...they really weren't, because they weren't there fighting to
understand that truth, they weren't there fighting to defend that truth,
they just kind of show up at some time.  And obviously we have people
flowing into Grace Church, we have people flowing into the college even now,
people flowing into the seminary who never were in the battle to define the
truth, who never were in the battle to defend the truth, who just show up
when all the work is done.  And that...and the attitude that tends to be
there is an attitude of apathy.  And that's really sad.  You see people who
go to church today, only if it's convenient, they're really not energized by
the discovery of the truth.  They're not particularly energized by refining
the truth.  They're not very interested in protecting the truth and
proclaiming the truth, and extending the truth.  They...they come whenever
they can, and they show up whenever they want.  You take the preaching of
the Word of God for granted, you take the truth for granted because you
weren't a part of the process, that's why it has no value to you.  You're
like a rich kid who has all the money to buy things but doesn't understand
the value of anything because no sacrifice was necessary for you to acquire
it.  

And that's when church life gets tough.  That's when people are worried
about whether the air conditioner is blowing on the back of their neck or
not, or whether they can find a parking place, or whether the service time
interrupts the plans for the day, or whether the sermon's too long, or the
pew's not comfortable.  And they become absorbed in all that stuff.  I've
read enough about church history and even contemporary and more modern
church history to know there's a time in the life of the church when that
becomes the dominant characteristic of the church because that third
generation weren't a part of the struggle and that is a frightening thing.
Maybe I'll die before I have to deal with too much of that.  But somebody in
the future will have to deal with it.

I get a lot of letters.  I got ...I think about a 24-page letter the other
day, that's a daunting thing, you know, you're so busy, you get a 24-page
letter and you say, "Really, do I need to read this?"  Usually it's from
some kooky person who...who, you know, writes with no space and then writes
up the side and across the top and down the side, and on the back and on the
envelope, you know.  But this was from a lady, her name is Dorothy.  It's an
absolutely...it may be the most incredible letter I've ever received and I
read all twenty-some pages of it.  And I was so moved by it that I had it
typed up to keep as a keepsake.  This woman went through this incredible
process of coming to understand the gospel.  She was from Germany.  She came
to America.  She married a real bozo of a guy.  And life was horrific.
She's a writer and a journalist.  She tried to find truth.  She went through
cults.  She became a God-hater and a Christ-hater and she goes writing
through all of this.  And she's a good writer.  And as the years go by she's
becoming more and more desperate.  As a little kid her mother was involved
with the occult.  Her father was in to demonology.  She couldn't sleep at
night for fear that she was going to be killed by demons and she had all
these incredible fears.  She was abused as a child.  And the story goes on
and on.

Well, to make a long story short, she turns on the radio.  She listens to
Grace To You.  And it's a series on the lordship of Christ.  She hears the
message.  She writes for the book.  First book she reads is the lordship of
Christ.  And she and her husband read it out loud verbatim.  That's a pretty
heavy introduction into Christianity.  She decided she wasn't sure the New
Testament documents were actually accurate so she needed to know about that,
so she went and got F.F. Bruce's book on New Testament Documents and read
that.  She came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ was who He claimed to
be.  The New Testament was what it claimed to be.  And riding along in a
car, reading...again the gospel of Jesus Christ with her husband...she was
converted to Christ.  And then she goes on for about five pages to describe
in the most clear way this absolutely insatiable thirst to know the truth.
And she says she weeps to know the truth.  She falls on her face before God
to know the truth.  She falls on her knees before Christ and pleads that He
would show her the truth.  Whatever it is that she comes to understand in
the Word of God as she believes implicitly without question and she is
demonstrating the real work of God in a transformed heart.  

You know, one could wish to have a church full of people like that who can
never get enough of the truth, who just hang on every element of the truth
because it is like food like no other, because it is so soul-satisfying.
And if it isn't soul-satisfying for you, then somehow you've developed bad
spiritual eating habits, right?  How...how can we...how can we move
ourselves away from these dangerous places of apathy that so easily creep
into our lives.  And many of you fit into that sort of third generation
category.  You come from a Christian home.  You come from parents who came
from Christian parents.  Your grandparents may be know the Lord, you've been
raised in the church, you didn't fight for the truth, you just kind of got
handed the truth.  How do you...how do you fight against the tendency to be
apathetic about that?  How do you avoid the danger of spiritual privilege?

