Phoenix Preacher

 We continue with DMW's study of 1 Timothy…

“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope,

¶ To Timothy, my true child in the faith: ¶ Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

¶ As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine,nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith.”

(1 Timothy 1:1–4 ESV)

To Timothy, my own son in the faith.

Paul's close relationship with Timothy shows here and his affection for him and his trust in him as a faithful son.

The close relationship between these two men is clear.

While I tried over the years to develop close relationships with the men I worked with, I found that the culture we live it simply eats up so much of our time to just survive, and the way the church is organized made it all but impossible.

What are the problems we see today in the church that are a direct result of the lack of close relationship between leadership, and between each other?

Grace, Mercy and Peace

This is different than when he wrote to churches to which he would say grace and peace, but when he wrote to an individual he included mercy.

Why do you think Paul would include mercy when speaking to an individual and not use it when he addressed a church?

To remain in Ephesus

Paul's would at times leave either Timothy or Titus for the follow up work when a church was established and go there. Notice that he besought him to stay there he didn't command him… were grace prevails there is no need to command.

Ephesus was a church that went from a condition that when Paul wrote his letter to them, there was no rebuke or correction. It is a letter that was all positive. But just twenty years later in the Book of Revelation Jesus had a strong rebuke. They had left their first love.

Twenty years is not a very long time. It should be a strong warning to all leaders to not take it for granted that just because they had a good start, and were blessed in a mighty way, that it can be lost in just twenty years. It almost seems like it is unavoidable.

Can you name any great revival where God did a mighty new work that the work continued to the next generation?

Is it possible that we should just shut down and start fresh every 20 years?

I know that is nuts. But there are times that it seems like a good Idea.

The Old Guard almost always seems to get in the way of the new leaders. I have seen it with my own eyes. After a very short time I have watched a wonderful move of God, follow down a path that those who were there in the beginning desire to protect and keep it going, but their efforts always seem to be in the direction of more and more human control over the church and less and less liberty in the Spirit.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”
(2 Corinthians 3:17 ESV)

That you may charge some to teach no other doctrine.

Paul gets right down to business with this letter. Don't give heed to fables and endless genealogies.

The first thing he charges Timothy to do, is to stand against other doctrines

No other Doctrine

There is a lot of false or wrong doctrines floating around today.

No Fables

We must be on the look out for people who make things up.

Stories about life changing powers of walking a labyrinth for one thing. There are some things that simply do nothing for the building up of a church.

We are prone to fall into those things that are not for edification— which is faith — simple trust in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Some men love to argue — they are contentious

I think that it was Vance Havner that once said that a bulldog could take a skunk any day of the week but some things just aren't worth it.

You can always find someone who loves to argue and pick over some small doctrine.

They are like dogs chewing on bones… while they enjoy it there is little nourishment in it.

How to Believe
John 4:43-54
When truth is given, it then becomes the responsibility of the one who receives it. That responsibility is gauged by your reaction to the truth. In other words, if you don’t like anything about the teaching of Christ and if you choose to reject it all, you will never be able to say, “Nobody told me.” So, if you don’t want to hear the truth, stop reading right here.

If you are a skeptic or have ever been one, then, chances are, you have had the experience of going to a Christian, asking about his or her faith, only to receive a “You just believe, that’s all” in response.
I don’t know about you, but I remember feeling frustrated by that. To tell a pagan simply to believe is silly!
Jesus had a lot of amazing things to say about belief. He said we could move mountains and that, with Him,nothing would be impossible. But the problem is—How to believe. What is the process of belief?

Belief is born in need (John 4:47). If you have no need to believe, then you will not believe. In the text, this father had a son who was dying. That is need. Perhaps it began when his little boy had a sore throat. He didn’t get over it; it only got worse. Th e boy’s fever rose, death drew near and out of fear, panic and need,his father went to Jesus. When your kid is sick, you will do anything. This was a man of power and influence, used to giving favors, not asking for them. He had a need and without that need, the man would never have believed.The difference between strong faith and weak faith is need. The paradox: the strongest Christian is the weakest Christian (2 Corinthians 12:9). God is in the business of putting His children in holes so deep that they can’t get out without His help.What is your need right now? Whatever it is, God is going to teach you how to believe.

Belief is nurtured in Christ (John 4:47). Whether or not belief grows depends on the object of your belief.When God digs your hole, make sure you reach out to the proper “helper-outer.”
The fact is, belief, unless vested in the proper object of belief, will die. Are you hurting? Go to God. That is how you nurture belief.In John 14:12, Jesus teaches that, “He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.” Jesus does not say that “He who believes in the power of positive thinking (in the power of the church, in the power of himself, in the strength of theology) . . .” Belief will not grow unless the object of that belief is proper—Jesus Christ Himself.

