...the right belief.
Well, to Paul, teaching had two parts.
To Paul, sound teaching had two parts, foundation
and superstructure, or otherwise, the root and tree
with its fruit.
And he said one became the other, that
is, one was inextricably tied up with the
other, one was the effect of the cause,
the other was the cause, one was the
foundation, the other the building, one was the
root, the other the fruit and the tree.
And he couldn't think of these apart, and
he wouldn't.
He said, now, there in Crete, that miserable
place, you notice how often in the...
just in the passage I read briefly and
imperfectly here, you notice how often he said,
be sober.
They were a Hollywood bunch, evidently, and sobriety,
both in temperament and in practice, didn't seem
to be their characteristics.
So he said, he warned them sharply that
they were to be sober.
Now, I want you to note here that
to Paul, salvation in Jesus Christ carried with
it beliefs about certain things and practice in
harmony with those beliefs.
Now, Paul knew nothing else but that.
That was Paul.
If you want to teach Paul, then you
can't separate certain parts of Ephesians and say,
this is Pauline theology.
Pauline theology had two sides to it, as
I've explained.
The one side was the theology of belief,
and the other was the morality that results
from the theology.
The one side was the right belief, and
the other side was the right living.
One side we call the foundation, the other
the building.
Or, changing it around to Paul, Christian belief,
Christian doctrine, sound doctrine consisted of the root
and the tree, which grew up out of
the root, along with the fruit of the
tree.
That is, again, we have it, the root
was the theology, what you believe about God
and Christ.
And the tree was the morality, and the
fruit was the right living.
So we have theology and morality, right belief
and right living, all bound together, and they
can't be taken apart.
Strange that we've forgotten that in the day
in which we live.
Strange, and even to mention it is to
have it said of you, you're a legalist,
you're a legalist.
Even to mention it, you're a legalist.
We don't mind names, so we'll go on
and teach what Paul taught.
Now, there's a great delusion, and anybody's likely
to fall into it, and it is the
delusion that you can separate the foundation from
the building, the root from the tree, that
you can have the one and not the
other.
One reason why fundamentalism has fallen on hard
times in our day, and thousands and multiplied
thousands of believers who are true believers are
turning away from the Word itself.
It's not as many of the brethren say
that they're turning away from Christ.
They're turning away from foundations without buildings.
They're turning away from roots without trees.
They're turning away from theology without morality.
They're turning away from right beliefs without right
living.
And I am turning with them if I
must, for I believe that we're to have
a foundation as well as, if we're to
have a building, we're to have a foundation,
but if we have a foundation, we're to
have a building.
Now, how completely foolish to separate the root
from the tree or the tree from the
root.
Would you consider what value a root is
buried deep in the earth if it has
no tree and no fruit on the tree?
Would you consider how vain it would be
to have a tree without a root, just
as you can't have a tree without a
root, so you can't have, or shouldn't expect
to have, a root without a tree?
The two go together.
Think about how foolish it is to lay
a foundation.
Imagine, if you will, laying a foundation, digging
down with a bulldozer, getting rid of all
the dirt down there, shoveling it away, then
laying the footings in and building the foundation
up, and then letting it lie there for
a hundred years.
What good is a foundation?
It's to lay a building upon.
What good is theology unless it eventuates in
right living?
What good is right doctrine unless it means
morality and sound truth and sound living?
So we try to build a building without
a foundation.
That's what our liberalistic friends do.
They want to live right, and yet they
don't have any foundation for their buildings, so
they push the building up and keep it
inflated with wind.
And the result is talk, talk, but there's
no foundation.
But we, on the other hand, tend to
lay foundations everywhere and not have any buildings.
But Paul said, Titus, see to it that
you get both.
See to it that your people are well
taught in sound theology but see to it
that they understand that theology without conduct is
vanity.
Charles G.
Finney, to my mind, the greatest evangelist that
ever lived, the greatest evangelist that ever lived,
and that's including Paul, greater than Paul as
an evangelist, not as great as Paul as
a theologian, not as great as Paul as
an apostle, not as great as Paul in
receiving the inspired scriptures, not great in that
way, but greater than Paul in the one
job God gave him to do, evangelism.
He taught and taught boldly that to teach
Bible classes without making an application was to
grieve the Holy Ghost and tempt God.
And he said it's all a mistake to
have classes where you teach doctrine unless when
you've taught your doctrine you make the application
and say to the people, now, as a
result of believing this truth, how are you
going to live?
Bring your life into conformity with it.
Right belief without right living has very little
value, very little value.
And how are you going to have right
living if you don't have right belief?
Now Christ gave us a powerful illustration, and
I will talk about that a little bit
in close.
Christ gave us a powerful illustration.
I want you to notice.
Matthew, the 7th chapter, and it's in perfect
harmony with Paul here.
