I want to address some things in regards
to the emerging church slash the emergent church.
By observation, I have been concerned about just
some of these things, watching them.
We have some resources back there.
D.
A.
Carson's book, Becoming Conversant with the Emergent Church,
is something to take advantage of.
Roger Oakland's video, I think, is important in
regards to the darker side of this issue.
As I look at the church in America,
you know, there's kind of three prongs to
this emerging thing.
One is the very slick, savvy, rear screen
projection, you know, million dollar operation, home entertainment
center, to keep people's attention.
And I'm not against tools, and I think
that those things can be important and used
well if they are an addendum to the
word of God.
I think the problem is that we can
be loaded for bear on the horizontal, and
we can be lacking the vertical.
When I think of Moody, and I think
of Whitfield, and I think of Spurgeon, I
think of men that touched entire cities, entire
countries, entire continents, without any of that stuff.
I know in my own life, I think,
Lord, what I'm lacking is on the vertical.
We got lots going on the horizontal in
Calvary, Philly.
And when I look at what's going on
in people's lives, when I look at the
young people, what they're struggling with, my estimation
of that situation is, Lord, if Spurgeon was
in this pulpit, or if Whitfield was here,
how different would this church be?
And it's, Lord, let your word be alive
to me, Lord.
Let the vertical of all of this be
alive and effective in my life.
So I think that's one prong, just getting
so consumed with the horizontal.
Another prong of this whole emergent thing to
me is, and it's concerning, and I want
to address it specifically in regards to the
word today, there's a devaluing of the holiness
and of the sovereignty of God, almost a
pushing aside of that.
But the truth is, God is holy, and
God is sovereign.
And I believe he's sovereign today.
And because his holiness and his sovereignty is
devalued, the natural next step is, there's a
devaluing of his word.
It's the word of a holy God.
And there is a devaluing of that word,
and of course, often experience being put in
the place of truth, particularly in regards to,
you know, monks and meditative practices from the
3rd century and 4th century and 16th century,
instead of the truth of God's word.
Looking back to a time in the church
when they loved the fact that the people
didn't have the word of God in their
hand, and they were more tuned in to
relics and incense and those kinds of things,
and the church was happy that you and
I did not have a copy of the
Bible.
And it's a wonder to me that people
would look back to that and not look
all the way back three, four centuries past
that to the book of Acts, to the
truth of God's word.
And then I think there's also a dark
side of the whole thing, a bridge probably
from Laodicea to the great whore, ultimately, as
time goes on.
Because there's a devaluing of God's holiness, of
his word, then there's a devaluing of the
central message of the word of a holy
God, which is the cross of Jesus Christ,
and the blood of Jesus Christ.
And because that's devalued, there's whole issues of
sin and hell.
Greg talked about it last night.
Sexuality.
All kinds of things are accepted because the
truths of those things are set aside.
And my concern is what's happening in the
church in regards to these things.
In an interview, Mark Driscoll asked Robbie Zacharias,
this is just two months ago, he says,
as we talked, I asked him what issues
were of the greatest concern to him and
what he was preparing to focus on in
the coming year, 2006.
Much to my surprise, he said the emerging
church was a great concern to him because
it held a low view of truth and
was gaining momentum as a gathering point for
all kinds of aberrant Christian doctrinal agendas.
His main concern, the emerging church.
Now, we tried to get him here.
He's booked up ahead of time.
We tried to get him for the West
Coast Conference.
We couldn't get him.
But his concern, that's what he says openly.
The emergent church.
Low view of truth.
God's word under attack.
No surprise because Paul says to us here,
I charge thee, therefore, before God and before
the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the
quick and the dead, that should be enough
to get our attention right off the bat,
at his appearing and at his kingdom, preach
the word.
Be instant in season and out of season,
reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine,
for the time will come when they will
not endure sound doctrine, but after their own
lust, they shall heap unto themselves teachers having
itching ears.
The time will come is the challenge that
Paul puts out.
So it's around us.
He says in the last days, the spirit
speaks expressly.
Perilous times shall come.
There will be those who will be debarting
from the faith.
Well, not just the last days.
Jude, early in the church, says, I was
going to write unto you concerning our common
faith, but as the spirit impressed my heart,
it was needful for me to write to
you that you would defend the faith once
delivered unto the saints, quickly coming under attack.
Here, Paul says again, know this also in
the last days, perilous times shall come because
of the culture.
And he goes through all of those, what
the tone of the culture will be, holding
a form of religion, denying the power of
it.