Michael Griffits(?), the British writer, said, "Christians collectively seem
to be suffering from a strange amnesia.  A high proportion of people that go
to church have forgotten what it's all about.  Week by week they attend the
services in a special building.  They go through their particular
time-honored routine.  They give little thought to the purpose of what
they're doing.  The Bible talks about the bride of Christ, but the church
today seems like a ragged Cinderella, hideous among the ashes."  Pretty
graphic.  And the ragged Cinderella has lots its beauty because it's failed
to understand the priorities in spiritual life in the church.  If we're
going to recover the passion, if we're going to recover the zeal for the
truth, we've got to focus ourselves on the right things.  And let me say
this as simply as I can say it, you have to focus yourself away from
yourself.  Building a church around felt needs is utterly contrary to
Scripture.  Focusing on you and your problems and your dilemmas and your
circumstances and your situations is counterproductive.  And while it may
intend to help you, the unintended consequence becomes, you are the one
being worshiped.  This is a problem.  You are the center of attention.  You
are the center of focus.  And then the unintended consequence is when you
feel like you don't have any particular needs, or they're not doing a very
good job of meeting those needs, you don't need a church.  If they fail to
deliver what you think you need, you check out.

So we need to get back to what the really...the really important matters of
the church are.  As the hymn writer said, you want to go to church to get
lost in wonder, love and praise.  You want to go to church to forget about
yourself, to set yourself aside and to lose yourself in the glory and wonder
of God, a God-centered preacher, a God-centered preacher, a God-centered
teacher, a God-centered worship is what you want in a church.  When you look
for a church, that's what you want.  You want those who are consistently
being brought before God, who are being brought into the very throne room of
heaven to see His glory and His majesty and the wonder of who He is and His
righteousness and His holiness.  It's really sad when people don't
understand the full glory of God because if you don't...if you don't
understand the depth of the being of God, you can't rise to the heights of
praise.  And that's what dramatically alters life.

Now, how do you pick a church?  Look, you come from a church, we all come
from some church, you go to a church.  The rest of your life you're going to
be involved in a church.  The church is going to be the center of your life.
It's going to be...some of you are actually going to get married and have
children.  You're going to raise them in a church.  The church scene is
frankly frightening.  In the tens of thousands of letters that we get at
Grace To You every...well every week, thousands a day, I would say that the
commonest complaint that we receive is from people who cannot find a church
where they feel the truth of God is honored and ministry is done in a
biblical way.  This is no small frustration.

It's not that there are many...there aren't many churches, there are lots of
churches.  It's trying to discern what is a good church, what is a right
church.  And I want to help you with that.  I want to talk about what a
church should be.  Now when I talk about this, you know you're getting down
to the core of where I live because as a pastor I have a great love for the
church.  I've always loved the church.  Even as a kid growing up I loved the
church.  And Jesus said, "I will build My church and the gates of Hades will
not prevail against it."  It's the only institution Jesus ever promised to
build, the only one that He is building.  And so we have to be committed to
the church.  But obviously not all churches are committed to what they
should be.  So let me give you some principles, okay?  What you want to look
for in a church.  Not just now but certainly now and for the rest of your
life.  These are not unrealistic expectations.  These are not methods,
nothing to do with that.  These are not formats.  These have nothing to do
with style.  I've been all over the world, I've been in church from the high
mountains of the Andes in South America, to a church...house church in
China, to churches in the Middle East, to churches in Europe, to churches in
South Africa.  I've been all over the world.  Everywhere I've gone I've been
in churches and I've seen every imaginable kind of style of church.  I'm not
talking about that.  I'm talking about substance.  Don't look at style, it's
seductive.  It's, at best, style can only appeal to the flesh.  Substance is
what you're after.

The first thing you look for in a church is a high view of God....a high
view of God.  And this one could spend his entire life discussion...a high
view of God.  Proverbs 9:10 says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of
wisdom."  Everything starts with fearing God.  That's the beginning of
everything.  And that's...that's crystal clear in Scripture.  The holiness
of God is the first and central element in the church.  The glory of God,
the exaltation of God.  

