Well, we're in between our book expositions, and I'm just continuing to find stuff. That I want to preach on.
Some more foundational stuff, I guess you could say, that um I have to remind myself that the old guard needs to revisit some things from time to time. Look at the Apostle Paul's epistles, the same truths. are just mentioned over and over and over. Because we need to Hey, we need to realign our hearts back with God every Sunday. That's what the model prayer is.
Remember, it's the realignment prayer. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. That's to be first. That's hallows his name. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
May you be. Honored and adored and worshipped and magnified, and by building your kingdom, which for us in this time period means his local churches.
Now, the kingdom is expressed in your individual life, in your marriages, etc., living for God in the world. Yes, it is, but nothing like when He brings His people together. That's the pinnacle. That's the foundation. That's the centerpiece of God's glory and purposes in the earth.
So, we want to be dedicated to that.
So, every Sunday when we come together, there's always that germ, that spark of wanting to put God's kingdom first in every believer's heart. That's one of the ways you know you're a believer. You have the amen of the spirit down in there. Lord willing, we'll talk about that the next time we get together. That thing that says, I wasn't really on track with that in my thinking on this Sunday morning.
I got too much Saturday still hanging over in there. But I do need to realign my heart back with my Lord's purposes and priorities. And that's good. I'll say it's good for us. It's not just good, it's essential for us.
And God's ordained preaching as the primary way to get that realignment done.
So, as I'm thinking about us as a church and Goodness, next spring, my 45th anniversary here with you. I was thinking about things I want to look at again, and this just jumped out at me. And I. We're going to be in Ephesians chapter 2, by the way. Go ahead and turn there while you continue to listen.
When I preached through Ephesians, my calculations are right about 23 years ago. That time of exegeting Ephesians and us as a body affirming those truths. That was a time of putting the nails in the coffin. of man-centered hoop jump Gimmicky easy believism. i.e., a false or weak gospel and a false view of conversion.
Now, we'd already really moved past all of that, to be honest, but Ephesians was like. We know we're not going back to those old systems that had some good intention in them, but. With a reason why a church like us literally would baptize people, and 90% of them we couldn't find in the next year or two. False profession after false profession after false profession.
So we've been doing some reformation, but then we came to Ephesians, and it was like. Wham, wham, wham. This is sealed forever for Grace Life Church. We're never going back. to the other.
So it really nailed the nails in the coffin of all man-centered easy believism, hoop-jump nonsense. That some well-intending people had brought into the Baptist life, even many, many decades before you and I were around. And it caused me then to think on all of the reformation, the reforming, if you will, the revitalizing of biblical doctrine and practice that we have put together. God has put together through us, I should say. Over these decades.
And this might be all of them, but I'm just going to run through them. These things have been underway for many decades, and now I can say, far from perfection, but we're functioning on these levels, if you will. First of all, a true membership. We've been done for a long time with having 3,000 on the roll and 600 in attendance. We crossed that bridge decades ago, and we're not going back there.
Our membership is really, really, matter of fact, our membership is generally lower than our attendance, or it often is. Because membership ought to mean something, it ought to be true. It ought to be about folks who have really been converted and folks who really want to belong to a church. You're not going to go to the marriage altar and make a commitment to a bride or a husband and then not show up. And the church is more important than your marriage.
And your marriage is very important to God, and to you, it should be.
So that was a reformation. And by the way, do you remember anything about that? There's some people who got really upset about that. We were removing people off of the church role years and years ago. And some of these people are 40 and 50 years old, and their mamas would call me and just let me have it.
You took my baby off the roll. I said, Your baby's 50 years old. And really, the blessed dear lady thought: if they're not on the church roll, they might not make it to heaven. That's how shallow and unbiblical we were. And in Baptist life, we just uh Dr.
Sewell just kept building and building and building on error and weak practice. Till I know he would agree with me, we just really came into heretical practices. It wasn't intentional. It wasn't intentional, but we really flew into that. And I have a large debt to Dr.
Bob Pittman. I was his associate. And he gave me his blessing because he saw it too, and he was encouraging me. Let's start fixing some of this. But it took a long, long time.
