This is reason #7 to be a member of a church in a list presented by Pastor John MacArthur in his sermon Personal Commitment to the Church part 1.
"Now the question you want to ask about a church is not how good is the music, not how comfortable is the environment, not how easy is it to park, not even how clever the preacher is. There's only one question...how do they handle the truth? That's the only question...how do they handle the truth? If they don't do that right, everything else is out the door. The truth issue. And if you just go bouncing around intermittently showing up, you don't get the continuity of the truth. You don't get the flow of the truth. The Bible is not the Koran, it's not 122 suras that have no context, that are arranged only in the order from the longest to the shortest with no regard for continuity. It's not just a bunch of stuff strung together in single statements. The Bible is a series of 66 books and a book has a beginning, a middle and an ending and it goes from point A to point Z and the only way to understand the truth of God is to follow the path of those 66 books. And that's what we endeavor to do verse by verse to understand the unfolding Word of God. If you come in and out, in and out, in and out, you're going to get a sporadic Swiss cheese comprehension of truth. Worse yet, you bounce over here, you bounce over there, you go here a little while, you go there a little while, you will never come up with a cohesive systematic understanding of the truth of God, and therefore you're limited in your sanctification because you're sanctified by truth. You're also limited in your understanding and therefore you're limited in your ability to worship God fully for who He is and what He has revealed. It's a truth issue. You need the truth. You need it systematically, you need it continually. You need to hear the truth spoken in love. You need to be protected by the truth. You need to be taught by the truth. You need to be trained by the truth. You need to be disciplined by the truth. And it needs to be systematic and cohesive. And that's the remarkable thing, of course. So many people bouncing around picking bits and pieces of stuff all over the place can't make a cohesive sense of it. If you're here in this church year after year after year, you'll find that all the elders and all the teachers and all the leaders teach the truth with continuity and consistency and integrity and they build the foundation on the house of truth. That to the eternal glory of God who is the God who wants His truth known and understood. It's a truth issue."
"Now the question you want to ask about a church is not how good is the music, not how comfortable is the environment, not how easy is it to park, not even how clever the preacher is. There's only one question...how do they handle the truth? That's the only question...how do they handle the truth? If they don't do that right, everything else is out the door. The truth issue. And if you just go bouncing around intermittently showing up, you don't get the continuity of the truth. You don't get the flow of the truth. The Bible is not the Koran, it's not 122 suras that have no context, that are arranged only in the order from the longest to the shortest with no regard for continuity. It's not just a bunch of stuff strung together in single statements. The Bible is a series of 66 books and a book has a beginning, a middle and an ending and it goes from point A to point Z and the only way to understand the truth of God is to follow the path of those 66 books. And that's what we endeavor to do verse by verse to understand the unfolding Word of God. If you come in and out, in and out, in and out, you're going to get a sporadic Swiss cheese comprehension of truth. Worse yet, you bounce over here, you bounce over there, you go here a little while, you go there a little while, you will never come up with a cohesive systematic understanding of the truth of God, and therefore you're limited in your sanctification because you're sanctified by truth. You're also limited in your understanding and therefore you're limited in your ability to worship God fully for who He is and what He has revealed. It's a truth issue. You need the truth. You need it systematically, you need it continually. You need to hear the truth spoken in love. You need to be protected by the truth. You need to be taught by the truth. You need to be trained by the truth. You need to be disciplined by the truth. And it needs to be systematic and cohesive. And that's the remarkable thing, of course. So many people bouncing around picking bits and pieces of stuff all over the place can't make a cohesive sense of it. If you're here in this church year after year after year, you'll find that all the elders and all the teachers and all the leaders teach the truth with continuity and consistency and integrity and they build the foundation on the house of truth. That to the eternal glory of God who is the God who wants His truth known and understood. It's a truth issue."
Comments
Post a Comment