Belief grows in faith (John 4:50). Jesus said to the father, “Go your way; your son lives.” If it were me, I would have said to Jesus, “Would you do me a favor and go down to Capernaum with me? If I get there and my son isn’t well, then I will have to come all the way back to Cana and my son might die in the meantime.” That isn’t what happened. The man accepted what Jesus said as reality . . . even when he didn’t know the reality for himself at that moment.You say you believe? How much are you willing to bet on that belief? Your money, your life, your relationships, your family? Without risk, there can be no belief.

In John 5, When Jesus told the man who had been sick for a lot of years, “Take up your bed and walk,” the man could have said, “Are you out of your mind? I can’t walk!” If the man had said that, he would have remained a cripple.Acts 3 describes the time Peter and John went to the temple and saw a lame beggar. Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold, but what I’ve got, I’ll give you. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, get up and walk.” What if the beggar had said, “No, that’s impossible! I can’t walk.” If he had said that, he would have stayed at the temple gate,begging until the day he died.

When I was just out far enough on the limb to hesitantly believe, I was afraid to talk to people about it.
Someone might challenge my faith and I was afraid to risk. One of the great discoveries of my life was that faith in Christ is true. It holds water.Within the context of your faith, God is asking you to risk. Maybe it is money, maybe it is a relationship,maybe it is in witnessing, maybe it is in a moral error. Belief grows in proportion to faith. And another word for faith is risk.

Belief is matured in fact (John 4:51). The mature believer is the one who has seen God act in direct and specific ways and whose faith cannot ever be shaken because it is built on fact. How do you get there? You have to have a need; you have to risk; you have to invest in a proper object and then, God acts in ways that will simply leave you speechless.I don’t want you to miss one of the most exciting things about this text: “ . . .And he himself believed, and his whole household” (John 4:53). Not only was the son healed, but the father, the mother, the siblings and the servants were also healed.Paul got it right: “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think,according to the power that works in us” (Ephesians 3:20). A mature Christian is not the Christian who says, “Lord,zap me with faith and belief, so that I can move mountains.” The mature Christian is the one who has gone through the process of need, Christ-centered help, faith and risk . . . and has seen God literally stagger that Christian with His faithfulness.
Maturity never comes in shallow water. I will never forget the day, when I was a little boy, my father let me go in water over my head. I then had the absolutely thrilling experience or realization that I was in deep water and I was swimming! I laughed in excitement and my father laughed, too. In the area of faith, the Heavenly Father laughs for the same reason.

Steve Brown

There going to be another internet storm soon…and J.I. Packer is going to once again be taken to task.

John Armstrong has written a new book on the church and unity…and Packer wrote the forward.

The book is called "Your Church Is Too Small".

I haven't read the book, but Packer's words are ones that I have been struggling to express here…words that I believe God has put in his mouth.

"My friend John Armstrong is a church leader who has traveled the distance from the separatist, sectarian fixity of fundamentalism to embrace the kingdom-centered vision of the church and the call issued by a number of Bible-based theologians and missiologists during the past half century.

What vision is this? It is the one that views the visible church as a single worldwide, Spirit-sustained community within which ongoing doctrinal and denominational divisions, though important, are secondary rather than primary. In this vision, the primary thing is the missional-ecumenical vocation and trajectory crystallized for us by our Lord Jesus Christ in his teaching and prayer and illustrated in a normative way by the Acts narrative and much of the reasoning of the apostolic letters.

Evangelicals have always urged that the church of God is already one in Christ but have typically related this fact only to the invisible church (that is, the church as God alone sees it).  All too often, they have settled for division in the visible church (the church on earth, as we see it) as at least tolerable and at best healthy. The vision Armstrong offers, however, perceives by exegesis that the unity of Christians, which Jesus prayed that the world might see, is neither unanimity nor uniformity nor union (as he neatly puts it) but loving cooperation in life and mission, starting from wherever we are at the moment and fertilized and energized by the creedal and devotional wisdom of the past. Thus the internal unity of togetherness in Christ may become a credibility factor in the church’s outreach, just as Jesus in John 17 prayed that it would.

Embracing this vision will mean that our ongoing inter- and intra-church debates will look, and feel, less like trench warfare, in which both sides are firmly dug in to defend the territory that each sees as its heritage, and more like emigrants’ discussions on shipboard that are colored by the awareness that soon they will be confronted by new tasks in an environment not identical with what they knew before. There they will all need to pull together in every way they can. The church in every generation voyages through historical developments and cultural changes, against the background of which new angles emerge on old debates and truths may need to be reformulated in order to remain truly the same as they were. Not to recognize this is a defect of vision on our part.