A lot of people didn't like it. But I was convinced God did. Competent leadership. We moved out very early on from just whoever could get a popular vote to become a deacon or something. And moved into what are the biblical qualifications and the standards for true leadership.
We started a process where um Uh We went from just having one pastor or elder to a plurality of elders.
Now, there's always a leader among those equals. But we begin to understand that was very important. That I don't. Dr. Chriswell of First Baptist Dallas, a good man, a respected man, used to say that the senior pastor is a benevolent dictator.
Okay, I don't quite ascribe to that. I know what he was saying, but. I felt like God had called me to be the lead pastor, but I needed other good men to work with me. And now, when something comes to you, the men that you have nominated. And the men the elders have approved, I have all looked at issues before we bring it to the body.
I like that accountability.
So we moved into what we would call competent leadership. And matter of fact, that goes further than just deacons and elders, but to small group leaders. Folks who are really on board, who are really committed to a sound biblical theology and biblical methods and structures. And so many of you are sitting out there, how I'm indebted to you guys. A church discipline.
Don't want to say much about this, but um. Church discipline had become almost non-existent in Baptist and evangelical life. Pushing 35, 38 years ago, we began to implement this and did some things wrong. We were just learning on the fly, had nobody really to learn from. But do you know back in like the middle part of the 19th century?
I read this in a church, a book on church polity and policies the other day. Back in the middle part of the 19th century, the Southern Baptist churches in Georgia excommunicated 75,000 members. That's a lot of people being removed from the church role. You see, at one time this was common. Because it's biblical.
And folks are afraid to do it because, well, we might not do it just right. And then there's all of these. False, unbiblical notions of, well, we'll keep them on the roll and keep them here. We might get them saved. That is the wrong.
You don't help God out. You do what's right. And God will build his church. Amen?
So these reforms were going on. Conflict resolution. Oh, how I messed up there. Oh, my goodness. For years, we did church business by whoever could get the biggest mob together for church business meeting night.
And if you got the biggest mob together and you could vote in something or vote out something, and we threw that away a long time ago. It wasn't about the mob, it was about the book. It wasn't uncommon in those days, maybe not a whole lot here, but I ran into it with all the churches we work with. To have some old moss-backed deacon tell the pastor, I don't care what the Bible says, we don't do it that way here.
Well, anyway, we Realize we have to learn to resolve conflict biblically in the body of Christ. You're going to have conflict with one another. You're going to disagree with one another.
Somebody may do you wrong, but there's a way to resolve that biblically and not join not form you a little group to start problems in the church. Let me say this to you again. We've covered all this thoroughly. If you think, wow, this is strong new stuff, it's not new. Been doing it for decades.
But if you have somebody who's wronged you in this church, church leader, otherwise. And you start a group. And you start trying to run that person down to support your position, we will discipline you. before the person who wronged you. Because you're damaging the body of Christ, and you don't have the permission to damage the body of Christ because you've got your feelings hurt.
I knew if I got into this, I'd spend a whole sermon on it. But I really, with all of my heart, Grace Life Church, I am so humbled. And so grateful. That you would walk with me through this because it was scary in the early days. About six hundred people left us.
Over three different splits. If any of the two splits had gotten together, they could have voted me out. But in God's providence They never got together. About 600.
Now, some of those were fine folks, and I love a lot of them today. I see them regularly in town. There's no animosity, they're just not supposed to be here.
Now they're welcome. They're welcome to come back. But not if they have the position that's unsound with the scriptures, of course. But that goes for anybody who joins your church. That's the job of the elders to wisely and biblically and thoroughly bring people in and make sure they're on line with what we're following biblically.
But anyway, I think I was talking about conflict resolution there. Learning to resolve conflict biblically and keeping it between two people, if at all possible, that's been remarkably helpful. Helpful for the unity and blessedness of the body. You young pastors, that's what we're going to tell you. Get that established right up front, and that'll solve a thousand one.
problems down the road. Learn from my mistakes. Biblical counseling. I remember when we sent Steve off to California to the master's seminary to study biblical counseling. Basically, Steve came back and I said, Steve, what did you learn?
He said, It's just the Bible. I thought, oh. What did I think of that? Because we had been drilled, even my graduate school drilled into us. You got to take psychology into the church.
