A Passion for God's Truth - Life of Paul Part 73

Well, good morning. I tell you, people in Washington are such babies.

I mean, the roads are fine, right? Thanks for coming out today. We appreciate you guys being here.

If this was Minnesota, they'd be out skateboarding on this stuff. All right. Hey, how about taking a Bible?

Let's open it together. Acts chapter 20. We're going to be continuing in our study of the life of that great man, the Apostle Paul. You know, it was July the 13th, 1813. When a 24-year-old American stepped off a rickety old merchant ship and onto the shores of the nation of Burma for the very first time. Now, this young man's name was Adoniram Judson. He was the first, by faith, American foreign missionary in the history of the American church. He, along with his wife, Ann, spent 37 years. Well, she died, actually, but he spent 37 years in the country of Burma. And you know, Adoniram Judson was in Burma for more than six years before he ever led the very first person to Christ that he would end up leading to Christ in that country. But by the time he died in 1850, God had used Adoniram Judson single-handedly to do some amazing things in that nation. He had used Judson to bring over 7,000 Burmese men and women to Christ. He had used Judson to establish 63 churches in Burma. He had used Judson to train over 100 native Burmese pastors.

And in 1835, Adoniram Judson, in the streets of Rangoon, ran into a young man who was in town on business from the Karen tribe, K-A-R-E-N, up in the northeast mountains of Burma. Judson led this man to Christ, challenged him to go back as a missionary to his own people, and the man did. Today, almost two centuries later, up in the Karen tribe, there are over 100,000 followers of Christ. They have self-supporting churches, Christian schools, Bible colleges, and they dispatch missionaries, the Karens do, to all of Southeast Asia, all because one young man met Adoniram Judson in 1835.

Now you say, wow, that's pretty amazing. How did one guy make such an amazing spiritual impact on an entire country? Well, here's what Judson said, and I quote. He said, it seems to me if we could deposit the Bible in every village in Burma, such a plan would be more effective than any other in filling this country with the knowledge of God. And folks, this singular task, translating the Bible into Burmese and then spreading it throughout the nation of Burma, this became Adoniram Judson's driving passion. It took him 21 years to translate the entire Bible into Burmese, but he did such an excellent job, he did such an accurate job, that almost 200 years later, the translation of the Bible that's used in Burma today is still the translation that Adoniram Judson did almost 200 years ago. Now towards the end of his life, he reflected back and said, and I quote, God's operations in Burma were slow at the beginning, but then rushed to consummation with lightning speed towards the end of my missionary career. I attribute this to one reason, namely the availability of God's true and accurate word in the language of the everyday Burmese person.

He went on to say, I consider the translating of the Bible into Burmese precisely and accurately to be the greatest contribution I could have ever made to the cause of world evangelization, end of quote. Now you know what's interesting when we look at the great men and women of God, the great servants of God down through the centuries, it's very interesting that as different as they may have been in so many ways, they all had one thing in common. The same thing Adoniram Judson had, and that is they all had this passion to deliver God's truth accurately and correctly into the hands of men and women, and that's what we want to talk about today and how that affects your life and my life here in the 21st century. Well, let me give you a little background before we dig into our passage. Remember the apostle Paul is on his third missionary journey, finishing it up actually. He's on his way back to Jerusalem with an offering for the saints there, the poor believers, and he's sailing down the western coast of Asia Minor, Turkey as we pick up the story here in Acts 20, and he's reached the town of Miletus just a few miles away from the large city of Ephesus. If you remember, Paul spent three years in the city of Ephesus building the church there, and so he invites the church leaders to come from Ephesus and meet him at Miletus, knowing this will be the last time he will ever see them on this earth. He gives them a little speech, and in this speech, he shares with these church leaders the principles that drove his ministry, the principles that shaped his life, and I've been telling you for weeks now that if you're a follower of Christ who is earnest about being a man of God or a woman of God, the principles that Paul shares in this speech are the most significant set of principles anywhere in the Bible for you and me.

Now we've covered three out of the five already. Principle number one, obedience to God. Principle number two, absolute surrender to God. Principle number three, having a passion for evangelism, and today we want to cover principle number four, and that is having a passion for God's truth.