In the Old Testament, this, of course, is established I think in the
writings of Moses most specifically in Leviticus 18 to 20.  If you would
look at that for a moment, this is just...there are a lot of places you
could go but...we'll start...just to look at Leviticus 18 for a moment.
There's a principle that comes out of this very interesting text.  The Lord
spoke to Moses and He said in verse 2, "Speak to the sons of Israel and say
to them, 'I am the Lord your God, so you shall not do etc., etc.  What's
done in Egypt, and so forth.'" Verse 4, "You are to perform My judgments,
keep My statutes, live according...in accordance with them.  I am the Lord
your God.  You shall keep My statutes," verse 5, "My judgments by which a
man may live if he does them, I am the Lord.  None of you shall approach any
blood relative of his to uncover nakedness, that would be incest.  Don't do
that, I am the Lord.  You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father or
the nakedness of your mother," etc.  And goes on to talk about various other
things.

Comes to verse 30, "Thus you are to keep My charge that you do not practice
any of the abominable customs which you have...which have been practiced
before you." This is the kind of thing the pagan world does.  "Don't defile
yourself.  I am the Lord your God."  In chapter 19, repeats the same
scenario.  The Lord says to Moses, "Speak to the congregation and say you
shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.  So reverence mother, father,
keep the Sabbath, I'm the Lord your God.  Don't turn to idols.  Don't make
molten gods.  I am the Lord your God."  Down in verse 10, "I am the Lord
your God."  Verse 12, "I am the Lord."  Verse 14, "I am the Lord," 16, "I am
the Lord," verse 18, "I am the Lord," verse 25, "I am the Lord your God,"
28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37.  Always your conduct goes back to the fact that you
have God for your God.

In verse 7 of chapter 20, "You shall consecrate yourselves before...or
therefore, and be holy for I am the Lord your God.  Keep My statutes and
practice them, I am the Lord who sanctifies you." And it goes on like that.
Down into verse 26 for example, "You are to be holy to Me, for I the Lord am
holy and I have set you apart from the peoples to be Mine."  There's more of
this in chapter 21.  There's more of it in chapters 22, chapter 23, chapter
25, it goes on.

Now what I'm saying to you is this, the foundation of all conduct is built
on your understanding of who your God is.  If you understand the glory and
the holiness of God, that becomes the main motivation for how you live your
life.

It was said by Paul, and it's a really profound insight, in Romans chapter
10, it's worth remembering.  It was said by the Apostle Paul of the Jews of
Israel, this amazing statement, Romans 10:3, "Not knowing about God's
righteousness they were seeking to establish their own."  You know, this is
really amazing...amazing.  What was wrong with Israel?  Why were they
apostate?  Why did they reject John the Baptist?  Why did they reject Jesus?
Why did they reject the Apostles?  Why did they reject the gospel?  Why did
they execute their own Messiah?  Weren't they religiously astute? Didn't
they know the Old Testament?  Hadn't they made commitments, particularly the
Pharisees and the scribes, to a fastidious study of every single detail of
the Law of God?  How could they go so wrong?  How could they reject their
Messiah?  How could they reject the gospel?  How could they therefore reject
the fulfillment of all that they had anticipated, promise to Abraham and to
David?  How could it happen?  And the bottom line is, Romans 10:3, "You
didn't know about God's righteousness."  Bottom line, they did not
understand how righteous God was.  Over and over again in the Old Testament
God said, "I'm holy...I'm holy...I'm holy." But they thought He was less
holy than He was and they were more holy than they were.  God being less
than He was, and they being more than they were, they thought their
righteousness was enough.  It is always a flawed understanding of God that
leads to iniquity.

Soft words produce hard hearts.  Remember that.  Soft words produce hard
hearts.  You show me a church where soft words are preached and I will show
you a church filled with hard hearts.  Jeremiah said that the Word of God is
a hammer that shatters.  Hard preaching produces soft hearts.  And a love of
soft words is a love of a hard heart...particularly do we have to preach the
hard crushing truth about the holiness of God and the righteousness of God,
that He is intolerant of sin, that He hates the sin and the sinner and that
He will judge the sinner eternally.  The Jews didn't know how righteous God
was and that was the fatal flaw.  If you do not have a lofty enough
understanding of God, that is rehearsed and repeated and lifted up before
you all the time, and I'm not talking about in songs and choruses, I'm
talking about a substantial, theological, biblical grasp on God then you do
not have in place the greatest motivation to godly living.  People don't
live godly lives because some guy got up and gave a pep talk about the fact
that they ought to live godly lives.  People don't live godly lives because
somebody got up and told them there are lots of negative consequences and
you might not be successful if you don't...if you don't behave this way.
People are motivated to live godly lives primarily from their view of God.