And we realized why? Like psychology's doing a good job. Have you checked the prescription numbers on antidepressants and anxiety lately? It's not working. It is not working.
Psychology might help you cope. God's truth enables you to overcome.
So we got back to calling sin sin. And just a little short note here: is it not true? And I'm talking from personal experience here. You can't be depressed without thinking about yourself. Is that not the simplest thing?
So the Bible says, deny yourself, depression gone.
Now, I know there's a challenge there, but that's where you should be working toward. Amen?
Striving toward dying and forgetting yourself. And then a whole lot of your anxiety and worries and fears go away.
Well Talk for endless hours on biblical counseling. We establish that when somebody comes into our office, we say, We're not a psychologist, we're not a secular trained. Counselor, we're gospel called Christian Pastors, and this is what we follow is this book. And we've seen some remarkable stories. of God changing people's lives.
and giving them new hope. Because almost without exception, when you've got a problem, it's a sin problem. But you know what I found in Jeff Doblett's heart? I didn't know it was there. It was kind of an attitude, a viewpoint, a disposition, a feeling that.
I thought that was normal, and all of a sudden God put a halogen light from the Bible on it, and it was like, oh my goodness. I've got to repent of thinking that way. And all of a sudden my anxieties lifted and my depression lifted. Biblical counseling. That's one of the reformations we worked on for a long time.
Biblical theology. That is, we don't just do stuff in the church to be successful. We don't just do things pragmatically that work. We find out what is God's great purpose, and are we flowing with that? Biblical theology.
So much more we could say there. Christ-centered biblically sound music. My, what a journey we had there.
Some good guys. I appreciate those guys, but we had music guys. Bless the hearts. Just didn't care much about doctrine. If it was fun.
If it was exciting, if it was professionally done, that was great. And I said, no, it's not great. Is it Christ honoring? Is it biblically sound? And then we had this crazy Church Christ guy from Illinois come in.
Tom Clay. And you know what Tom Play told me when he came in? And this isn't completely accurate, but I was getting his heart. He said, Pastor, I'm here to prove that you're not the problem. There are music guys out there who want a pastor to insist on sound doctrine and Christ being honored in the music.
And he said, I want you to know you'll be the pastor of the music program here. And I'll work under you. And I thought, yeah, that's what the other guys said. But you know what? He's lived that perfectly.
He's lived that out perfectly. And I take his advice on things because I trust him. And we have such a good body of leadership here. I mean, such a good body. It just.
Brothers in Arms, it's iron sharpening iron, and I'm so blessed by all of them. The biblical role for women. This is more of a new thing, but there's been such a sweet and substantial awakening, especially among our young ladies. That in essence, they're going to the Bible and saying, I've got to do well what the Bible says is my role in calling to my husband, my home, my children. And whatever else I do, it's got to fit with that.
It's not about who works, how much, where. That's not the main goal. The heart of the matter is the matter of the heart. And we're seeing a real revival of that kind of viewpoint and consciousness among ladies. And that's been a reformation that's been sweet and good without legalism, without judgment.
toward one another. And and and though this is something that's um Hard to say you reform this, but biblical love. Biblical love. What I mean by that is. As a church matures, Jesus said, All men will know you're my disciples by the love you have for one another.
And I've seen that. Especially in the last two, two and a half decades that you just don't get on outs with one another over nothing anymore. He just You know, as one man told me, he was a leader in the community, he said, You know, I've learned to put stuff on a shelf that bothered me. That guy said that, or that lady did that. He said, I'll just put it on the shelf unless it just keeps on happening.
I'm fine with it. And by the way, in biblical love and maturity, Sometimes you let the immature one have their way, and you just go on and say, you know, the body of Christ is more important than me getting upset over something like this. But you've illustrated that church, and I'm so grateful to God. That was a part of reforming and maturity that's been so obvious to me. A growth in a biblical love that just overcomes the stuff that doesn't matter.
Does that get through all of 'em?
Well, there is one more, a biblical view of the gospel and salvation. That's where Ephesians comes in. That's one that we wrestled with a bunch. And um Not perfect at it, but I'm very happy where we are now because instead of having, and this is not just an exaggerated preacher talk. Instead of having 90% of those we baptize not show up within two years again.