He says, second Corinthians, you don't have to
turn, he says this, therefore, in chapter four,
seeing we have this ministry, as we have
received mercy, we faint not, but have renounced
the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in
craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully,
nor handling the word of God deceitfully.
It can mean in a false manner, but
it's also the word that was used in
his day for the watering down of wine
that was sold in the market, cutting it.
He's saying, we are not among those who
are watering down the truth of the word
of God.
God has not called us to a ministry
like that.
So look, I don't want to preach to
the choir as we go over these things,
but I am in a sense, so this
is an exhortation, it's a reminder.
I may mention versions, paraphrases, translations, no offense,
that's not my point.
I may mention some names, and I don't
have anything personally against anybody, and probably if
we sat down with some of these individuals
and had fellowship and broke bread, we'd say,
hey, that's a brother, hey, you know, they
really do love Christ.
But underneath of all of that, as I
watch, I think there's an erosion of the
word of God across the board, and it's
inside the church.
And I think there's an agenda attached to
it.
So for you and I, as we look
at this, what is the question then as
we look at this, not watering down the
word of God, is the Bible the word
of God?
Well, of course, we would all agree that.
What authority does it have?
What purity is there?
How accurate is it?
What's been handed to us?
The God who inspired it, has he preserved
it?
If the Bible is not 100% reliable,
if it's not 100% pure and accurate,
how can we trust it?
Did he inspire it and preserve it?
If the Bible is 100% reliable, who
would change it?
If you, you know, get sick, you get
the flu, you get strep throat, you have
to go to a doctor.
He has to be licensed.
There has to be some reliability there.
There has to be some, you know, he
has to be validated by a medical board.
He's going to write you a prescription to
a druggist who has to be trained.
And he's going to prescribe something to you
that the FDA had to approve of because
you're going to ingest it.
And it's relative to your health.
As we ingest the word of God, we
don't want some generic thing.
We want the same purity.
We want to know that what we're dealing
out is in fact, the word of God.
Now, you all know this, 40 individuals over
1600 years, three different languages, different backgrounds, different
strata in their social structures with a single
commonality, all claimed inspired by the one true
living God.
Imagine trying to do that today.
Take 40 individuals from our current culture, all
speaking the same language, all from American culture,
from different backgrounds, and let them write on
one controversial subject and see what kind of
coherence there is, what you would get in
that book of opinions as you read through
that.
But that's what we have in the scripture.
Integrity.
You know, the oldest copies of the Old
Testament we had for centuries from the Masorites
who had committed themselves to track the Old
Testament scripture and copy it with accuracy.
The oldest complete book of Isaiah, oldest complete
Old Testament, 900 AD, the Dead Sea Scrolls
were discovered, which are over a thousand years
older, and they're exactly the same.
And it speaks to us of the integrity
of the text.
And should we be surprised by that?
They went to great, the Old Testament scribes,
the Jews understood the importance of copying the
scripture.
There was a numerical value attached to all
of the letters.
At the end of a scroll, if it
didn't add up, they destroyed it and started
over again.
And we owe them, in a sense, for
their integrity in the way that they did
that.
It tells us this in the book of
Proverbs, every word of God is pure.
He is a shield to those who put
their trust in him.
Add thou not unto his words, lest he
reprove thee, and you be found a liar.
Every word is pure, refined as in a
fire.
Don't add to his word, it tells us
here.
It tells us in Psalms, chapter 12, the
12th Psalm, verse 6, the words of the
Lord are pure words as silver tried in
a furnace of earth, purified seven times.
Purified seven times.
Paul, writing to Timothy again, says this, but
continue thou in the things which thou hast
learned and has been assured of, knowing of
whom thou hast learned them, and that from
a child thou hast known the holy scriptures,
which are able to make thee wise unto
salvation through faith which is in Christ, all
scripture is given by inspiration of God and
is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
for instruction in righteousness, that the man of
God may be perfect, complete, thoroughly furnished unto
every good work.
He says this, that from a child thou
hast known the holy scripture.
Hare grammata.
It was a word that was used in
regards to the Old Testament.
Timothy wasn't raised on the New Testament, he
was raised on the Old Testament.
And Paul says that integrity in the Old
Testament was able to make you wise unto
salvation.
He moves to the next word and he
changes where he says all scripture, there he
says pasagrafe, all writings, which was the term
they used to include the new writings, the
New Testament.
He says all the writings are God breathed,
literally.
The writings are God breathed, the New Testament.