I can walk in a church, I can be there five or ten minutes and I'll tell
you...I can tell you usually how profound their understanding of God is by
how they worship.  You know, the preacher...the preacher's responsibility,
first of all, is to take people down so that they can go up.  That's how I
view my role.  And what do I mean by that?  I mean, you have to take people
down into the depths of Scripture, down into the deep things of God if you
ever expect them to go up in praise.  And if you have a congregation that
don't understand the deep things of God, that don't understand the height
and breadth and length and depth of the glory of His majesty and His person,
then what they call worship is just a form of manipulation.   And they're
primarily motivated by the style and the lilt of the tune and not the
content of the words.  And when you get people together who understand the
deep things of God, and they begin to sing and to praise God, they're lost
in wonder, love and praise, not so much over the musical form, as over the
gripping profundity of the Scripture and theology set to music.  Shallow
worship is the byproduct of shallow theology.  Elevated, glorious,
transcendent captivating emotional enriching worship is the byproduct of a
deep understanding of truth.

And so, the key in looking at a church is...is there evidently there,
manifestly there, a lofty view of God?  If it's all about success, and it's
all about tweaking your life and feeling better about yourself and solving
your problems and fixing you, etc., etc., etc., that's selling short the
priority.  There's a whole Jewish religion confronted by Jesus and Paul that
was apostate and on its way to eternal hell.  As sophisticated as they were
in their religious system, they all perished because they had too low a view
of God.

We face a frightening battle with a man-centered kind of theology
today...selling psychological comfort to people rather than exalting God.
It was said of John Calvin that no man ever had a higher view of God.  And
does that ever come through.

It was Isaiah, you know, who had a vision of God and it just crushed him to
the point where he literally cursed himself.  But out of the ashes of that
destructive experience of seeing the glory of God came his usefulness.  And
it was Isaiah who toward the end of his book in chapter 66, the last
chapter, gets this word from the Lord, "Thus says the Lord, 'Heaven is My
throne, the earth is My footstool.  Where then is a house you can build for
Me?  And where is a place that I may rest?'" I'm bigger than anything you
could ever build.  "For My hand made all these things.  Thus all these
things came into being, declares the Lord, but to this one I will look."  

God says, "I'm not looking for buildings, here's what I'm looking for...to
him who is humble and contrite, or broken in spirit, and who trembles at My
Word." That's what I'm looking for, the one who trembles at My Word.  This
is of all things an irreverent age, utterly irreverent.  It is the
hopelessly informal age, you've noticed.  I was reading an article not long
ago that said essentially, "Most people...and I forget the statistics, like
75 percent...most people have never been to any formal event."  It's a
casual world and for the most part, there is a cavalier and casual attitude
toward serious things.  And there is a very obvious dumbing down and loss of
refinement in the world.  And so we take this casual cavalier approach and
we adopt it toward God.  It's a...it's...there's so much of it in the
culture.  I've been reading Eric Liddle's biography, pretty fascinating, the
great Scottish sprinter, you know, who won the gold medal at the Olympics
and wouldn't run on the Lord's day.  His mom dropped him off at a missionary
school in London and he was seven-years-old, his brother was nine, his
brother, Rob.  Both of them went back to China as missionaries.  He as a
teacher, and Rob as a medical missionary, later on.  But their parents lived
their whole life in China.  They brought the two boys home, seven and nine,
stuck them in a London boarding school and the mother went away
heart-broken, weeping because she wouldn't see them for eight years.  And
the biographer says, "Seven-year-old Eric received his class schedule...are
you ready for this?...English, science, mathematics, French, German and
Latin."  Seven years old.  We are a long way from that kind of mental
preparation.

And so, what happens is this dumbing down of a whole culture gets brought
into a dumbed-down church environment and there's very little ability to
rise above that, apparently, and to think great and grand and glorious and
profound and compelling and searching things about our God.  But that's
where everything starts...a low view of God produces a low view of sin, and
a low view of everything else in the Scripture.

So when you look for a church, look for a church where the preaching centers
on God, on His glory, the wonder of His person and not on you or others
around you, where God is constantly being exalted, where the music is filled
not with just a kind of style that's popular and enjoyable, but it's filled
with a profound level of content that helps you grasp what music in the Old
Testament was intended to do.  If you want to know what it was intended to
do, read the Psalms where you feel like you're coming to grips with the
greatness of your God.