Now we're 90 to 95 percent of those we baptize are faithful two or three years later. That pleases and honors the Lord.
Now, look, we're going to pray for, work with, encourage all men everywhere, all the time to come to Christ. Amen. But I don't have the right to tell you you're okay with God until the scriptures bear that out. That you can tell me from scriptural authority, Pastor, that's what has happened to me. That's where I am.
That change has happened in my life.
So we're going to dig into that one a little more this morning, Addie. Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. And merciful heavens, you listen so slow. I'm just, my time is just getting away from me. And it's such a tragic thing.
We ought to have two-hour morning worship services. I don't know why we'd. You think you've got to get home and watch a ball game, and most of the people are going to hell. I don't know what the deal is on all of that. But they do play some pretty good ball, and it's entertaining anyway.
Ephesians chapter 2, and by the way, with the revivals we're seeing on college campuses and on athletic programs, it's pretty exciting that the number of young people that seem to be coming to faith in Christ. Do you know what's sad about it? It's very, very rare to find a sound church that can bring them in and Bring them forward. John MacArthur is sort of a mentor for a lot of us. He was very kind to me personally in the early years of my ministry.
Matter of fact, he encouraged me to keep going when I didn't know I could keep going. But he was a good man in so many ways. And John said that when he started at Grace Community Church there in Los Angeles.
Somebody asked me about how did y'all grow so big? And he said the Jesus movement. You remember the Jesus movement back, what, 60s, Brother Steve? You're old. You remember that, don't you?
Yeah. No, you just this big yelling for Auburn. That's all you're doing. You know, you're about five, six, seven years old. He said the Jesus movement came through.
And all of these, I mean. Teenagers up to about 30-ish, you know, were just. Come and embrace Christ. He said, but they were super ignorant. And a lot of them weren't genuinely saved.
They just kind of got on the Jesus Club, you know. But he said, they were looking for thorough biblical teaching. And he said, they kept coming, kept coming to my ministry.
So he was kind of gleaning the fruits of a youth movement, awakening, if you will. And remember, with ever awakening, brothers and sisters, there's always some solid parts and always some unsolid parts. And we're not going to beat to death the unsolid parts. We just want to glean the solid parts.
So Saying all that to say that there are a lot of bad things going on in the world, but it seems that God has kind of brought something of an awakening, especially to the college age and young people age. All right, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9. We'll touch on a little of this and then I'll let you go and we'll pick it up next time we're together.
So that grace Past tense here. You have been saved. Through faith. And that's not of yourself. Poor though, not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God. Not as a result of works.
So that no one may boast And I may preach on this later, but it's one of the most fantastic verses in the Bible to kind of summarize. The work of salvation and God's sovereignty in it. Look at verse 10, if you will, those first one, two, three, four, five words. For we are his workmanship. The scholars tell us actually that the Greek order that is stated this way.
His workmanship we are. For by grace are you saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not by works, lest any of you would like to brag about you are smart enough to receive Jesus. You are wise enough and virtuous enough to receive Christ. He said, be gone with that foolish, blasphemous nonsense.
For by grace were you saved through faith, and that not of yourself. It's the gift of God, not by works, lest any man should boast. And it's almost like Paul comes to this crescendo of emotion and says, His workmanship we are. If you don't get nothing else, that's good. You ought to go home and be happy.
That's good stuff. And I hadn't preached a word about it, I just read the verse. Gift. Roman number one in our outline, and we'll just touch on it. I promise you, those of you who come to church to go home, I'm going to let you go home in just a second.
Yeah. So by grace, you've been saved through faith. That not of yourselves, it is the gift. We're going to talk about gift there for a moment, the gift of God. The word gift here is a common word in the ancient Greek culture.
One of the things we learned early on in graduate school, studying Greek and Hebrew, is that the Greek of the Bible is the Koine Greek. It's the Greek of the common man. It's the common farmer, the common blacksmith guy, the common. Business owner, whoever it is, just the common language of the common man of the day. And so, this word gift is used a lot in the common language of the day of the Bible.
There's no special uniqueness about it. It's used to talk about gifts to people or gifts you give to God, but in this case, it's used of God's gift to us. God gives a gift to us.
