KTLG - Chapter 22
Knowing the Living God • Sermon • Submitted
0 ratings
· 2 viewsNotes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Our Response to the Truthfulness of God
Our Response to the Truthfulness of God
Our God is the god of truth; and all of His ways, works, and words are within the realm of truth.
Number One Headline - WE SHOULD STUDY THE WORD OF TRUTH
Number One Headline - WE SHOULD STUDY THE WORD OF TRUTH
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
Personally I like the way the KJV (the 1769) puts it a little better:
King James Version Chapter 2
15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
We as the church of God are called to do what?
We are to called to rightly divide the Word of truth.
I want to go a bit on a tangent here and I need some feedback from you guys. I am going to deal with two words and I want some feedback on their meanings.
Eisegesis
Eisegesis
What does this word mean?
Eisegesis is the thought process by which when we have an idea or a point of theology and we go to the Scriptures to support a particular view.
There is two types of preaching. I like to bring them into perspective.
Topical
Expositional
what are the differences in these two?
In topical a preacher has an agenda of something he holds to and he presents this topic and then he grabs scripture from all over the Bible to support his supposition.
Expositional is where a text is approached with no prior inclination in a desire to reap and to grasp that particular texts meaning. Not to impose, but to expose.
Expositional is where a text is approached with no prior inclination in a desire to reap and to grasp that particular texts meaning. Not to impose, but to expose, I.E. Expositional.
So the opposite term to Eisegesis is Exegesis.
To be Exegetical is to leave the text in its form and in an effort to grasp the truth that is contained within it.
This is to rightly divide the Word of truth.
We are not to add to the Word.
We are not to add our own idealogical presuppositions to the text at hand but are to rather grab the heart of that text and glean from its intended point.
We need to constantly be rightly dividing that which we study, not seeking to add our own agenda to what is intended.
We have to consistently study and glean from the text at hand as we seek to conform to it.
How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor stand in the path of sinners,
Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water,
Which yields its fruit in its season
And its leaf does not wither;
And in whatever he does, he prospers.
When we see the word Blessed we need to see that to be “Blessed” is to enjoy well-being in every part of life.
So, the man who stays away from wickedness is Blessed.
The righteous are to be described by what He avoids, what he does not listen to.
The verbs “walks”, “stands” and “sits” are typical marks of a downward progression.
We can walk away from God and not seek Him
We can stand in defiance against God in an effort to “stake our claim”
I wonder how many of us, even into our adolescence would adamantly oppose our authority in an effort to rebel against their authority.
Even as adults, we tend to want to fight back when we are told that we are in the wrong.
How many times do we preach that we were doing the right thing and often times we come up with statements that supposedly defend our position.
We are all natural liars.
Outside of the endearing work of the Holy Spirit we cannot fathom truth.
Truth is a word that we can merely seek out.
Absolute truth is what comes from the exposing of Holy Scripture.
We struggle in giving it that rite as we stammer and come up with our own form of justification.
The gospel isnt ala carte’, it resounds with conviction that primarily deals with our hearts.
The heart of flesh is something that we desire, one that realizes how much we need grace.
Outside of the inner working of the Holy Spirit we cannot grasp the weight of our own sin.
Truth is the absence of our opinion on a matter.
God doesnt ask us whether or not He is just.
He doesnt ask whether a murderer needs a pardon.
He is the epitome of truth.
We need to be faithfully attentive to that and we need to leave our own opinions at the door.
Because truth is something that we can only see in Christ, we need to cling to it and display a heart that reveres it and pray that we would steadily progress towards that knowledge.
We have no knowledge outside of that which we have been taught.
How are we to face the law of the Lord?
This can seem daunting and I think its a subject that we spend far too little time regarding.
We need to understand that we have to see the law as the impending requirement for our redemption.
Outside of the fulfillment of this law we would utterly never attain or be able to remotely grasp the weight that it can put on our soldiers.
The jews today are bound by the law according to their regimented forms of religiousity but in fact even they have changed them in an effort to make their lives somewhat live-able.
By in large they no longer sacrifice the lamb, and they state that they dont have to as long as the temple is not in service.