So let's dig in and do that. Verse 28, Paul says to these church leaders, keep watch over yourselves and all the flock for which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, the shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood. Here Paul calls on these elders to defend God's sheep, to protect God's people just like a shepherd defends and protects his own sheep, and you say, well, Lon, defend them from what?

Protect them from what? I mean, what is the enemy that Paul has in mind here? Well, he goes on to tell us in the very next verse. He says, verse 29, look, for I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Even from your own church family, men will arise who will distort the truth in order to draw away followers after them, so be on your guard. The enemy here that Paul has in mind, has in focus, is theological error, theological false doctrine, theological heresy. And Paul says that from your own church family, people are going to arise up who will distort, twist the truth, and they will be savage wolves who will not spare the flock. The word literally means they will rip up, they will ravage God's people, and as a result, Paul says, I want you guys to be vigilant, and I want you guys to be passionate about defending the accurate and real truth of God, just like I was, Paul says, when I was there among you. He goes on to say, verse 31, remember that for three years, when I was in Ephesus, I never stopped warning you night and day with tears.

You say, Lon, warning them about what? Friends, warning them about theological error, warning them about the distortion of God's truth, and what we see here is that Paul had a passion for the truth of God. He warned people about error so that they could stay on the true path that God had called out for them. And Paul's passion for God's truth was not only for spreading God's truth, we talked about that in principle number three, but he also had a passion for defending God's truth, for defending its accuracy, for defending its correct interpretation, and for defending its true and genuine meaning.

Paul tells us, this passion ran so deeply inside of him, it even brought him to tears, he said, sometimes. Now, what I find interesting is that this was not just a passion that the apostle Paul said he should have. Every person he ever mentored, he tried to teach them to have this very same passion for the truth of God. We already saw right here in Acts chapter 20 that he called on these church leaders in Ephesus to have this. How about Timothy, his personal disciple? Look what he said to him, 1 Timothy 4, he said, The Holy Spirit, Timothy, clearly says that some will abandon the true faith and will follow deceiving spirits and doctrines invented by demons. So Timothy, you devote yourself to the preaching and the teaching of Scripture.

Watch your doctrine closely, because by doing this, you will protect both yourself and your hearers. What was Paul doing here? He was calling Timothy to have the same passion for the defense of God's truth. And he did it for Titus. He said to Titus, Titus chapter 1 verse 10, There are many deceivers, Paul says, who ruin entire households by teaching error they should not teach. They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him.

Titus, Paul says, They must be silenced, therefore rebuke them sharply. Friends, this is the fourth great principle that Paul gives us here in this little speech, the fourth great principle about what it takes to be a real man or a woman of God. He says to these church leaders of Ephesus, if you guys want to be mighty servants of Christ like I am, if you guys want to see God use your life the way He's using my life in awesome ways, there are some non-negotiables you've got to meet. Number one, obedience to God is non-negotiable number one. Non-negotiable number two is absolute surrender to the will of God in your life. Number three is a passion for reaching people for Christ.

And number four, a similar passion for God's truth, knowing it and defending it as found in the Bible. Now I want to stop there in our passage because it's time for us to ask our most important question. And we haven't done this for a while. And you know, I'm a little worried maybe you guys forgot what the question is. Did you all forget?

No. All right. So are you all ready? I mean, you know, this is going to feel good. I'm telling you, this is going to feel good. So are you ready? Nice and loud.

One, two, three. So what? Didn't I feel good? I missed that.

I think you did too. All right. Now you say, Lon, so what? So this is great.

So Paul had this great passion. So yada, yada, yada. So what the, like what difference does this make to me? Well, let's talk about that. I don't know if you are aware of this.

Maybe some of you are, but my name has been in the news a fair bit over the last few weeks. And let me tell you how it all started. It all started when David Brickner, the Executive Director of Jews for Jesus, I'm a board member of that organization for 15 years, he sent out an appeal letter back in December entitled The War on Jewish Evangelism. And the article was all about the slippage that has taken place over the last 25 years among evangelical Christians on this issue of whether or not Jewish people really need to believe in Jesus Christ as their Messiah in order to have eternal life and go to heaven. Well, Mr. Brickner said they must.