Isaiah says, the grass withereth, the flower fadeth,
but the word of our God abideth forever.
How pure is it today?
The word of our God abideth forever.
Jesus, when tempted by the devil, said, man
does not live by bread alone, but by
every, that's an important word, but by every
word of God.
By every word of God.
You know, I'm reading a King James Bible,
don't hold it against me.
1,189 chapters, 31,175 verses, 810,697
words.
Every word Jesus said.
How about letters?
3,568,489 letters, free information.
What about every letter?
Is that important?
Jesus says this in Matthew.
He says, for verily I say unto you,
that heaven and earth, till heaven and earth
pass, one jot or one tittle shall in
no wise pass from the law till all
be fulfilled.
One yod, smallest letter in the Hebrew, but
it's actually just a mark.
One yod, one tittle.
He says the markings bear out the integrity
of the Old Testament text.
This is Jesus saying this.
Not one jot, not tittle.
I didn't say it.
Jesus said that.
And why is he saying that?
You know, he will come to an argument
with a lawyer, and the lawyer will say,
what's the great commandment?
And you know this in Matthew 20.
He goes through that, the greatest commandment.
And then the Pharisees are there, and he
looks at this lawyer.
When you're arguing with a lawyer, you need
to know what you're talking about.
And he says to this lawyer and these
Pharisees, let me ask you a question.
Christ, whose son is he?
Well, he's David's son.
Well, really, then how is it that David
says when he prophesies by the Spirit, the
Lord said unto my Lord, that's one letter.
My.
Yod.
One yod, one tittle.
How is it then he says that the
Lord said unto my Lord, and he says
the argument stands or falls on one letter?
A yod or a tittle?
A yod.
Paul tells us something very similar in Galatians
when he's arguing about Christ in 316, and
he says the promise in regards to Christ
is in regard to thy seed, not seeds,
plural, as of many, but thy seed as
of one.
Paul says there the argument stands or falls
on whether the word is singular or plural.
Whether the word is singular or plural.
If that's true, if Jesus holds it in
that regard, and Paul holds the word of
God in that kind of regard, who would
then change things?
And why would they do that?
I would think there have to be an
agenda.
John Stott in his new book called Between
Two Worlds, The Challenge of Preaching Today, says
the preacher with a humble mind will avoid
omissions and additions.
He must refuse to manipulate the biblical text
in order to make it more acceptable to
our contemporaries.
For to attempt to make it more acceptable
really means to make ourselves more acceptable in
regards to popularity.
Adding to God's word was the fault of
the Pharisees.
Subtracting from was the fault of the Sadducees.
Jesus himself criticized them both, insisting that the
word of God must be allowed to stand
by itself without plus or minus, without amplification
or modification, supreme and sufficient in its authority.
The modern Pharisees and Sadducees in the church
who tamper with the scripture, discarding what they
wish was not there, inserting what they wish
was there, don't heed the criticisms of Christ.
There is, I am afraid, we have to
say, a certain arrogance about the theological liberalism
which deviates from historic biblical Christianity.
And he challenges in our attitude in regards
to God's word.
Who would change it?
Now look, there's a lot of translations now
that are neutral gender because they want to
be inclusive.
That's kind of what John Stott says.
We're going to make, you know, it won't
offend anybody.
We want to just let everybody in, one
big happy family.
And today's NIV.
Now look, if you have that, I mean,
it's not my point.
What I want you to do is maybe
just be aware of the erosion in regards
to the word of God.
So if you're reading today's NIV and you
live by it, you read that.
That's fine.
The New Living Translation.
I'll pick on today's NIV for reasons.
And there are, in today's NIV, there are
3,600 changes, 2,000 from singular to
plural, 1,600 gender changes.
And the critics, many of them who worked
on the NIV, who are criticizing what's been
done to their translation, say those thousands of
changes from singular to plural remove the sense
of personal responsibility.
Where you or somebody in your congregation would
sit alone with a Bible and read the
text and it would say, man does not
live by bread alone.
Singular.
Or let, when a man is tempted, don't
let him say he's tempted of God from
James 12.
They say when they are tempted.
They change it to plural.
It does something to sit alone with God's
word and have it the way the text
said it was and let it speak to
our hearts.
Thousands of changes from singular to plural.
Paul says one argument about Christ stands and
falls on whether it's singular or plural.
Thousands of changes in these translations, you know.
And I think the singular is so important.
One of my favorite Psalms, Psalm 119, where
David says this, and it's in the singular,
and to me it's the vertical of the
word of God that we can never lose
track of.