Nobody can...nobody can make you a worshiper.  You worship God at whatever
level your understanding of God allows you.  If you have a superficial
understanding of God, then that's how you worship because the substance of
your worship is the content of your belief, right?  We could sing a hymn
like, "O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come," and there
would be some Christian people that say, "That's not a very cool tune."
Well maybe they don't know much about God.  But if you find somebody who
knows the Bible from cover to cover, O God, our help in ages past, and all
of a sudden into his mind comes the great redemptive history of God unfolded
in the Old Testament, and then our...O God, our help in ages past, our hope
for years to come," and then his mind sweeps from the past to the future and
he knows enough to know that in the future God is going to unfold all His
glorious purposes on into eternity.  In other words, you...you...you bring
into the content of your worship whatever it is you know to be true.  And so
this is where it has to start.  So as you look for a church, you find one
where God is taken very seriously....very seriously.  And you know your God
and you are confronted with His glory and His majesty and His holiness.  And
when you know He is the Lord your God and He is holy, that compels you then
to obey His statutes and His commandments and His precepts as we read in
Leviticus.

There's a second, and I think equally critical focus.  If you are looking
for a church, if you want a church to be what it should be, and if you want
to bring to your own church experience what is necessary, not just a high
view of God, but a high view of Christ...a high view of Christ.  Now I don't
know that I need to beg that issue or to say too much about it.  It should
be pretty apparent to all of us.  Look for a church where Jesus Christ is
exalted, not where somehow they sort of sneak Him in here and there.  

I remember seeing a program at a large seeker-friendly church, and during
this program there was...there was strange...there was music and there was
even some cursing and very kind of non-Christian event.  And the idea...this
was done in the church, people were brought to this thing, and it was...it
was really nothing Christian about it.  And at the end, a statement was
made, and this is a quote, "In some way, shape or form, Jesus has touched
all our lives.  Good night."

Well I don't even know what that means.  In some way, shape, or form Jesus
has touched all our lives?  That doesn't mean anything.  But I suppose that
was some effort to, I don't know, sanctify the event.  One thing you're
going to find in the New Testament church is the centrality of Jesus Christ.
He is not an addendum.  He is not a P.S.  He is not a postscript at the end
of the program.  He is not sort of stuck in at the end after you have been
the focus of the preacher's attention.  That's why if I had my choice, I
would rather preach the gospels than any other part of the New Testament
because...and I think that's why the bulk of the New Testament is the
gospels and the gospels are the life of Jesus Christ, the life and work of
Christ.  And the Old Testament, Jesus said, are those that speak about Me.
Jesus Christ is the center of all our worship.  There wouldn't be any
worship without Him.  And I just...I'm saddened.  I listen to TV preachers
who talk about all kinds of things, about people's problems and needs and I
just don't sense the centrality of Christ.  If you preach the gospels, it's
Christ in every verse.  If you preach the book of Acts, it's the work of
Christ through the Holy Spirit in the church.  If you go to the book of
Romans, it's the great treatise on the meaning of the sacrifice of Christ.
If you go to the book of Hebrews, it's the glory of the great high priest.
If you go to the book of Revelation, you're going to see the glory of the
returning and exalted Christ.  And He is the theme of Scripture.  There must
be a high view of Christ.

And I don't mean that in some esoteric sense, or some sense of respect.  I
mean that in terms of a passion on the part of the worshiper.  I love to
sing hymns about Christ.  I love to sing songs about Christ.  I love to
preach about Christ.  There's no greater subject than Christ to preach on.
I would...I find it almost impossible to give myself to speaking about
issues that aren't related either to the greatness of God or the person of
Christ, or the work, of course, of the Holy Spirit.  But I'm saddened by the
fact that the glory of Christ has been diminished in churches that are so
focused on the people.