And I believe based on the Bible. They must. And what this has done, the media has picked up on this, and it's kind of become a hot new item on the talk show circuit. The Washington Times ran an article on this recently, called me up. I gave them an interview on that.

Family News in Focus, you know the news program for Focus on the Family, is running a program this next week on this issue. I was happy to give an interview to them. And when I got through talking to this guy, the producer of Family News in Focus, I said to him, I said, now listen, I just want to tell you, if you guys run this article on the airways, and you guys defend that Jewish people need Jesus, I'm telling you, you guys are going to take some flak. You know you're going to take some flak, right? But I said, I want to encourage you, there is nothing wrong with taking flak as long as we're taking it for the right reason. And to defend the truth of the Gospel, the real truth of the Gospel, that is the right reason. Run the article, and don't worry about the flak.

Run it. Now, can I tell you why I'm happy to let all these people interview me? I mean, it's not that I've got nothing else to do.

They call you up, they talk to you for an hour, an hour and a half, and maybe they use two or three sentences of what you said, and they don't even get that right sometimes. So you say, well yeah, so then why do you waste your time and let them do that? I'll tell you why. One reason, one simple reason, this is the only reason, because theological error drives me crazy. Theological heresy just makes me see red when I see people who are twisting and distorting the truth of God, it drives me nuts.

And I'll tell you why. Because I understand that real people's lives are at stake. I understand real people's eternal destinies are at stake, friends. You know, false teaching does more than just benignly mislead people.

We've got to understand that. That's why Paul called these false teachers savage wolves. That's why he said they rip up the flock, they ravage the flock.

This is strong language. And what Paul wants us to understand is that false teaching is serious. Theological error is serious, and that it damages and hurts and rips people's lives up.

It does it in two ways, and let me tell you what they are. Number one, it does it first of all by teaching people to live in ways that bring the consequences of sin onto their life instead of the blessing of God. You see, one of the main reasons God gave us the Bible, friends, is to give us a formula for life that works, a formula for life that brings success, a formula for life that God has promised to bless and to honor. This is what God said to Joshua. He said, this book shall not depart from your mouth, Joshua, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you might be careful to obey all that is written in the Bible, for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Friends, when we seek to live according to the principles of God's Word, we bring the honor of God onto our life. We bring the blessing of God onto our life.

We avoid the landmines and the alligators in life that other people step on and have their legs chewed off. But the converse is just as true, and that is when we live in ways that contradict God's written Word, we bring on ourselves the consequences of disobeying God, and they are always painful, they are always damaging, and they are always sad. Now, as different as every false ism and ology may be, they are all the same in this first way, and that is they all give people permission to live in ways and to do things that God warns us in the Bible not to do, because these things are harmful for our lives. For example, did you know that Islam teaches that revenge is okay, that hatred and racial hatred is okay, religious violence is okay, that treating women like dirt is okay? I mean, Mormonism teaches that polygamy is okay, and for the first 150 years of its history taught that severe discrimination against African Americans was okay. Liberal Judaism teaches that divorce is okay, abortion is okay, homosexuality is okay, sexual activity outside of marriage is okay. Buddhism teaches that slavery is okay. Christian science teaches that it's perfectly okay to deny medical treatment to people who might be saved by that medical treatment.

That's all right. Hinduism says, hey, it's okay to let people starve, but don't touch the cows. The cows are fine. Just let the people starve all around them. The New Age movement teaches that drug use is okay and alcohol abuse is okay and that contact with the demonic world, underworld is okay, and the worst of all of these is liberal Protestantism, because liberal Protestantism teaches all of this stuff is okay in some form and fashion just about. And friends, these things are not okay. They are not okay because they violate what God says in the Bible. They are not okay because they wound people. These things hurt people. These things damage people.

These things rip up our lives. And by giving permission for people to do these, all these false religions do exactly what Paul says. They ravage God's people and God's sheep. Let me tell you, there's a second way in which false religions damage and rip up people, and that is, second of all, by offering people strategies to get to heaven that don't work. Jesus said, John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Nobody gets to heaven unless you come by way of me. Peter said, Acts chapter 4, verse 12, there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name given to mankind by which we can be delivered. And the other area about which every false religion agrees is this, that whoever Jesus Christ is, he is not God in human flesh. And whatever Jesus Christ did, it was not create the one and only way that human beings can get to heaven.