He says, teach me, O Lord, the way
of thy statutes.
He's saying the vertical of the word of
God, how real it is.
Yeah, we should study to show ourselves approved.
We're going to talk about that.
But there's something about the vertical in regards
to the word of God.
Teach me, O Lord, the way of thy
statutes, and I shall keep it until the
end.
Give me, this is a prayer, understanding, and
I shall keep thy law.
I shall observe it with my whole heart.
Make me go in the path of thy
commandments.
Incline my heart to thy testimonies.
He says, turn away my eyes from beholding
vanity.
Over and over, establish thy word to thy
servant.
There is a cry to the vertical in
regards to the word of God.
Because if you remove the vertical from it,
it isn't the word of God.
It's a textbook.
And the question then comes, in the translation,
there is a challenge between literal equivalency or
dynamic equivalency.
And this is not my field, I'm not
an expert, but literal equivalency is where translators
will sit with a Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic manuscript,
and they translate best they can literally word
for word.
And what they're doing is they're respecting the
manuscript and deferring to that, not deferring to
modern language.
Dynamic equivalency, brilliant men sit, they look at
the original languages and say, well, what we
need to defer to is our modern language,
so when we do the translation, we'll do
that respecting the modern language.
Now personally, you know, I think read paraphrases,
and I do.
Read different translations, I do.
Read those things, but as men who teach
the word of God, have a translation.
Have a translation, an NIV, a New American
Standard, and then move to the King James
someday.
But have a translation that you trust, that
you know someone sat and labored to give
us the very words, verbal inspiration, the very
words of God.
That's what I want.
I don't want somebody telling me what God
was trying to say and really couldn't say
in my culture.
Give me what he said and let it
be supernatural.
The vertical of it will take care of
that in my life.
It's language, and all life is based on
language.
You know, we're in Genesis, we're studying intelligent
design.
All life is based on a language.
All of the language in the DNA is
lesser and derives from this word of God.
Lewis was up here yesterday and told us
what happens in his life with leukemia when
one chromosome is out of whack.
He loves to mention his Philadelphia chromosome over
and over, I don't know why, but one
chromosome.
So try dynamic equivalency with biology and see
what you get.
A deformity, a sad situation.
I want somebody telling me what the Bible
says, that's what I want.
Look, Eugene Peterson, and if you read the
message, I have a copy of the message
in my office.
We don't have it in the bookstore, but
I have one in my office.
It's a paraphrase, but I'm so aware of
the erosion, I want you to be sensitive
to that.
Eugene Peterson, in an interview, says this, and
he's a Greek scholar, he says it's his
second language.
The importance of poetry and novels is that
the Christian life involves the use of imagination.
After all, we are dealing with the invisible,
and imagination is our training in dealing with
the invisible, making connections.
I don't want to do away with or
denigrate theology or exegesis, but our primary allies
in this business are the artists.
Why do people spend so much time studying
the Bible?
How much do they need to know?
We invest all this time in understanding the
text, which has a separate life of its
own, and we think we're being more pious
or spiritual when we're doing it.
Christians should be studying it less, not more.
You just need enough to pay attention to
God.
I'm just not at all pleased with all
this emphasis on Bible study, as though it's
some kind of special thing that Christians do,
and the more they do, the better.
This is Eugene Peterson.
Paul says, study to show thyself approved, a
workman of God, rightly dividing the truth.
You need not be ashamed.
Over and over, we're told to abide in
the word.
What do we want our congregations to do?
Eugene Peterson, in his paraphrase, the message, just
interesting, just an aside, do with it what
you want.
My King James Bible has the word Lord
in it 7,970 times.
The message has it in there 71 times.
There's 7,989 deletions of the word Lord.
Now, sometimes master's plugged in, but I like
the Lord for some reason.
The King James Bible, these three words, the
Lord Jesus, you'll find those words together 118
times in the New Testament.
In the message, you find them zero times.
In the King James Bible, you'll find the
Lord Jesus Christ, those four words, 84 times.
In the message, you find them zero times.
Eugene Peterson, though he doesn't think it's important
to study the scripture, is one of the
advisors on the Renovere Study Bible.
And as I look at this, I'm amazed
it's happening in the context, again, I think
of being inclusive.
The Bible as it was intended to be,
this is an advertisement for it.
Like for 1,900 years, we've got it
all wrong.
A new approach to scripture, it dismisses Genesis
chapters 1 to 11 as a collection of
myths and folklore handed down by tradition.