They were told the truth and yet they rejected it because, and I dont want to sound harsh here but they were not the elect.
Now, Im not stating that no jew will inherit the mercy of the creator, but what I am saying is that apart from the mercy of the Father and the saving grace of the Son they will not be able to experience the work of the Holy Spirit.
Truth is demanded by God and through His perfectly just nature.
We need to continually see the cross and be reminded that our redeemer hung on it in a full extension of the mercy towards us.
What does God promise to us who give the proper place to His Word in our lives?
He promises that we will prosper.
I think we often get off on the wrong foot when we hear that word but we need to understand that prosperity is not necessarily the padding of our financial status but it is that our lives are going to be marked by the grace and mercy of Christ.
For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.
Ezra was a diligent hearer and doer of the Word, and thirdly he sought to teach others to do as He did.
We need to know the law and understand that a true believer’s heart will be reconciled through repentance and to hang to Jesus as we become partakers at the table of the sacramental elements.
How are we to practice the law in the New Testament age?
Well for starters we need to be consumed in study with the Word of God.
If we are not willing to put in the work and the time it takes to study then how are we to partake of the elements and the benefits that come with saving grace.
Im not talking about reaping benefits due to the work.
We are to focus our hearts in a state of true reverence for all that has been done on behalf of us.
Not as followers of the law so that we may partake but seeking forgiveness because we know we cannot achieve redemption in our own strength.
We cannot provide conviction to others.
We can scare and woefully worry others into making a statement.
The evidence of our lives is the evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit.
We have to seek and be willing to study God’s Word and then not merely keep it locked up, but demonstrate this effect to those around us, spiritually and physically.
It is our responsibility as believers to not only be students now, but also we are to be teachers later.
When you are given a gift it can be multiplied to help others.
Teaching can sound daunting when you look at the nature that we possess, but if we are waiting on a day in which we are “ready” then actually that moment is the day when we die and we enter into the glorification state.
We need to find someone, maybe a peer or a friend. Someone who seems possibly in the same position as we are, or perhaps were at one time.
Go and latch on to them and both parties will reap the benefits of it.
We do not need to look around at others and weigh their knowledge and see if we match up to their character.
We need to look to the cross and the Christ who lost His life on it.
We should pray to understand God’s Truth
I was talking with an older gentleman earlier this week and we were talking about reading and studying doctrine and I offered up something that I am going to study in the very near future and told him about it and I was asking him about what books he was reading right now and what doctrines was he working through and he informed me that he never really got too deep into studying things that were seemingly over his head.
I sought to encourage him and in a effort to not overwhelm him I told him to start with something simple and suggested for him to study and learn the meaning of the term “Lordship Salvation” and study it until he could define it to anyone he met.
He said he would and I would encourage any and all to do the same.
And then later, find someone else to pass that baton on to.
We are given knowledge by the Word, and we have a responsibility to point others to that same knowledge.
Make me know Your ways, O Lord;
Teach me Your paths.
Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
For You are the God of my salvation;
For You I wait all the day.
Psalm 25:4-5
The path is the conduit
The conduit is the means.
Understanding is something that occurs in a moment but often times has to be put together over time.
We want to have everything now and not have to wait.
You cant plop your Bible open and understand all that it says, but rather we have to study, we have to consult sources.
We need to grasp the weight of that mindset that we can only understand what God desires for us to understand, but not only that, He desires for us to be students of His word and to be partakers of what it says.
Vindicate me, O God, and plead my case against an ungodly nation;
O deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!
For You are the God of my strength; why have You rejected me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?
O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your dwelling places.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God my exceeding joy;
And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.
Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God.
pop quiz: What was the name of God’s Holy Hill?
Zion
What was on Mt. Zion?
the temple.
-I love asking people questions they know the answer to just dont know how much they want to!
What is David’s petition here?
“Send me your light, and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to Zion and in your temple.”
The desire to go to church has many different ways.
Some go to church to be social.
Some are drug to church.
Some are attempting to “do the right thing”
But why should we go to church?
To receive the admonishment of the word and to tell God that He is who He is.