Our dispensationalizing brethren take in Titus but dismiss
Matthew.
And here yet we have it on the
same thing, the same spirit, the same principle,
the same beliefs here in the 7th of
Matthew as we have in Titus, the book
of Titus.
Jesus said, Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of
mine, and doeth them.
You see, hearing these sayings of mine, that's
theology.
Doing them, that's morality.
Hearing these sayings of mine, that's the foundation.
And doing them, that's the building.
Hearing these sayings of mine, and doing them,
that's having the tree and the root, or
the root and the tree.
And our Lord never separated the two.
He expected and meant that the two should
go together.
I believe that we could have some kind
of revival in our land, some kind of
reformation that would last.
Perhaps it wouldn't be so dramatic, but it
would last if every preacher started and for
three months insisted that everybody obey what he
preached and insisted upon it that the word
was given that it might get obedience and
that the foundations were laid, they might have
buildings and that the root was there that
it might produce the tree and its fruit.
But Jesus said, Whoever hears and does these,
I will liken him unto a wise man.
Here was Jesus with his great oriental love
for parables and illustrations.
Said, I will liken him unto a wise
man which built his house upon a rock.
And naturally, the rain didn't come or the
floods didn't descend just to be a part
of this story.
But rains descend and floods come and winds
blow normally.
Normally.
In a little country paper that I used
to know, there was a character by the
name of Peter Tumbledown and he kept a
very bad farm and he never fixed the
roof.
And he gave as his reason for not
fixing the roof that when it was raining
he couldn't and when it wasn't raining he
didn't need it.
Now, when you build a building, you don't
use Peter Tumbledown's theology.
You build it in good weather with the
knowledge that the good weather won't last.
When you build in July, you build with
the knowledge there will be a December and
a February.
You build with not a breath of air
and the sun shining calmly on the meadows
with the knowledge the time will be when
the wind may hit 50 miles an hour
and the rain come down in drenching torrents.
And our Lord said, this man built his
house on a rock and he did it
by doing.
He used exactly the illustration I've used before.
He heard and did and the result was
that his house was on the rock and
when the floods came and the rain descended
and the winds blew and beat upon that
house, it wasn't there.
They weren't mad at the house particularly.
They were just being the way winds and
floods and rain are.
But that house had to stand up there.
But it fell not, says Jesus, for it
was founded upon a rock.
But he said over against this, everyone that
hear these sayings of mine, there's theology and
do them not, there's failure to have living
in harmony with our teaching.
He shall be likened unto a foolish man
which build his house upon a rock.
And while I have not used this before
in my sermons on divine wisdom, do you
notice here how Christ contrasted between the wise
man and the fool?
There we have moral wisdom which is as
practical as a slide rule.
Moral wisdom when it builds a house digs
down to the rock and lays a heavy
good foundation.
Moral foolishness when it builds a house builds
on sand.
And the rain descended and the floods came
and the wind blew.
The rains and the floods and the wind
weren't mad at the house.
It was just, they do those things, that's
weather.
And you can expect that.
And the beat upon that house and it
fell and great was the fall of it.
The house was just as, I suppose, as
carefully built as the other one except that
the foundation was neglected.
The man had the theology but he didn't
have the life.
Somebody says, well, but you're confusing your illustration.
Maybe so, but I'm getting an idea across
my mind that there must be practical soundness,
the hearing and the doing.
There you have the two of them, the
hearing and the doing.
They're a unit.
You can't separate them.
And if you separate them, you have no
foundation.
It goes out from under you and even
your very beliefs cease to have any value
to you.
And the rain descended and the floods came
and the winds blew and beat upon that
house and it fell and great was the
fall of it.
Everybody that heard that understood it.
Everybody knew about that.
Everybody.
I've heard of houses that were built and
built in fill-in sections or sections that
were so sandy that they hadn't been built
long until great cracks began to appear in
the bricks.
Plaster began to crack.
Foundations were poor.
Might have meant well, but the foundations were
bad.
So, my brethren, the foundation and the building,
they're one.
And so Paul says, Speak thou of the
things that become sound doctrine.
All right, Paul.
What do you believe?
You believe in the Trinity?
Yes, but I'm not talking about that.
You believe in the deity of Jesus?
Yes, but I'm not talking about that.
You believe in baptism by immersion?
Well, of course, we'll have to have Paul
say yes.
Even though some people said, wouldn't say he
said yes, but we have a baptistry back
here so we'll say he said yes.
And Paul, you believe, what else do you
believe in?
Do you want us to teach second coming?
That's not what I'm talking about.
What do you want us to teach?
I want you to teach it all, but
what I'm specially asking you to bear down
on here in Crete is the things that
befit sound doctrine.
Old Halim and Julius was an atheist.