Now, Jesus said in the beginning, God made
the male and female.
He actually thinks, Jesus, that it literally happened.
Jesus, when he talks about the flood, talks
about a literal occurrence.
When he talks about Abraham, talks about a
literal individual.
This is folklore.
It says here that the new Renovere Study
Bible is the most accepted.
Anybody have one of those today?
Nobody here has the most accepted Bible?
It is the most accurate, the most ecumenical.
Ah, there's the agenda.
Renovere introduces spiritual disciplines that date back to
the early church.
Its main editor, Foster, explaining his view of
celebration, writes, we of the new age can
risk going against the tide.
Let us with abandon see visions and dreams
and so forth.
Jeremiah says, let the guy with the dream
tell his dream, the guy with the vision.
But he who hath my word, let him
declare it faithfully, because what is the chaff
to the wheat?
The arousal of imagination, how important it is.
He says this, sadly, the Renovere explanatory notes
deny the divine authorship of much of the
scripture, even that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, claiming,
again, Genesis is all tradition.
Denying Isaiah chapter 53, Christ's sacrifice.
Renovere describes the book of Isaiah as poetic
imagination.
It says that poetry, in poetry, Jeremiah attempted
to explain the circumstances of his day through
poetry, doing his best to try to explain
the circumstances of his day.
All of this in the sense of being
inclusive.
And look, I've watched some of this and
there are things to learn.
Don McClure was in a church in the
west coast.
We talked.
He said, you know, Joe, one of the
things I really appreciate about this church is
they make people feel welcome.
They've done some great things.
And he said, you know, sometimes as Calvary,
we get an attitude, hey, we teach the
word of God.
You should be thankful.
Just come in and shut up and sit
down.
And that's not right.
And, you know, we have a big church
and I listened to him.
We talked and I thought, you know, it's
a great idea.
He said, you know, they have people at
the doors that greet people.
And I thought, you know, our church, sometimes
I see people walking and they look a
little lost.
So there's a group of women in our
church now and they're on fire.
They love this ministry.
They stand at the entrances.
If they see somebody come in with that
forlorn look on their face, you know, they're
right there.
Can I help you?
Here's a map of the building.
Let me take you.
This is where the nursery is.
And I met and had breakfast with them
a week ago.
And it was, you know, we had a
men's breakfast first with my home fellowship leaders.
It was bacon, ham, eggs.
And then I had afterwards the breakfast with
the ladies and it was quiche and fruit
and just, it's a different world.
But I was full when I got there.
But they're so excited.
I mean, the one of them said, I
saw this lady walking with her kids and
she ended up in the overflow room and
I saw them leaving.
And she said, a greeter had talked to
me.
She said, I ran and talked to her.
And I said, no, no, I understand.
It's uncomfortable.
It's a big overflow.
And she said, two weeks later, I looked
in the sanctuary at the invitation.
I saw her going forward, her and her
husband, and they got saved.
One of our gals is a nurse.
And she said she met this girl, come
in and talk to her here.
She was a nurse.
So she had her come and sit with
her and her friends where they always sit.
And she said the same thing.
At the end of the service, she got
up, she went forward, she was saved.
So I think it's valid.
I think that we should be sensitive to
those things.
But it goes to a degree where we
want to fill the church with unbelievers.
So we're not going to state truth.
We don't want any light to shine because
they become uncomfortable to the point where some
churches are saying, let's sign up the unbelievers
and let them serve in the church.
And maybe if we let them serve, they'll
feel part of things and they'll become open.
I look in the book of Acts and
it said to wait on tables.
They had to seek out men that were
filled with the Holy Ghost, that had tact,
that had wisdom, to wait on tables.
How can we invite unbelievers in to serve
in the church?
The church is the ecclesia, the called out
ones.
By its own name, it's separate.
By its own name.
Moses had nothing but a headache with a
mixed multitude.
Look, there's this tide.
And again, not my, I'm not, believe it
or not, denigrating anyone.
Rick Warren, when he was in Philadelphia just
a little while ago, and I know Rick's
a brother.
He said the New Testament says the church
is the body of Christ.
This is a Philadelphia newspaper that leaves us
answering all these questions.
It says, so the church is the body
of Christ.
But for the last 100 years, the hands
and feet have been amputated.
The church has been nothing but a mouth
for 100 years.
Let me tell you something.
In the last 100 years, there have been
more martyrs in the church than all of
the 19 centuries before that.
What about them?
In the last 100 years, more copies of
the scripture have been distributed than all of
the centuries before that.
In the last 100 years, more people have
come to know Christ than in all of
the centuries before that.
And in the last 100 years, more humanitarian
hospitals, orphanages have been done in the name
of Christ than all of the centuries before
that.
This is a perspective trying to push something.
He says here he despises fundamentalism.
Now I can understand what he's trying to
say there, but that says something else to
the world.
He says this, as powerful as churches can
be in working for the powerless, they can't
succeed without governments and non-governmental organizations.
Tell that to the Christians that were burned
at the stake in Rome.
They succeeded without the government.
Rome is gone.
The church is still here.
Warren predicts that fundamentalism of all varieties will
be one of the big enemies of the
21st century.
Muslim fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, secular
fundamentalism, they're all based on fear.
Well, I'm fundamental in what I believe.
And in the early part of the last
century, some great men like Robert Dick Wilson
and Metchin Gratian and Van Til broke off
from Princeton when it started to go liberal
because these are the fundamental things that we
won't surrender.
And we should all have those things in
our lives.
And we're fundamental in that sense.
And I do not like being placed in
the same category as a Muslim fundamentalist who
has the right in what he believes to
be destructive.
We don't have any of that as Christians.
I think it's lowering the bar.
Joel Osteen.
Hey, wait a minute, Pastor Joe.
Look, no, no, no, no.
You know, and no doubt if we ate
with him, say this is a brother, you
know, but you know, it's the Copeland Hagen
ilk.
It isn't really anything new.
Osteen uses a problematic Bible version, the message,
talking about the men who received their sight,
the blind men who came to Jesus.
Jesus said to them, are you believing to
go higher in life, to rise above your
obstacles, to live in health and abundance and
victory?
You will become what you believe.
But that's what he said to the blind
men.
He said, as your faith is so beautiful,
they got, they received their sight because they
believed in Jesus, not because they had a
positive mental attitude.
He says the reason that he says the
reason the Hebrews didn't enter the promised land
was because of their lack of faith and
their lack of self esteem.
Robbed them of a fruitful future.
They never fulfilled their destiny because of the
way they saw themselves.
Please don't laugh.
Because this is a brother.
You know, I come home sometimes Sunday night,
I'm really shots and I sit there and
surf and I don't know why I do
that to myself and kind of go.
And I watched him the other week and
he was saying, you know, those of you
who have suffered in New Orleans, we have
faith for you.
And the whole church is going, yeah, that's
a good thing.
And he says, those of you who have
lost your homes, we have faith for you.
We believe God's going to give you a
brand new home, a bigger home, a more
expensive home.
Everybody's going crazy.
Then he starts on cars.
Those of you who have lost your cars,
God's going to give you a faster car,
a more expensive car.
Everybody's going.
And I'm listening to this for 40 minutes
and I thought, what in the world are
you talking about?
And what bothers me immensely is not what's
said, it's what's not said.
Where's the cross, the resurrection, the blood of
Jesus Christ, the rescue of the culture?
It's not there.
McLaren, one of the voices for the emergent
church, Brian McLaren says this, the church has
been preoccupied with the question, what happens to
your soul after you die?
As if the reason for Jesus coming can
be summed up in, Jesus is trying to
help more souls get into heaven as opposed
to hell.
Summary, I just think a fair reading of
the gospels blows that out of the water.
I don't think the entire message of the
life of Jesus, I can understand some of
this, is about that.
It's from a PBS special in the emergent
church.
Jesus says, for God so loved the world,
he gave his only begotten son, that whoever
believed in him would not perish but have
everlasting life.
The son didn't come into the world to
condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved.
That kind of sums up the thing too.
I don't think we've got the gospel right
yet.
What does it mean to be saved?
When I read the Bible, I don't see
it meaning I'm going to heaven when I
die.
I'm glad I see that when I read
the Bible.
I am going to heaven when I die.
And nobody's clapping.
You clapped when Don said he was going
to heaven.
I don't know whether you're looking forward to
seeing him and not looking forward to seeing
me.
None of us want to throw the Bible
out the window.
What we want to do is become more
savvy, more aware in our interpretive grids.
One good way to think of the Bible
for me is to think of it as
a scrapbook of memorabilia.
I don't think of it that way.
It's not good for me to think that
way.
McLaren.
After Brian McLaren of The Emergent, brand new
neo-evangelism, was named as one of the
top 25 most influential evangelicals in America today
by Time Magazine February 7, 2005.