The way I phrased that may sound a bit odd.
but the fact of the matter is this.
God is truth, His word is truth.
we need to grasp that as many times as we can.
Prayer.
What is prayer? someone stab it out.
What are we doing when we pray?
Prayer is man, telling the Almighty Creator that He is God. And we are not.
It should humble us, we should approach that with trembling.
Humble ourselves and seek Christ.
Lord, give us the direction, Lord give us your truth, and take us to Your House, which is on your Mountain.
Teach me Your way, O Lord;
I will walk in Your truth;
Unite my heart to fear Your name.
You ever read a verse and your like, “That’s my verse”?
I desire for this one to be burnt forever in my mind.
We should be zealous for God’s way and then we should stand by Him
Unite my heart to fear Your name.
May I know that fear, may every ounce of who I am know and fear the creator of all things.
Fear and trembling.
He knows every sin, every thought, he is Omniscient.
May we never forget this.
May our hearts be united and totally set on God.
We should Obey God’s Truth
Washer says here “Not only should we study the Scriptures and pray so that we might know God’s truth, but we must also obey or walk in God’s truth and rejoice when others do the same.
I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment to do from the Father.
What’s missing today in the modern evangelical church?
Fathers and mothers that fail to demonstrate family worship in their homes.
Mothers that lead their
This should be happening every night, whether there are children or not.
Family worship can be a one, two or 20 person event.
Be faithful, so that they will know what faithfulness is.
You dont show a counterfeit dollar to demonstrate what is fake.
You learn what is right and then you know what is wrong.
Not only are we to e partakers of family worship but we are also to live throughout the day walking in God’s truth.
For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth.
I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.
When my three children die, I desire that their hearts will be filled with the truth that is Christ and they will be walking in this immeasurable joy.
Are we ordering our lives according to God’s truth.
but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation.
And then we see the danger.
Its so natural to be caught up in the world and to seek after that which is unrighteous.
Are we pu
Its easy to sin
Its easy to be selfish
Why steal when we can earn?
Seeking our selfish desires comes so naturally that it really is scary.
Negatively: the unrighteous do not Obey the Truth.
Positively: the unrighteous do Obey Unrighteousness.
A true believer has marks, marks of ownership. Whether in their home or their speech.
God places a desire that we would otherwise not contain.
A desire to be obedient.
Children are not born obedient.
We are not born obedient.
Even the best of us have disobedience burning to come out.
Its hard to rid ourselves of our disobedience but the Holy Spirit is faithful to train us to be sensitive towards our rebellious nature.
Psalm 51:6
Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being,
And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.
For us to have truth in our innermost being it must be imputed to us, hence Lordship Salvation.
I mentioned this term a few minutes ago
Lordship Salvation is that Christ decided all that He would save before the foundations of the world were laid.
Those who are called according to His purpose will be saved.
And part of this process is that He would impute truth into us.
As we progress through this life known as sanctification there is much imputed to us who follow after Christ.
Truthfulness that is imputed to the part of us that is hidden.
The part that no one sees, those who have Christ will gain wisdom.
Since this inner part of us experiences Christ’s truth, it will begin to come through our lives and our legacy will be marked by the stamp of this evidence of the Holy Spirit.
For us to obey the law outside of the work of the Holy Spirit is meaningless and will not provide access to the mercy of the Father.
The evidence that is seen by others should be indicative of an internal work that is manifest through the flesh.
Good works are never to be merited as sanctimonius efforts that provide forgiveness.
We do good works because of that which has changed us.
“But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
“God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”
The state of glorification is going to be one in which we are not constantly at war with our flesh and pre-occupied by our wants and desires.
But the fulfillment of the Holy Spirit in us will be representative of the culmination of our justification and our sanctification.
This is going to be an amazing moment when we are no longer held down by our flesh and weighing our options with sin and its consequences.
There is a setting apart that has begun now and Christ is working it out for the moment of true, selfless worship in which we are not hindered by the burdens of this world.
We wont be worrying about that which lurks at us tomorrow, or worried about the mistakes that we made yesterday.
We will be fully enraptured by the love that sustains us now.