This perception, not surprisingly perhaps, disturbs persons brought up to believe that Bible-based doctrinal faithfulness counts supremely (yes, indeed, right so far), and that some form of ahistorical fundamentalist fixity was, is, and always will be the doctrinal last word. John Armstrong knows; he has been there.  His corrected and corrective vision generates deep suspicion and an onslaught against its proponents as confused compromisers.  Both he and I have learned this by direct experience. Some years ago, in One Lord, One Faith, Rex Koivisto made many of John Armstrong’s points and was effectively ignored. I hope this book will not be ignored but will have the influence it deserves. Aspects of North America’s future—aspects, indeed, of the honor and glory of Christ in this century—may well depend on whether or not it does."

— J. I. Packer, Advent 2009

The part I italicized is exactly my vision for what I want to happen here and in my church and my community.

Before we are buried by shouts about compromise and the coming one world religion…what do you think of Packers vision statement?

What did you teach?

We continue in the Heidelberg Catechism;

Question 110. What does God forbid in the eighth commandment?

Answer: God forbids not only those thefts, (a) and robberies, (b) which are punishable by the magistrate; but he comprehends under the name of theft all wicked tricks and devices, whereby we design to appropriate to ourselves the goods which belong to our neighbour: (c) whether it be by force, or under the appearance of right, as by unjust weights, ells, measures, fraudulent merchandise, (d) false coins, usury, (e) or by any other way forbidden by God; as also all covetousness, (f) all abuse and waste of his gifts. (g)

(a) 1 Cor.6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (b) 1 Cor.5:10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world. Isa.33:1 Woe to thee that spoilest, and thou wast not spoiled; and dealest treacherously, and they dealt not treacherously with thee! when thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shalt be spoiled; and when thou shalt make an end to deal treacherously, they shall deal treacherously with thee. (c) Luke 3:14 And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages. 1 Thess.4:6 That no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter: because that the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also have forewarned you and testified. (d) Prov.11:1 A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight. Prov.16:11 A just weight and balance are the LORD'S: all the weights of the bag are his work. Ezek.45:9 Thus saith the Lord GOD; Let it suffice you, O princes of Israel: remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord GOD. Ezek.45:10 Ye shall have just balances, and a just ephah, and a just bath. Ezek.45:11 The ephah and the bath shall be of one measure, that the bath may contain the tenth part of an homer, and the ephah the tenth part of an homer: the measure thereof shall be after the homer. Ezek.45:12 And the shekel shall be twenty gerahs: twenty shekels, five and twenty shekels, fifteen shekels, shall be your maneh. Deut.25:13 Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. Deut.25:14 Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. Deut.25:15 But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Deut.25:16 For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God. (e) Ps.15:5 He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. (f) 1 Cor.6:10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (g) Prov.23:20 Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: Prov.23:21 For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. Prov.21:20 There is treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise; but a foolish man spendeth it up.

Question 111. But what does God require in this commandment?

Answer: That I promote the advantage of my neighbour in every instance I can or may; and deal with him as I desire to be dealt with by others: (a) further also that I faithfully labour, so that I may be able to relieve the needy. (b)

(a) Matt.7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. (b) Eph.4:28 Let him that stole steal no more: but rather let him labour, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.

It's been a rule of thumb here on the blog that if you wanted to start a poop storm instantly all you have to do is say something negative about Chuck Smith.

That also starts people claiming that CC is a personality cult…yada, yada, yada.

When I was in Geneva I never expected to find among the Reformed (who are the loudest in decrying personality driven churches)…the exact same phenomena.

The conference was about John Calvin, but outside the lectures the name most often on peoples lips wasn't Calvin's it was… "The Doctor".

Martyn Lloyd Jones.

If the Reformed believed in "saints" there would have been icons of him everywhere.

By the time I left Geneva I knew what "the Doctor" (said in hushed tones with eyes to the ground) believed about almost everything, including things that happened after "the Doctor" had passed into glory.

Carl Trueman has drawn the ire of some big name folks by offering a gentle criticism of Jones and in response he said something that can be applied in a lot of places today.

"In sum, the reaction of Mr. Murray to my review typifies the problem surrounding the legacy of MLJ: those who knew him best have signally failed to engage critically with his life and thought, preferring simply to burnish the edifice and deride all who do not buy the party line.  The result is that, instead of a genuine assessment of his strengths and weaknesses which might have been of real value to the contemporary church, what we have is a personality cult, supported by a body of hagiography, and maintained by a defensive mentality, where all critics are dismissed as unworthy slanderers and mediocre historians."  

Sound familiar?

We are zealous in defending our idols, not so much in defending the One who gave them to us.

In history, just as in life… we learn as much from our mistakes and failures as we do from success.

People with shiny plastic heroes tend to worship a shiny, plastic, Jesus.

Jesus was perfect, the rest of us are victims of the fall.

We need to worship Him alone and love each other and our heroes with the understanding that we all fail as often as we succeed in living like Him.

Just don't say anything negative about Packer or I'll kick your …