Now But what is the gift of God in the flow of this context? For by grace are you saved through faith, that not are yourself, it's the gift of God. What is it? Is it the grace? That's the gift, or is it the faith that's a gift?
I believe there's only one good interpretation there. It's all of it. It's as one scholar said, it's the whole of salvation. The grace is a gift. The faith you exercise is a gift.
Again, you cannot in any way face the triune, holy God, and say to him, Oh God, you'll take me into heaven because I was wise, good and virtuous enough to believe on your Son. Just a more arrogant, blasphemous thing couldn't be said. The only way you can believe on his son is if he gifts you. With the faith to do it. Not to complicate things, but the neuter gender is used here.
That's not of yourselves. That's a neuter. What is that referring to? It's referring to grace and faith, because both of them are in the feminine gender, and it would be awkward in the Greek. uh grammar to Combined a neuter with amplifying a feminine gender, they would be of the same if that were the case.
And I think the point is, it's the whole of salvation, not just one part, that is the gift of God. This makes the passage flow naturally.
Now, listen to this. Faith is the capacity to understand. I don't mean to understand everything, but understand at least the essence. The truth of the gospel. Faith is the.
The capacity to understand. To feel There's an element of faith that says, I know the facts, but I feel the truth of them. And that it applies to me. I feel the truth of the fact that I'm a sinner and I need a Savior, and I cannot save myself. Faith.
is that capacity to understand, to feel. And then to act. To act on the message of the gospel. What's the first action? It's those baptismal waters up there.
That might be the first formal action. Your first action to be talk to a church leader and say, God's done something in my life. I'm ready to. Put footsteps to this. Unite with the people who have also come to Christ, who claim Christ as their Lord and Savior.
and move on in progressive sanctification. in fellowship with the church.
So faith is that capacity to understand Not everything. I'm still understanding things of the gospel. We never unpack the totality of God's wisdom. To understand, to feel, and then to act on the message of Christ Jesus. This capacity, though, as I said earlier, is a gift.
That is given to us through the new birth. Um Ephesians chapter 2. Go go up in verse 1. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. And then down to verse five, Ephesians two: one, you were dead.
Dr. Jimmy Millikan, my old theology professor in graduate school, used to say, Well, how dead were you? Kinda dead, sort of dead. No, there's only dead and are not dead. Go down to the funeral home.
And ask everybody in there that's in a casket to repent and believe. They can't, they're dead. That's where you and I were. You were dead in your trespasses and sins. Now look down in verse 5.
Even when we were dead, when we were in the state of spiritual death, continuing on in the state of spiritual death, and could do nothing about it because of our transgressions, last part of verse 5, Ephesians chapter 2, made us alive together with Christ. Crush your pride. Crush every notion in your being. that somehow you are smart, wise, good, virtuous. Decided to turn to Jesus.
No. While you were dead. He made you alive. After how does that work? No idea.
I don't know. When I was a little boy, I wasn't sure how you made ice cream. I know a little bit about it 'cause my sister always sit on the crank on the thing we crank it.
So I know it was made there. I guess that's homemade ice cream. But I all had just one taste of it and I knew what it was, man. It was real. And that's the way the new birth is.
You don't know how God worked all this out, but you know when He's changed your heart. It's a new birth.
So The text teaches us that faith Whereby we believe on Christ is a gift. Acts 3:16, and on the basis of faith in his name, It is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man. And you see. And no. and the faith which comes through him.
Where'd it come from? Through him. Has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. A.T. Robertson is the elite Baptist scholar of the Greek language, and he says: Jesus is the object and source of faith.
Faith as all of salvation comes, quote, through him, end of quote. That's A.T. Robertson's interpretation of Acts 3:16 that we were looking at. Philippians 1.29. For it has been.
Granted. It's the same noun form of the word for grace in the original language. It's been granted. Not for your sake. I want to get up there so bad.
But it's blotchy. And they'd said, don't walk on the blotchy stage. Your faith that you might be saved was given to you for Christ's sake. That he might be thought of as more special. that he might be thought of as powerful and wise.
and able. to do what no man could do. That he might be glorified. You see, your salvation is not first for your good. It's wonderfully good for us, amen?
But it's first for his glory. That's how we know we're eternally secure because if he lost even one, he would be something of a failure.