Reason to believe he finally died by his
own hand.
When I was a boy, this atheist was
publishing books called the Little Blue Books.
And I got hold of them and began
to learn about the great writers.
For a little education I got, I got
partly out of an atheist who was a
great publisher of great books and published them
all, good and bad and indifferent.
I believe I knew the difference between them.
But anyway, this atheist wrote a sketch one
time about religion.
He didn't believe in it.
He said he could drive through the landscape
and enjoy the scenery without leaning on the
God that was supposed to have made the
scenery.
But when he came to a chapter in
his book about the Quakers, he said this
significant thing.
He said, Then came the Quakers and startled
the Christian world by living like Christians.
Imagine that.
Startled the Christian world by living like Christians.
I believe that without any particularly great leaders,
maybe, but just the common people, the plain
Christians, I believe that we could startle the
religious world if we'd begin to take seriously
Paul's admonition to live lives that befit sound
doctrine.
Not only believe what the Bible says, but
do what the Bible says.
Not only believe the theology, but practice the
morality of the Bible.
Quit our lying.
Quit our deceiving.
Quit our gorging.
Quit our luxurious spending.
Quit our quarreling.
Quit our nasty treatment of each other.
Quit our laziness.
Quit our long, unnecessary, and expensive vacations away
from God's house.
I believe in the vacation, all right, even
if I don't take them, but to run
to extremes.
In England they say when Friday comes, cars
are bumper to bumper for the seashore, and
they don't come back till late Sunday night
and the churches are left high and dry
for the owls and the janitor.
That's carrying a decent thing to terrible extremes.
They can import Billy Graham or any other
great preacher they want to.
They'll never have lasting revival until they've started
obeying God.
Paul Rees they say, I always claimed one
of America's greatest preachers going to England, left
leaving his church in Minneapolis.
But if the English people don't remember that
you can't bring the blessing of God by
bringing a good man to your shores.
Speak the things which befit sound doctrine, that
aged men live this way, aged women live
this way, young men live this way, young
women live this way, employers do this, and
employees do that, and all of you do
this.
That's the way Paul said, sound doctrine ought
to sound.
And I believe that we could startle the
world, rock the liberals back on their heels.
A man wrote me a letter and said
you probably won't like it that you get
a fan letter from a liberal, but he
said I just read something you wrote and
I like it, and I wrote back and
said listen, there are two kinds of liberals.
There are the smooth talking hollow fellows with
superficial philosophies who don't mean what they say
and live on wind and words, and I
have no respect for them.
But there's another kind of liberal, the kind
that's been driven to liberalism by the hollow
lives of the orthodox and the poor living
of those who claim to be fundamental in
their faith.
And I said I not only respect them,
I pity them, and I think you're among
them.
Instead of damning the liberal, we ought to
remember the liberal hasn't had a very good
example of godliness.
If we lived the way Paul taught us
here, I think the liberals would begin to
disappear.
One after the other, they'd begin to disappear.
Captain Henning, how many of you know Cap
Henning?
Connected with Pacific Garden Mission, has been a
Christian for years.
When Mrs. Dietz died, we had her funeral
here in this church, Cap Henning sent a
floral piece.
It was a long ribbon, and in gold
letters, the florist had written this, I watched
her life and sought her savior.
And I saw Cap Henning and ate with
him the other day, and Henning said, I
was a fresh, smart, young fellow, and I
stayed at the Dietz home, and I watched
Mrs. Dietz.
And he said, when I was leaving, they
said, would you like to pray with us,
Cap?
And he said, sure, and he got down
on his knees and got converted.
I watched her live, and then I sought
her savior.
But there's many a liberal today that watches
us live and turns to liberalism.
Not because he's got anything against Christ, but
because he gags on what he sees.
The holy season, as we call it, means
anything, my friends.
It means that we ought to take this
whole thing practically.
If that was God's son that rode into
Jerusalem there that Palm Sunday, if that was
God's son who came out of that new
tomb on that Sunday morning and stood among
men in shining glory, if that's all true
and I stake my eternal future on it,
then we ought to begin to live as
if it was true and stop being animals,
civilized animals, living according to our glands, chit
-chat and gossip and all the rest.
We ought to begin to live like Christians.
And if we do, immediately our prayers will
take on a new power.
Immediately our testimony will take on a new
sharp edge.
Immediately our joy will begin to spring up
like wells in the desert.
And I believe that we can make an
impression on mankind.
Some of my poor Orthodox brethren have begun
to believe over the last years that if
we can get some good polemical writers, that
is, argumentative writers, who know how to argue
with others, if we get some good books
arguing for the faith that we can cure
liberalism, never, my brethren, you will cure it
when we begin to live like Christians.
But never before.
So I beg of you, let's begin to
live the life that befits sound doctrine.