In that interview, in the midst of the
purpose, different craze, and so forth, Brian McLaren
has endorsed a book by Alan Jones.
He has endorsed the book that calls the
cross a vile doctrine.
It's reimagining Christianity by Jones.
And the Spiritual Teachers Project, of which Jones
is involved, is a group of about 25
that includes Zen, Buddhists, monks, New Agers.
I mean, just, I read this and I'm
amazed at some of this.
Rob Bell.
And, you know, people are getting saved.
Great guy.
You sit there, and I'm sure you feel
that way.
But as I look at this, here's his
bell.
It says, the bells began questioning their assumptions
about the Bible itself, discovering the Bible as
a human product, as Rob puts it, rather
than a product of divine fiat.
What he's discovered now is the Bible is
a human product, not the product of God.
It's still the center, but it's a different
kind of center.
His wife says, Kristen, I grew up thinking
that we'd figure out the Bible, that we
knew what it means.
Now I have no idea what most of
it means, and yet I feel life is
big again.
Life used to be in black and white,
now it's in color.
Erwin McManus says this, stop preaching sermons, start
telling stories.
Look, all of this to say there's an
erosion out there, and the Word of God
is under attack, and the temptation for you
can be to see television churches, to try
to understand that behind the scenes, there's 1
,300 Calvaries in the country now.
And I'm not touting Calvary.
There's a lot of great work going on
outside of Calvary, but I'm just saying you're
part of a movement where there's 1,300
churches in the country.
KP has 21,000 churches in the 1040
window consider themselves part of Calvary.
There's over a million house churches in the
underground church in China consider themselves part of
Calvary.
You're part of something that's spreading around the
world, that's touching lives everywhere.
And somehow, because we sit in front of
the tube, we see this, you know, this
thing built, erected, this huge, you know, with
everything that makes people happy on the vertical,
and we think we're not successful unless we're
doing that.
Remember, Paul stood in the arena in Ephesus
with 20,000 people screaming at him, great
as Diana of the Ephesians, and he was
there in Ephesus with what, 30, 40, 50
people?
But which side of that would you want
to stand on?
He had the truth.
He had light.
He had Jesus Christ.
Robert Dick Wilson, just an exhortation as I
end, talking about the validity of the Old
Testament manuscripts.
This is from an address he made called,
What is an Expert?
It was printed in the Bible League quarterly
in 1955.
Robert Dick Wilson was a scholar at the
turn of the last century, taught at Princeton,
the head of Semitic languages.
He could read and write read and write
45 ancient Semitic languages.
When he was 25 years old, he could
read the New Testament in nine different languages,
and had the New Testament memorized in Hebrew,
and could quote the New Testament from Matthew
chapter 1 to Revelation in Hebrew, every syllable
without missing a syllable, and had many of
the Old Testament books memorized in Hebrew.
He says this, For 45 years, continuously, I
have devoted myself to one great study of
the Old Testament, in all of its languages,
in all of its archaeology, in all of
its translations.
The critics of the Bible, who go to
it in order to find fault, claim themselves
all knowledge, all virtue, all love of the
truth.
One of their favorite phrases is, All scholars
agree.
Well, when a man says that, I wish
to know who the scholars are and what
they agree on.
Where do they get their evidence?
I defy any man to make an attack
on the Old Testament on the ground of
evidence that I cannot investigate.
After I learned the necessary languages, I set
about the investigation of every single consonant in
the Hebrew Old Testament.
There are about 1,250,000 of them.
It took me many years to achieve my
task.
I had to observe variations in the text,
in the manuscripts, notes of the Masorites, in
order of various versions, parallel passages, and conjectural
emendations of critics.
And then I had to classify the results
of every character, every consonant, to reduce the
Old Testament criticism to an absolutely objective science,
something which is based on evidence and not
opinion.
The result of those 45 years of study
which I have given to the text has
been this.
I can affirm that there is not a
page of the Old Testament concerning which you
need have any doubt.
For example, to illustrate its accuracy, there are
29 ancient kings whose names are mentioned not
only in the Bible, but also on monuments
we've uncovered of their own time.
There are also 195 consonants in those 29
proper names.
Yet we find that in the documents of
the Hebrew Old Testament, there are only two
consonants out of the 195 that have ever
been called into question, and they are all
exactly the same way as they are inscribed
on their monuments, which archaeologists have dated and
discovered.
Some of these go back 4,000 years.
He says the names in the Old Testament
are exactly spelt the way that they have
been turned up on the monuments, and some
of them got 4,000 years, and are
written that every letter is clear and correct.
Compare this accuracy with the greatest scholar of
his age, the librarian at Alexandria, Egypt, 200
BC.
He compiled a catalog of the kings of
Egypt, 38 in all.
Of the entire number, only three or four
are recognizable.
He also made a list of the kings
of Assyria, and in only one case can
we tell who he's talking about, and that
one's not spelled correctly.
Or take Ptolemy, who drew up a register
of 18 kings of Babylon.
Not one of them is properly spelled.
You could not make them out at all
if you didn't know some of the outside
sources.
If anyone talks about the Bible, ask him
about the kings mentioned in it.
There are 29 kings referred to, 10 different
countries among these 29, all of which are
included in the Bible and on the monuments.
Every one of these is given their right
name in the Bible, their right country, their
right place in correct chronological order.
Think what this means, is his conclusion.
Think what this means.
What do we hold in our hand?
And what do we need to do to
better it?
You know, we get caught in this trap
sometimes.
Jesus says this in Revelation chapter 3, and
I'll read it to you there.
And I believe it's speaking to the last
day's church.
To the angel of the church of Philadelphia,
and that's not why I'm partial to this.
Write these things, saith he that is holy
and true, he that hath the key of
David, he that openeth and no man shutteth,
and shutteth and no man openeth, I know
thy works.
Behold, I have set before thee an open
door.
So this is an effective church.
No man can shut it, for thou hast
little strength.
And that's not a criticism.
There's no criticism.
He's actually saying that's good.
You actually have a little strength.
And has kept my word.
I've set an open door before you that
no man can shut for, that's causative in
the Greek, because, the reason I've set the
open door in front of you is because
of this.
You actually have a little strength, and you
have kept my word.
There's a regard to it.
You have kept my word.
You have not denied my name.
And you still know the difference between who's
a Jew and who's not?
A lot of people don't know that anymore.
And because you have kept the word of
my patience, my hupomoni, what I've borne up
under, because you have kept my passion, because
you've kept my suffering, because you've kept the
cross and the blood of Christ, because you've
kept my word, I'm also going to keep
you from the hour that's coming to try
all of those who dwell on the earth.
Hold that fast, which thou hast.
Let no man take your crown.
And of course, he ends by saying this.
He that hath an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Eugene Peterson in The Message says, listen to
the wind words blowing through the churches.
Listen to the wind words.
He that hath an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
The holiness and sovereignty of God is under
attack.
There's an agenda behind it.
Some well-meaning, some convoluted, some very dark.
Because the person of God, his holiness, his
sovereignty is under attack, of course, the natural
next step is the word of that holy
God then comes under attack.
And when the word of that holy God
comes under attack, the central message of it,
which is the cross and the blood of
Christ, the resurrection, that then comes under attack.
My exhortation to you is, what do you
have in your hand?
And think what that means.
Inspired, preserved, every word important, every letter important.
Integrity of the text handed to us.
Read your paraphrases.
Read those things.
Study to show yourself approved.
But have a translation.
Have a translation of the words of God.
And never make apology or be ashamed because
heaven and earth is going to pass away
not one yod, not one tittle is going
to pass from this.
Let's stand.
Let's pray.
Lord, let that be to you, Lord.
You have given us your word.
And Lord, in one great sense when we
sit alone with it, it flays us, Lord.
It's sharp and it's powerful.
It divides down into our being between that
which is soulish and that which is spiritual,
Lord.
How we love your word.
And Lord, I pray as pastors, Lord, as
those serving, Lord, that our time alone, Lord,
my time alone with your word, which is
the one thing I love to do so
much, Lord, would not be eaten up by
all of the other responsibilities that we have,
Lord.
We think of those with wisdom, filled with
the Spirit, with tact, that we're given the
weight on tables so that, Lord, so that
others might give themselves to the word of
God and to prayer, Lord.
Let that be our call in these days.
And Lord, we believe if we're going to
see an awakening, if the Calvary movement's going
to be born again, Lord, if we're going
to see revival in our hearts and in
our churches and in this nation, Lord, we
believe it will be where your word is
being honored as your word.
Lord, never let us be pharisaical.
Please, Father, don't let that be the spirit
of these things.
Make us wise.
Let us be sons who love to sit
in your presence and open your word and
love it.
Have the full force of all that it
is and its beauty and its power in
our lives.
Incline our hearts, Lord.
Cause us to walk in your statutes.
We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.