So, when your church of Christ friends talk to you about losing your salvation, say, don't talk to me like that because Jesus can't fail. And I was given faith to believe for his sake. For Second Peter 1:1, Simon Peter, Bon. Servant and apostle of Jesus Christ of those who have received. The word received there can be amplified out to mean obtained by divine will.
We have obtained by divine will A faith. How did you get your faith? The divine will, the divine one. Gave it to you.
Now why in the world? God would choose. Primarily preaching. To bring you to that point and to that place where he grants to you believing faith, where the Spirit of God regenerates you and brings you to that conclusion about your sin and about Christ as the only hope of your salvation. Why God, Corinthians says it this way, why God would choose what the world calls the foolishness of preaching to bring you to faith in Christ makes no sense to me except for this.
Number one, God does what he pleases. And secondly, That way he gets all the credit and all the glory through the things the world would call foolish. Doing great, great things through the avenues. The world would say that's not wise, good, or effective. You don't need any of that, but we do need it, desperately need it.
Acts thirteen forty-eight And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord, and as many as And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. It came from God. Paul's got a lot of explaining and correcting to do or Faith is the gift of God. It's very difficult to deny the clear implications of that very text. This believing, this faith, is dependent upon first being appointed to eternal life.
You know, and I can see Paul. Thank you for the trip to Greece that you sent Pam and I hope. But I'd walk those streets. And again, think about Paul and Aquila and Priscilla's tent-making business. They're on the side of the.
uh the the the i always forget the greek word but it's the marketplace lane And think of him looking at all of these people, all of these. Often, people who considered themselves elite intellectuals and sophisticates. And people were getting converted out of those people, and they were considered, oh, they're just ignorant people. They're just the lower-down ones. There's not much to them.
And Paul said, no, no, no, that's not the issue. It's God is choosing not to regenerate your hearts, but He did regenerate theirs. We'll close with this. Um 1 Corinthians 1, 26 through 31, what kind of speed do it? For consider your calling, brethren, that is somebody else called you.
You didn't call them first. You didn't leave a voicemail with God. And say, God, if when you get some time, I've jumped through the hoop. I've done the stuff you told me to do.
Now you call me and save me. For consider your calling, brethren, there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many high-monky monks in the community are getting saved, he says. Not many of the mighty, not many of the noble. Verse 27. Generally speaking, what he's saying, God has chosen, that's God's initiative again to do it.
the foolish things of the world to shame the wise And God has chosen, there it is again, the base things of the world and the despised. God has chosen, fourth word, to show God's initiative in sovereign grace to save someone. God has chosen the things that are not, that he might nullify the things that are. Verse twenty-nine, that no man should boast before God. Isn't it interesting what he does not say?
He didn't say, for consider those of you who are smart enough to believe on Jesus. No, he says, consider that God chose you. He never puts it in man's ball court here. It's all from God's divine and sovereign perspective. Verse 30, 1 Corinthians 1, 26 through 31.
Or rather, but by his doing you are in Christ Jesus. I remember a very young preacher. We're talking about the first year after my conversion. I preached on you must be born again, and I told people how to be born again, and I saw that that was so. erroneous.
That is so wrong. You can't tell a baby to be born. The baby just gets born. But I was in a system that. And we're going to talk about this next time.
I was in a system that was all about us manipulating to help God out to get more people out of hell. Then I realized getting more people out of hell is not the main goal. It's a goal. It's a good goal. That's not the main goal.
God being pleased and glorified by his way of saving people is the main goal. But by his doing, verse 30 again, you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God. That is, the regeneration of the spirit has happened. Thinking is illumined. We begin to understand the Word of God like we didn't before, and we're beginning to see God as God.
Wise and his son, and the work of the son is the wisdom of God, and he is our righteousness, he's our sanctification, he's our redemption. Verse 31, that just as it is written, Let him who boasts boast in. The Lord.
So we leave this Sunday morning, realigning our hearts afresh with it's all of God, not of me. Humbled to the dirt. But joyous. That were his. Joyous Deeply treasuring.
Eum. For all he's done for us. All to the end. that for time and eternity. He might be wondered over, he might be honored, he might be glorified, he might be esteemed, he might be.
Hallowed. Yeah.