And you know, well-meaning, naïve people believe this. They're led astray by this. They're led tiptoeing right down the primrose path to hell by all these false religions. Let me just say that God's truth, preached correctly, blesses people's lives and points them to heaven.

Could I repeat that? God's truth, preached correctly, blesses people's lives and points them to heaven. Conversely, God's truth, preached erroneously, curses people's lives and points them to hell. And because this is true, this is why in Acts chapter 20, God called on these leaders of the church in Ephesus, and it's why God calls on you and me and every follower of Jesus Christ to protect ourselves and protect other people from theological error. Because these things are damaging eternally and on this globe as well.

And they say, okay, Lon, so how do we do that? I mean, there is so much error out there. How in the world can we possibly protect people from all that error?

Well, the answer is simple, friends. We do it by confronting theological error with theological truth. See, God says in the Bible that the best way for us to defend ourselves and others from theological error is to proclaim truth, to proclaim it boldly and courageously. Look what he said to Timothy. 2 Timothy 4, he said, Timothy, there will come a day when people will not accept sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own sinful desires, they will follow after teachers who tell them what their itching ears want to hear.

Sounds like America today, doesn't it? Well, so what method should we use to combat this? How should we counteract all of this?

Look what he says. So I give you this charge, Timothy. Preach the word. That's how you confront it. Preach the word. Correct, rebuke, and encourage with careful instruction. Preach the word.

Confront error with truth. You know, not too long ago I had a friend here who came up to me and we were talking and he said to me, he said, you know, I work for the government. Well, I've learned in Washington over the years. I used to say when people said that, oh really, what branch? Now I've learned not to do that. I just go, okay, you work for the government.

I understand that. And he said, we got to talking and he told me a little bit about what he did and he's involved in, you know, catching counterfeiters. And so when we were talking, he said to me, Lon, he said, do you know how we teach our agents to recognize counterfeit money? And I said, no. He said, well, take a guess.

What would you think? I said, well, I guess you get everybody in a room with a little magnifying glass and you get every counterfeit $100 bill that's ever been made and you run it all by them and you have them look at it and examine every place that these bills are wrong. And he said, no, no, no, absolutely wrong. It's not how we do it.

I said, really? He said, yeah, let me tell you how we do it. We get them in a room with a magnifying glass and what we put in front of them is the real $100 bill. And we have them become such students of the true $100 bill that they know every square millimeter on that bill exactly what it looks like. And he says, when you know truth that well, you spot error just like that.

You can spot it a mile away, a fake bill, when you know a true bill the way we teach them to know it. That's how we teach them to recognize error. We don't teach them about error, we teach them about truth.

And I thought, wow, what a great spiritual principle because that's exactly what God says. He says, we're not to be spending all of our time out here studying every theological error that's ever been made up. We're to study truth. And if we know truth, if we know the Word of God down to every square millimeter, friends, we'll recognize error a mile away. You'll see error coming. And this is what God called on Timothy to do, to preach truth.

That's how you deal with error. And friends, this is our passion here at McLean Bible Church, week after week after week. This is what we labor to do here, to teach you God's truth, to teach it to you accurately and precisely and practically, to give you a deep grasp on the Word of God so that not only do you know how to grab on to God's way of eternal life, so not only do you know how to live a life that's healthy and fulfilling and Christ-honoring, but you know how to tell other people to do the same thing. But you know, this is not just a passion that God wants preachers to have.

No, no, no. This is a passion that if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, He wants you to have. You know, what this means is that to be a true man of God, to be a true woman of God, friends, we have to have more than just a casual acquaintance with the Bible. We have to be students of the Word of God.

Listen to what he said to Timothy, Paul did. He said, Timothy, 2 Timothy 2, be diligent to present yourself to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed because you know how to correctly handle the Word of truth. And if you're a follower of Jesus Christ here today, my friend, this is what God wants for you. God wants you and me to be people who correctly handle the Word of God, who have a deep and a profound grasp on the truth of God so that not only can we live a successful life, but so that we can protect others, our children, our friends, our co-workers, our neighbors, and our relatives from being duped and led astray by error.