We will see the nail scarred hands that held his body to the cross in epic pain and abandonment from His Father as He fulfilled the promise of Isaiah.
No man has ever held that level of pressure as Christ did in that moment.
Another element that Paul Washer has noted here that I would like to hit for a minute is that the term “in spirit” has two possible implications:
1.we must worship God sincerely and profoundly
2.we must worship God in the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. The reference to worshiping God “in truth” also has two possible implications:
1.we must worhsip God truthfully, sincerely, and with integrity;
2. we must worship God according to the truth—that is, according to the will of God revealed in the Scriptures.
Last segment we are going to hit is how we should share God’s truth with others.
I have proclaimed glad tidings of righteousness in the great congregation;
Behold, I will not restrain my lips,
O Lord, You know.
I have not hidden Your righteousness within my heart;
I have spoken of Your faithfulness and Your salvation;
I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great congregation.
Psalm 40
those who are in Christ are going to have the result of spewing out what is inside of them.
we are to represent Christ in our speech, in our actions, whether they are private or public.
When I was a kid my mom would drag us to countless antique stores which I can assure you there is no place more miserable for a kid to go than an antique store.
She’d load us 4 kids up and mind you my Dad had a precedent set in our home when I was a child.
He was likened to a Drill Instructor that featured all of the character traits with the exception of he didnt use swear words.
My mom was naturally a softy but she rarely let my dad down on his carefully dicated rules and regulations.
When we would go to the antique stores we’d file out of our Ford Econoline Van and stand next to it with our backs and hands touching the side of the van.
Then we would receive the instructions for the visit.
This wasnt dont flippantly or simply haphazardly.
This was intentional.
We were asked, “Who do you represent?”
We had a list of responses and good things to say.
We also were reminded that we could look but never to touch absolutely anything in that store.
I can honestly say that I do not believe any of us ever touched anything.
I was of the impression that there would be quite an impression in my backside if I even breathed on some blue-willow plate that was 100 years old.
I say this story to demonstrate that there was a fear that was stilled in our hearts out of respect for the authority that God had in my life.
My parents loved the dicketts out of all four of us and I never, not one time doubted that.
But they instilled a healthy dose of discipline that was essential to my childhood.
We are to fear Christ because He has instilled this fear into us and we know who He is and we see Him working in and on our hearts.
We battle with our flesh because its like He is cleaning out our garage.
I literally have tens of thousands of dollars of tools and this isnt me bragging, its somewhat shameful on one hand. And I have to clean out my garage every so often because it gets to where you can hardly walk through it.
God is consistently cleaning our garage and sometimes it hurts to go through that process, but He is faithful to complete and work us towards Himself.
We are to not hide this work of Christ under a bushel, but we are to share it with others and always give the credit to His hand.
but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,
I think one of the hardest things for us to do as believers is to truly speak the truth in love.
It is so easy to do two things:
It is so easy for us to sweep sin under the rug and act like it is not there.
It is also easy for us to speak the truth but in a irrational way and a vindictive way.
We have to be courteous as we speak the truth in love.
Always speaking that which is right in a effort to restore that which the locust has eaten.
Love is a natural outflowing of the Holy Spirit that is not natural pre-Christ.
The world thinks they know what love is but it is so distorted now in society it is scary.
My parents were tough as nails on my because they had expectations of me and saw that what was comfortable in the moment was not the best thing for me.
But that building endurance and the ability to grasp the meaning of being steadfast was for more endearing than the immediate gratification I desired in the moment.
with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth,
Gentleness is a character trait that I have had to learn how to use.
I place a lot of my own experience with this trait in the things I have learned in being married.
Nakitta and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary this October and when we got married I struggled with keeping my tongue gentle.
I have by no means arrived at any level, but Christ has been gracious to me and allowed me to understand the benefits to being gentile.
We should always seek a resolution and not a severing.
Church discipline should be a marker by which this is displayed.
We should desire that those around us repent.
We should not enjoy seeing the demise of others.
Note here: The word “gentleness” comes from the GReek word prautes, which also denotes meekness, mildness, and forbearance. It is the very opposite of harshness and severity.