Turn in your Bible for a minute to Philippians chapter 3 and I can comment
on this briefly.  And this is a familiar portion of Scripture, Philippians
chapter 3, so familiar, I go back and read it all the time.  It's basically
falling out of my Bible here.  Philippians chapter 3, well we can pick it
up, you know, it's...you know verses 3 through 6 where Paul talks about all
of his accomplishments as a religious Jew.  He...verse 4...talks about his
confidence in the flesh, circumcised of the nation Israel, tribe of
Benjamin, Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, as regard to the law, persecutor of
the church which defines his zeal, as to the righteousness which is in the
Law at least outwardly, certainly not inwardly, he was blameless.  And all
of that he had spent all his life accumulating, up until his true
conversion.  But I just...I think it's just a powerful thing in verse 7,
"Whatever things were gained of me, those things I have counted as loss for
the sake of Christ."  He spends his whole life accumulating all this, all
this self-righteousness, all this religiosity.  And then he says, "I met
Christ and it was nothing but loss.  I had put it in my gain column, you
know, like an accountant would do on the profit side.  I put it in the gain
column as if it was advantageous to me.  And I met Christ and I realized it
was all loss because all efforts at self-righteousness are damning efforts
and they don't accumulate anything helpful."  So he says it was all loss.

And then in verse 8 he says, "More than that, I count all things to be loss
in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."  Now there
is a statement that at some point in your Christian life, you have to come
to grips with.  "I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing
value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of
all things and count them but excrement...is the Greek word...in order that
I may gain Christ."  

Everything in this world is in the King James dung, manure, compared to
Christ.  I mean, that is an incredible statement.  I don't care what it is,
your worldly accomplishments, your achievements, your material possessions,
your career, whatever it is you own, all that and even your own sense of
well being, your own confidence, your own self-esteem.  Paul says all the
best about me, all that I spent all my life accumulating, a reputation, and
he had a noble reputation.  He was a funded persecutor, funded by Jewish
money to persecute and kill Christians.  He was considered a noble defender
of Judaism.  And when it came to his religious achievements, nobody could
give a more impressive list.  And he said it's all manure compared to
knowing Christ.  And the question that rises out of that is...how important
to you is it to know Christ?

He says here, "I count all thing to be loss in view of the surpassing value
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."  And yet in another place, you remember he
said this, "That I may know Him...that I may know Him."  Go down to verse
10, "That I may know Him."

What are you talking about, Paul?  You just said you know Him, now you say
you want to know Him.  What is he talking about here?  He's saying I know
Him but the knowing is not sufficient.  I want to know the power of His
resurrection.  I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings.  I want to
be conformed to His death.  What do you mean?  I want to really know Him.  I
want to know Him better than I could ever know Him knowing what I now know.

You ought to go to church and say...the goal of going to this place is I
want to know Christ better than I know Him.  I want to know Him far better
than I know Him.  I want to know everything about Him.  I want to know
everything about His character, everything about His mind, the mind of
Christ.  I want to know everything about His attitudes.  I want to know
every word He said.  I want to understand it.  I want to grasp it.  I want
to understand the depth of His compassion, the greatness of His affection,
His love.  I want to understand the zeal that He had for the truth and I
want to understand the heart of anger that went out against sinners when He
made a whip and cleaned the temple.  I want to understand every nuance that
the Apostle Paul unfolds in the scriptures concerning the meaning of the
death of Jesus Christ.  I want to understand that.  I want to know the same
power that raised Him from the dead.  I want to understand that power and
know it as He lives in me.  I want to know the fellowship of His sufferings.
What does he mean by that?  He said, "I want to suffer the way that He
suffered.  I want to have a partner in my pain.  I want to have Him
understand that I am suffering for the same truths and the same realities
for which He suffered, not atoning for sin but suffering the hatred of those
who resented the truth."  Paul said, I want...I want to be conformed even to
His death.  I want to die the way He died, faithful to God, for the truth.
I want to know Him.  And I question whether in contemporary evangelicalism
there's very much of this desire in the hearts of people to know Christ like
this.

Can you actually look at all the stuff in your life and say it's just manure
to me?  What really drives me is to know Christ, to know Christ.  As I said
a moment ago, I particularly love to preach the gospels.  It takes me a long
time to go through the gospels, but I have to tell you this, slower is
better than faster, folks, because I don't want to miss anything.  And one
of the deep regrets of my life an dit is a serious regret that I live with
and I don't often talk about it, but it is one of the really deep aches in
my heart and it's been there for many, many years is that I know some things
about Christ from my study of Scripture that I don't have the time or the
opportunity to tell other people.  And that's one of the...you talk about
preparing a message for me, I never prepare...I never study the Bible to
make a sermon, I study the Bible to understand it.  And having understood
it, I can usually think of something to say.  But what comes out of that
sermon might e a tenth of what I have come to understand.  Sometimes it just
sort of leaks out in conversations and occasionally in spaces like this when
I share those things.  But it's one of the frustrations.

Somebody asked me about the book I wrote, The Battle for the Beginning and
somebody was, you know, saying they appreciated the book and they asked me
how I felt about the book and I said, "I'm not happy about it.  I really am
very unhappy about that book.  It bothers me a lot."  And they said why?  I
said, "Because when I went through Genesis 1 to 3, the book should have been
this big and it was this big and there's all that that nobody is going to
know." That's very frustrating to me.  So as I said, you're fortunate that I
don't even go slower and longer.  Somebody said my preaching is like my
golf, long and to the right and always near a hazard.  But I'm not running
out of material, I'm running out of time...I'm running out of time.  I'll be
dead before I can get to it all.  And I will have, and this is interesting
for a preacher, I will have so many things that I will die knowing but never
having told you.

Well, let me give you a third thing to think about when you're thinking
about a church and where its focus should be.  And by the way, a church that
is consumed with the glory of God and the majesty of Christ is really going
to be a wholesome, healthy, holy place.  But there's another thing that is
obvious.  I mean, I hardly need to say it and I'll just say it in passing.
You need to be in a place where the Scripture is exalted...where the
Scripture is exalted, not where somebody's ideas are punctuated with Bible
verses.  Psalm 138:2 says, "God has exalted His Word above His name."  Jesus
said, "We live by every word that comes out of the mouth of God," quoting
from Deuteronomy.  You need to be in a place where the Word of God is
proclaimed and explained.  I've been saying the meaning of the Scripture is
the Scripture and nothing is as powerful.  When you understand the meaning
of Scripture, you have just tapped in to the most powerful truth in the
universe.  It doesn't make any sense to be in any place where the Word of
God is not proclaimed.  You know, 1 Timothy over and over again, Timothy is
instructed about the Word and about how important it is to be faithful to
the Word and in chapter 3 there's a reason sort of summing it up.  He says,
verse 15, "The church of the living God which is the pillar and support of
the truth." We live in a whole universe of lies.  Satan is the father of
lies.  He fathered them in the garden, as we all know. The world is full of
lies.  There has to be someplace where you can go and hear the truth.  Not
man's ideas, not man's impressions, not man's insights, but the truth....the
truth...the truth.  

It was some years ago when the publisher of the L.A. Times and five or six
other national newspapers and the owner of a dozen network affiliate
television stations took me to lunch and asked me a question.  He said, "You
know, I've come to listen to you a few times and I just want to ask you a
question.  You have this audience, you have this influence, why don't you
ever give your opinion on things?"  We were sitting at lunch and I said,
"You...you...you really want another opinion?  You don't have enough?  You
know, can you really benefit by another opinion?  You've got a whole opinion
section in your paper every day, you want more?"

"Well...he said...come to think of it, it's a good point."

I said, "However, I...I would be very happy to write a column for you that's
not my opinion."

"Well whose opinion would it be?"

"It wouldn't be anybody's opinion, it would be the truth of God.  I would be
happy to do that."

Never heard back about that.  I'm not about opinions, it's all about giving
voice to God.

I was sitting in one of those...they used to have, what they called
serendipity sessions.  It was group therapy.  I'm not real big into group
therapy.  People were sitting around saying all kinds of things they
shouldn't say.  And so they said, "You know, we want you to get in touch
with your deepest inner self." And so they passed out little paper cups to
everybody and they said, "Do to that cup what will be a representation of
how you view yourself."  So I have this little cup in my hand and I'm
sitting next to a guy, he's a pretty complex guy, and he's...he's making an
origami thing, you know, like the Japanese deal out of it, like the bird
they make out of paper.  He's...I'm sitting there...what am I doing to do
with this cup?  And they give us like 45 minutes.  So I just sat there and
watched all these guys with the nuances, you know, trying to reflect all the
complexity of their personality.  Finally it struck me.  I just punched the
bottom out.  I was done.  And then they came around and they decided to ask
certain people to explain themselves with their cups.  This was kind
of...this was kind of an epiphany for me at the moment and I...and they
picked me.  And so I said, "Well, it's pretty simple, I just see myself as a
channel through which the truth of God can flow."

Oh brother, how boring.  How one-dimensional.  And that's how I see myself.
Every opportunity for me, whether it's at the college or the seminary or
Grace To You or Grace Church is the same.  It's about the truth...it's about
the truth and it's about divine truth.  And divine truth is what energizes
me.  Divine truth is what's been deposited to me.  It's a treasure that I
have to guard and it's a message I have to proclaim and I'm accountable to
God for doing it.  But it's not something I do reluctantly, it's something I
do passionately.  And when you choose a church, you find a church where the
people who are shepherding, the people who are preaching and teaching have
this passion to proclaim divine truth accurately, faithfully.  Anything else
is a misrepresentation of their responsibility.

I remember reading about a Puritan who...this is an American Puritan back on
the east coast in the 1800s and told the people he was going to preach
through the Bible.  And the leaders of the church were so mad, they locked
the pews.  Have you ever been in an old church in New England where they had
a swinging door and a lock and people bought their section like box seats at
the Dodger Stadium?  And the rich people bought the boxes up front, and the
poor people got the little ones in the back and a guy stood above with a
little long fishing rod with a ball on the end to whack kids in the head who
talked.  That's how it was.

Well these guys were so mad that this preacher was going to preach through
the scriptures that they locked the pews so that the people who wanted to
hear him had to stand around the perimeter.  So he preached to people
standing around the perimeter through the scriptures for nine years before
they unlocked the pews.  That's commitment...that's commitment.  He knew
what he was supposed to do and he did it.

Now I admit you could get carried away.  There was another Puritan who came
to a church in New England and said he was going to preach through Isaiah.
He preached there over 25 years and died in chapter 8.  That's too slow.

Well, you understand.  When you find a place that teaches the Word, you'll
find a place where doctrine is clear, you'll find a place where holiness is
pursued.  You'll find a place of spiritual authority...all very, very
essential in your spiritual development and to the glory of God. 

Father, we thank You for our time and reminding us of what is Your desire
for Your church.  We want to exalt You and Your Son and Your Word.  And we
need to do a little inventory in our lives to find out if that's really
important to us.  I pray for the students for whom church is a real burden,
who go because they have to go, who sit there with indifference and apathy.
They didn't fight the battle to discover the truth and to refine it and they
didn't then live the wonderful passions of protecting it and proclaiming it,
they just showed up.  And there's a general apathy for that truth.  I pray,
O God, that You would grant them by Your Holy Spirit grace to pursue the
knowledge of the holy, to pursue the knowledge of Christ and to pursue the
knowledge of the truth.  And in that increasing and deeper knowledge of You
and Your Son and Your Word will come the glorious new love for Your church
as the place where the deepest longing of our soul is met.  We want to know
You, O God, and Christ and the Word for in that knowledge comes our soul
satisfaction, comes out power, comes our joy.  Put us in places like that
all through our lives and even use us as leaders to assure that the church
is what it should be.  We thank You in our Savior's name.  Amen.

Thanks.

Charis,

Mike Abendroth

 <http://www.bbcchurch.org> www.bbcchurch.org

Ephesians 3:21 auvtw/| h` do,xa evn th/| evkklhsi,a| 

2 Tim 1:2b  "Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord."

"Faith is not our physician; it only brings us to the Physician ... Faith is
not our saviour. It was not faith that was born at Bethlehem and died on
Golgotha for us. It was not faith that loved us, and gave itself for us;
that bore our sins in its own body on the tree; that died and rose again for
our sins.  It is a sin-bearer that we need, and our faith cannot be a
sin-bearer. Faith can expiate no guilt; can accomplish no propitiation; can
pay no penalty; can wash away no stain; can provide no righteousness. It
brings us to the cross, . but in itself it has no merit and no virtue.
Faith is not Christ, nor the cross of Christ. Faith is not the blood, nor
the sacrifice; . Our faith does not divide the work of salvation between
itself and the cross. It is the acknowledgment that the cross alone saves,
and that it saves alone. Faith adds nothing to the cross, nor to its healing
virtue. It owns the fulness, and sufficiency, and suitableness of the work
done there, and bids the toiling spirit cease from its labours and enter
into rest. Faith does not come to Calvary to do anything. It comes to see
the glorious spectacle of all things done, and to accept this completion
without a misgiving as to its efficacy. It listens to the "It is finished!"
of the Sin-bearer, and says, "Amen."   

NOT FAITH, BUT CHRIST 

by Horatius Bonar 
(1808-1889) 

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