So I want to close today by asking you guys a question. My question is, where are you individually involved in a deep and serious study of the Word of God? Where are you involved in a deep and serious study of the Word of God in your own life?

I mean, maybe it might be McLean University here. Maybe you might be attending Precept Bible Study or Community Bible Study or Bible Study Fellowship. Maybe you're taking Capital Bible Seminary courses here. Or maybe just in your own devotional life you got the Bible in one hand and commentaries in the other hand and you're really digging in and studying. But wherever it is, where are you involved in a deep and serious study of the Word of God? You say, well, Lon, you know, honestly, I try.

I do. I get the Bible out and I read it. But, you know, somehow when I read it, I never get out of it what you seem to get out of it. I don't know, man, I don't know. How come I don't get out of it what you get out of it? Well, friends, why is it that you do you think that I get so much out of a passage that you don't? You say, Lon, I've thought about that and here I think the answer is whiffle dust. I think God sprinkled whiffle dust on you. And somehow, someway, when you read the Bible, there's like an anointing and it's like doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. And you see stuff I don't see.

Friends, that is absolutely ridiculous. That has absolutely nothing to do with it. Let me tell you why I get out of the Bible what I get out of it. Because when I was a brand new follower of Christ, the guy who led me to Christ grabbed me by the nape of the neck as a 21-year-old young man and said, son, if you want your life to count for Jesus Christ and you want to be a man of God, you need to become a deep and serious student of the Word of God. And he pushed me into seminary where they taught me how to study the Bible.

That's the only reason. I've learned how to study the Bible from some skill training. It's not whiffle dust. It's not anointing. Nobody comes out the womb just being able to see deep stuff in the Bible. No, no, no.

No. You learn principles that teach you how to pull the Bible's meaning out and how to do it properly, correctly. And, friends, if you don't want getting out of the Bible everything you'd like to get out of it, let me tell you what.

You just need to go get some skill training. That's all. And we'll give it to you. We've got a five-week course starting next week called How to Study the Bible, appropriately enough, led by Jim Battle, one of our elders, Dallas Seminary graduate. And he'll teach you the historical grammatical method to study the Bible. You go, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.

What was that? Well, go to the class and we'll teach you what that is. He'll teach you how to pull basic principles out of the Scripture and how to do it correctly. And if you don't know how to do that, don't sit around and read the Bible and go, Hamma, hamma, hamma, hamma, hamma. Go learn how to study the Bible and get the meaning for yourself so you can become a student of the Word of God. Listen, you cannot become a man of God. You cannot become a woman of God. It is impossible without being a deep and serious student of the Word of God. And knowing how to correctly interpret the Word of God, it can't happen. This is what Paul was telling these elders. This is what I'm telling you. And it's not enough to come to church on a Sunday and have me regurgitated to you.

That's not enough. You need to be able to dig in and do that Monday to Saturday for yourself if you're really going to become a man or a woman of God. So if you don't know how to do that, go out in the lobby right after we're done. Take the insert right out of our bulletin and we start next week right here on Sunday. All you got to do is come and go on Sunday and we'll teach you how to study the Word of God.

But friends, I'm back to my question. Where are you in your life involved in a deep and serious study of the Word of God? If you can't answer that question and if you want to be a man or a woman of God, my dear friend, you got to go get an answer to that question.

We'll help you if you'll let us. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thanks for talking to us today about this fourth principle of how to become a really serious man or woman of God. And that is that we need to be students of the Word of God in a deep and a profound way so that not only will it guide our life but we can defend it from theological error so that that error doesn't mislead other people. God challenge us today to really become students of the book and to be serious about theological truth, to have a passion for God's Word in our own lives and in the lives of others. Father, I pray for people here today who need help in learning how to study the Bible that they would take advantage of this course and let us help them so that they could become real students of the Word of God. Father, thank you for the passion of the Apostle Paul that we're seeing in this little speech. May every one of these principles become passions of ours that we might become the kind of men and women of God that the Apostle Paul was. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen.