Questions and Answers, Part 5

Transcript

GRM 1198
09/23/2018
Questions & Answers, Part 5
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

I thought I’d take more time for questions this evening since last Sunday evening I spent more time with our study. I have some material and I’ve brought some questions but maybe I’ll open up, so maybe I’ll start. If you have a question, you’d like addressed let me give you the opportunity to do that first. If you don’t take advantage, you know me, I’ll use your time.

Gil a question regarding the Holy Spirit given believers that are mature, and we all have the same Spirit, so why different understandings?

Why are there various understandings? Why different understandings on similar issues? You know it’s sort of like the-- we were talking about the unity there should be in the body. Why do we have different understandings?

I guess, we’d have to come to the root and say our sin nature and the devil and somehow the simplicity of Scripture gets lost. That’s why we spend so much time on hermeneutics. Once we settle that the bible is the word of God and I realize that’s not settled for many people, but for us in our local church, we believe the bible is verbally inspired, but for that to be meaningful, we also have to interpret it correctly. That’s why we spend time on the principles of interpreting Scripture because to claim we believe the bible is fully inspired from God, but then we don’t interpret Scripture correctly, then we’ve mishandled Scripture.

There’s a little bit of the way some of this thinking develops, for example, we are premillennial. We believe that Christ will come (and we’re going to do this with Revelation 20) to earth to establish His kingdom on the earth, the Millennium being the thousand-year phase of that kingdom. For the first 300 hundred years or so of church history, basically the church was premillennial. There’s pretty general agreement on that.

And then there was a change, some things happened. Augustine stands out in particular and things happened at that time in history. For example, Constantine claimed to have become a Christian. He made Christianity the religion of the empire, so now we have merged Christianity and the political situation. Augustine started out as a premillennialist but then you begin to rethink, it looks like the kingdoms here. Look at this, the emperor says Christianity is the religion of the empire so then they redid their theology, so they could say the kingdom was in existence. We’ll say, that’s backwards.

Then we have amillennialism that God holds spread through the church. Everybody says oh, we’re in the kingdom. Were in the kingdom. It’s a spiritual kingdom, and then variations of that start. Well wait a minute. We should have just stayed with interpreting the Scripture literally, at face value. We look at what’s going on and then we come back and reinterpret the Scripture.

I talked to you along the way about neo-evangelicalism, the new evangelicalism that really takes root around the 1940s and then in the ,50s. It’s pervading the church today. What was new is we had what was called fundamentalism, and dispensational premillennialism and interpreting the Scripture literally and there is a future kingdom. We are not in the kingdom but then some very intelligent men said you know we need more scholarship. We need to be recognized as scholars in the world more broadly, and we need to be socially and politically involved, so we can change our society, and then we don’t want to be separatists, separating from people so we ought to be more open to different ideas so then they back up and reinterpret Scripture. Well if the kingdom is yet future and you’re just going to interpret the bible literally, you believe the kingdom was yet to come. Well we need a kingdom that’s present, so not amillennial but we want to--it comes from within.

Those who started this basically started out as dispensationalist, but once you have those three principals--now let’s reinterpret the bible so that we can do those. Well if we’re going to be scholars, we should go to schools like Harvard or go overseas to European schools, get degrees that are recognized in the scholarly world more broadly. If we’re going to get more socially and politically involved, it doesn’t help to say the kingdom’s future, so we should relook at our view of the kingdom, so they came up with the idea, “already not yet.” We are already in the kingdom but there’s more of it to come in the future, and course if we’re going to get a place at the table, and that’s the title of the biography of perhaps the leading neo-evangelical, George Eldon Ladd. We have to be not so separatist so, you know, you don’t have to agree with us theologically. We learn from each other so a lot of this happens, we decide what we want to be, then we come back and reinterpret the Scripture instead of putting our nose in the Scripture, staying with the basic principles of interpreting the Scripture, and there’s reasons for that because the bible interprets itself.

For example, all the prophecies of the Old Testament that have been fulfilled were fulfilled literally. There is agreement, the major hermeneutical books written by an amillennialist said that if you’re going to interpret prophecy literally, you have to be a premillennialist, but I don’t want to do that, so we don’t interpret prophecy literally, so there’s a subjectivity to it. Who says that you don’t interpret literally? But that’s how it gets going and from within it builds momentum. Today young people grow up. They want to be socially and politically involved, so they’re less comfortable in a church not socially and politically involved. I want to make a difference with my life. I want to be out there influencing the social situation, changing life for the poor, getting involved in politics. Well then, I don’t want to go to a church that interprets the bible literally and says the kingdom’s future and we’re here to present the gospel, so there is an erosion that goes on. We decide what we want, then we try to find a version or a variety of Scripture that fits us, so I think a lot of it goes like that.

Then you add the devil’s involved in undermining the Scriptures. If you want to be intellectually creditable, you can’t believe in the creation account of the opening chapters of Genesis, so if I want to get accepted, teach and be a scientist, I can’t be a creationist, so we come up with theistic evolution. Now we can put it together, but then I have to play down the theistic side of evolution. Don’t make that too big a deal so all these things, the subjectivity, the Scripture in subtle ways is no longer the absolute authority, and part of it happens by going out into the world and exposing ourselves to the world’s philosophy. Fuller Seminary is usually the great example of that because that’s where neo-evangelicalism started. Charles Fuller, “Old Fashioned Revival Hour.” He was very popular, raised lots of money and started Fuller Seminary. Dispensational, but his son went to Princeton and its neo-orthodoxy. Then he went over and studied under Karl Barth, the Swiss theologian. Then he comes back no longer believing in the full inspiration of the bible. Then some of those on the faculty agreed.

You know we want to be scholars in the scholarly world. Science, there are errors in the bible, so we don’t have to believe in the full inspiration of the Scripture. Well we’re going to do that, we probably don’t want to interpret the bible literally either, so we’d better change the premillennialism of the Scripture or the erosion goes on. So yeah, why are there, if we are submitting to the Spirit and the bible’s the authority, do we ever expect that the scholarly world of unbelievers is going to recognize and approve us?

It’s not a matter of scholarship. I’ve shared with you when I was in seminary a hundred years ago, A. E. Wilder-Smith, a scientist from Europe says, “I have three earned Doctor’s degrees from three different countries in Europe, and I cannot get a job teaching on the continent because I’m a creationist.” It’s closed, so if you want to be there, you have to make adjustments in your theology. Thankfully he didn’t, so if we wonder—you know the pressure comes on us in a church because the more evangelical churches that become more broad.

Why is Indian Hills so narrow? Why are we such separatists? Why aren’t we out there helping people and doing good deeds and all that and don’t we want to get involved politically, and get the right people in office and all this? People forget there’s a theological foundation to this, and so pretty soon, we may not change our theology in the doctrinal statement, but we change it in our practice. Why would we do that? Well the world expects it, they look down on us because we don’t. Even other evangelical churches and I’m not pointing it out, I’m just making a kind of example in any city. The more the evangelical church goes that way, the more isolated the church. That is going to stick with what the Scripture says. Oh, they’re narrow. They cut themselves off. When I was at Fuller back in the ‘70s for a short time, I visited with students. I was in a graduate program and some of the student’s there; they came from all kind of denominations. You know what they said, “Well we’ll go back to our denominations and influence them from within.”

It doesn’t work that way, so you have to make adjustments and compromises to be accepted in that liberal denomination and pretty soon, you’ve become like that liberal denomination. We can’t compromise the truth. It seems like that’s the way it happened. You know, read Marsden’s “Reforming Fundamentalism.” Some of you are in book studies together. Marsden is no friend of dispensationalism. He is not a dispensationalist. He’s not a fundamentalist but he’s an historian and he has written a very fine book, a number of you have read. He gives the history of what happened with Fuller Seminary, how neo-evangelism came in, how that subtle undermining of the authority of Scripture took place, and within a relatively short time those committed to the full inspiration of Scripture and its literal interpretation were pushed out of Fuller. It’s just the process it goes on, it’s the battle we have now. We hold our theology loosely.

We have to hold it tightly, and that means let’s get down and wrestle with the Scripture. What does it say, how should it be interpreted? The Scriptures are our authority. We can’t become involved in the social issues of the day the political issues of the day, but if you’re in the kingdom now you should be. Carl F. H. Henry wrote a book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. I read it I don’t have an uneasy conscience. This book was written a number of years ago, but it became popular. Why? We’re not involved socially, that’s what’s wrong with fundamentalism. Primarily the premillennial dispensational, you know, narrow view of Scripture. We ought to have a view of the kingdom that gets us out into the world, and we see we’re kingdom people. Well, if you’re in the kingdom there are social dimensions to the kingdom.

There are political dimensions so there’s a theological foundation. Then you have confusion. In the 1980s Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority. He claimed to be a dispensationalist. He wrote a book on being a fundamentalist but in practice, he was functioning like a non-dispensationalist. The Moral Majority, you see what happens in the world. Quickly, sin becomes acceptable and they all bail in. Where’s that moral majority? It was a denial of the depravity of the human heart. You get involved politically, we’re behind this candidate we’re doing this. Now what about your theology? Well don’t let that interfere with your practice. Then you become well known, you’re being interviewed on TV. It seems like the phycologist out of Colorado, you know if you don’t do this, Christians won’t vote for you. We’re making a difference, we’re sending out all this. We’re not in the kingdom. We know where it’s going.

People are negative about dispensationalists. You’re so negative. You think the world is going to get worse and not better. You think we can’t make a change. You can’t, the problem is a heart problem. I mean that’s it isn’t it? Don’t we believe that? Don’t we believe the gospel must change man from the inside? Then the outside changes. Well you get out there and we’re going to get involved in social programs and political programs, and the world will say, “There’s a church that is doing what I think they should do.” A church ought to be doing what God says they must do, not what other people think they should do.

Well that’s a short answer. Glad I could get that off my chest. We’ll talk more about neo-evangelicalism and neo-orthodoxy, which is different than neo-evangelicalism, but when Daniel Fuller went and studied under Karl Barth he, come back imbibed with neo-orthodoxy. I may say something about that but anybody else have a question you’d like me to answer before I ramble on.

Let me go back to something. I appreciate some of you bringing material. I don’t want you to think I’m on a crusade about John Piper but a number of you are exposed to John Piper so when I comment about him, you draw my attention to material or you’re aware of things that I should be aware of, I read a quote from John Piper. I read part of it. I don’t remember what parts of it but here’s what John Piper says from his website.

“Let me tell you about a most wonderful experience I had early Monday morning, March 19, 2007, a little after six o’clock. God actually spoke to me. There is no doubt it was God. I heard the words in my head just as clearly as when a memory of conversation passes across your consciousness. The words were in English, but they had about them an absolutely self-authenticating ring of truth. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God still speaks today.” And I know that God speaks in His word, this is His word, but he knows it because God spoke to him on March 19, 2007. You see we’ve moved it now to a subjective, experience. That’s how I know God still speaks today so he talks about how he got up, and I read some of this. He had gotten up early and “I thought and thought things over.”

God said, “Come and see what I have done. There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that these were the very words of God. In this very moment, at this very place in the twenty-first century, 2007, God was speaking to me with absolute authority and self-evidencing reality. He had something to say to me. When God draws near, hurry ceases. Time slows down. I wondered what He meant “come and see.” Would He take me somewhere, like He did Paul into heaven to see what can’t be spoken? Did “see,” mean that I would have a vision of something. I’m not sure how much time elapsed between God’s initial word, “Come and see what I have done” and his next words. It doesn’t matter. I was being enveloped in the love of his personal communication. The God of the universe was speaking to me.

Then He said, as clearly as any words have ever come into my mind, “I am awesome in my deeds toward the children of man.” My heart leaped up, Yes, Lord! You are awesome in Your deeds. Yes, to all men whether they see or not. Yes! The words came again. Just as clear as before, but increasingly specific and he goes on quoting Scripture here. I turned the sea into dry land, and so on. There settled over me, I’m not reading you know I’m jumping for time. There settled over me a wonderful reverence. A palpable peace came down. This was a holy moment and a holy corner of the world in northern Minnesota. God Almighty had come down and was giving me the stillness, and the openness and the willingness to hear his voice. As I marveled at his power to dry the sea and the river, He spoke again, “I keep watch over the nations.”

This was breathtaking. It was very serious. It was almost a rebuke. I sat staring at nothing. My mind was full of the global glory of God. He had said this to me. It was not just that He had said it. Yes, that is glorious. But He had said this to me. The very words of God were in my head. They were in my head as much as the words that I am writing at this moment are in my head. They were heard as clearly, as if this moment I recalled that my wife said, “Come down for supper whenever you are ready.” I know those are the words of my wife. And I know these are the words of God. Think of it. Marvel at this. Stand in awe. The God who keeps watch over the nations--goes on--this God still speaks in the twenty-first century. I heard His very words. He spoke personally to me. What effect did this have on me? It filled me with a fresh sense of God’s reality. It assured me more deeply that he acts in history and in our time. It strengthens my faith that He is for me cares about me, will use his global power to watch over me. Why else would He come and tell me these things?

You note there is a repeated emphasis. This was God personally coming and speaking personally to him. “It has increased my love for the Bible as God’s very word, because it was through the Bible that I heard these divine words, through the Bible, I have experiences like this every day.” My problem here and I appreciate my attention was drawn to the article, so I could read the last part of the article. I didn’t have that at the time the last time I talked. John Piper delights in doing this kind of thing. He takes something, and you know he’s weirdly way out here like his Christian hedonism and then he brings back and tries to give it a twist, so it looks like a really, spiritual insight and it’s not just what you said. I’m never sure where he is.

This sounds like neo-orthodoxy. His great hero the one from whom he learned hermeneutics is Daniel Fuller. In another instance, he lists those who have influenced him so greatly and he learned hermeneutics from Daniel Fuller at Fuller Seminary. The problem is Daniel Fuller got hermeneutics from Princeton Seminary, which was neo-orthodox, and then Daniel Fuller went and got it from the horse’s mouth, Karl Barth, the father of neo-orthodoxy, often called “barthism.” Karl Barth, the Swiss reform theologian. Wait a minute! Something is wrong because Barth taught the bible is a witness to God’s revelation but it’s not itself the revelation? So, we have existentialism, but when it speaks to you, it becomes the word of God? This sounds an awful lot like this.

I mean I believe it’s the word of God when I read a portion and it doesn’t impact me emotionally or lift me to the heights. It’s still the word of God. It’s still the very word of God. It’s still rich and wonderful. It is not, oh, this morning God came to me. There’s a certain kind of spiritual, arrogance in this and you begin to read this, and you think I would like experiences like John Piper’s having.

He goes on to try to further clarify it, and he, you know, but he’s pulling you back, now it’s the word of God speaking but you note it’s not just the word of God speaking, because the word of God is speaking in every word it says. And he would agree with that and yet he turns it around and as though there’s something—he’s got the date and the time fixed because this is just not reading your bible. Just not being impressed with the truth of the bible and we’ve all been through that where the bible just--you’ve been in this passage. It’s just so rich and full. This is God coming down in a personal way at this date and this time, and the result of that I have greater confidence in the bible. That’s a subjective experience, existential experience.

Now he talks about misplaced so he gives an example of a Christian professor who wrote an article. This is why I found the article and he mentions it. A man writes about his conversation with God in this magazine or a paper. “I found it sad, about what he wrote, it was written by an anonymous professor at a “well-known Christian university,” it tells of his experience of hearing God. What God said was that he must give all his royalties from a new book toward the tuition of a needy student. What makes me sad about the article is not that it isn’t true, or didn’t happen. What’s sad is that it really gives the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is wonderful and faith deepening, so you see this is Piper, and he gives this a twist. The problem with this man is not that God spoke to him, because maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. I’m not saying it’s not true, but he didn’t use the words of Scripture.

Now wait a minute, you have made the words of Scripture subjective because it’s when God comes and speaks to you in the words of Scripture in this special way that He lifted you up out of yourself almost and He’s there talking to you personally. You know all Scripture is inspired and is profitable but it’s not God directly speaking to you. You know we used to joke in seminary you know about being careful, God’s not addressing everything to you directly. That’s why the joke used to be Judas went out and hanged himself. “Go thou and do likewise.” Go thou and do likewise and I meditated on that. Go thou and you know you can bring yourself into emotion, mystical people do it all the time, and supposedly they’re transported to a different level and this is the idea I get from Piper. And oh, this man makes me so sad because he claims God spoke to him, but He wasn’t using the words of Scripture but charismatic. You listen to these radical charismatics, they’ll quote Scripture all the time.

Here’s what God said to me and they’ll quote Scripture. Well, I say that Scripture wasn’t directly addressed to you in the way you’re using it. You can learn from it but it’s like this was my special, experience. I grieve at what is being communicated here. I grieve at what is being communicated by Piper, that unless you’ve experienced these emotional almost existential experiences where this portion of Scripture carries you out of yourself. That’s not what Paul; you know he’s had experiences like none of us can ever have. “I know a man whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. Such a man was transported to the third heaven” and heard wonderful things. Paul’s not going on about the emotional transporting of me, and this experience brought me into a closeness with God, and I was there in the presence and I saw God and I heard. It’s rather clear, I knew a man. I don’t know whether it actually happened, or it was a vision and I heard things that even I wasn’t allowed to record, so that it emphasizes what Paul heard and wrote was God’s word but it’s not elevating Paul.

When I get done reading stuff like this--this is like when we were in the Holiness Movement if I can carry back to my background. You always were looking for this experience. This is the experience you want, this is what you’re looking for, God transporting you. I’m not saying there aren’t times when you have that sense of God’s awareness and closeness, but you know that’s not what we build our life on. Every word of this book is true. Some days you may open up and read it and, yeah that’s great. It’s just as much the word of God as you read it and say boy that portion just seems more alive to me today than it was, but this language God just came down on this date at this time and He spoke to me. These words from the bible and what did it do to me; it gave me greater confidence in the bible.

Now wait a minute. Now we’re in this subjective world of my experience and my feelings are what? You know what bothered me. I read those that influenced, we had a great article in the newsletter a little while back. Be careful about your friends, who you hang around with, they influence you. Who does Piper say the books that have influenced me the most, Hermeneutics by Daniel Fuller? Daniel Fuller wrote his doctrinal dissertation attacking the liberal hermeneutics of dispensationalism. He’s the one I referred to you last week who said, “Believing Gentiles are not just the spiritual descendants of Abraham, they are the physical descendants of Abraham.” Piper said, “The influence of (and he mentions another book by Daniel Fuller) the emphasis of these two books is indistinguishable from the influence of Dr. Fuller as a living teacher. Through these two books and his teaching, I found my way into a method of biblical theology, which has been fruitful,” and so on.

C. S. Lewis, another that just was so influential. Let me read you something about C. S. Lewis. C. S. Lewis was not a sound guide for he had a confused understanding of the Christian faith. Much of his writing is deeply mystical, and I see that influence that romanticism that Piper seems to be drawn. C. S. Lewis taught and believed in purgatory, prayers for the dead, the physical presence of Christ’s body and blood in the bread and wine, a sacrament that he called the Mass. He practiced auricular confession. That’s where you have to go to a priest to confess your sins and have them forgiven. He believed in baptismal salvation. He rejected the inerrancy of Scripture and justification by faith alone, as well as the doctrine of total depravity.

I get concerned when this is--another of his influences was George Eldon Ladd. I mentioned him, he’s sort of given credit for the “already, not yet” view of the kingdom. George Eldon Ladd, I don’t know, I guess he was a believer. I read his stuff and sometimes I wonder. He died a drunk, had a miserable marriage, a miserable family life. He taught at Fuller Seminary. They speak about the sad thing later in his life, him and his son staggering down the street drunk, getting up at chapel in Fuller Seminary under the influence of alcohol. Going drinking at the bar but a man, his biography is entitled, A Place at the Table. We have to do what will make us recognized and accepted by unbelieving scholars. Go to Harvard, even his biographer who is—writes favorably of him. It says Ladd did not realize how much he had been influenced by the theology of Harvard, and the particular liberal, but Piper says, “In understanding the theology unique to the New Testament no one has influenced me more than George Ladd. From Ladd’s books I came to appreciate the centrality of the coming of God’s kingdom into history in advance of its apocalyptic manifestation at the end of history.” I just get concerned if these are your friends, no wonder you’ve gotten influenced so, how does the church get off track.

This stuff comes in. How many people get into Piper and who influenced Piper? Well those who influenced Piper, through Piper now are influencing others, and young people flock in droves to his conferences. Christian young people. I get concerned. He is anti-dispensational. He’s covenantal, premillennialist, Post Trib. He’s an already, not yet. When they got a new pastor when he retired from his church, the article I read on it, what really excited him about this man; he had the proper view of racial reconciliation, so he will be a good man for our church. I mean what about his theology? His teaching? Racial reconciliation is what drew you to him? At any rate, that’s not to say Piper never does anything good. I like his mini biographies of various men in church history.

Question: Gil I would like, you’re speaking about the influences of John Piper. I would like to know a few men that influenced you. Yes, well for professors. My professors at Philadelphia College of the Bible, I was blessed to have men, solid and sound in the word. John Cawood, he preached here many years ago. He’s now home with the Lord. He was really solid theologically and challenged me. It was through theology class with him that I finally realized I could not biblically defend my Arminianism anymore coming out of the Holiness movement. He just kept saying, “well what’s the Scripture say here Gil. What’s the Scripture say?” “Well, I’ll have to get back to you on that Dr. Cawood,” and pretty soon I went in and said, “you know, I yield, I’m wrong.”

The other professors there rooted in us--Clarence Mason an elderly man. He’s the man who would take the introductory class. When you came in as a freshman, you would have this whole auditorium and he would say, “We’re going to do a test. You’re going to try to stump me. I use the Scofield Reference Bible. Now you read a passage of Scripture, and I’ll tell you where you’re reading,” so you know everybody here, I’m in Joel. Somebody else was in Malachi. Somebody else is in this and you know he impressed me with his knowledge of Scripture. He didn’t do it, it’s just a reminder of how you have to know Scripture. He’d start reading a verse; the works of His hand are truth and justice. All His precepts—stop, stop. You were on the left-hand side of the page in the right-hand column. You were about a third of the way down because you’re reading Psalm 11 verse 22. I said, “Wow I’ve got to learn the bible, guess I’ve got to be careful here,” so those men.

Then I went to seminary. John Whitcomb was there. I appreciated him and his openness. You could go to his office and talk to him. Paul Fink probably had the most influence on my preaching. Paul Fink was the Homiletics professor and he was relentless. Teach the text, teach the text. You were not allowed—you had to diagram your portions you were dealing, and then you had to make an outline of the text and you were not allowed to include any other verses, from any other place in Scripture because he said men, you have to learn to teach the text you’re teaching. Not run every which way to all the passages and then if in your outline you included anything that wasn’t in that text, it came back with a big red circle. Where is that in the text, so those men of constantly driving you back to the Scripture? It was a blessing to study under them and no excuse for doing anything else but sticking to the Scripture, so the men that I got to study. Then I tried to concentrate my reading first and foremost in good sound material.

I have to say, I’m not a reader of Piper. I read him when people are bringing him up, that’s how I read the Sirens of God when it came out years ago. Someone asked me. What’s your opinion of this? I’d like to have you--that’s what got—read that but I figure I don’t have any reason to read him anymore. I read those men now because of my position and responsibility to critique. I want to read good theology. There’s so much good stuff out there; I don’t want to be out here on the edge. I want to be immersing myself in good sound theology, but also, I have a responsibility to know what’s wrong and what the errors are. Read good stuff. Read good stuff, there’s a lot of stuff. Read the good stuff so that’s the influences I’ve had in my life and that goes on.

We came out of a good church. The best thing my parents did was when they left the Methodist church and started going to a bible teaching church. Well you know Lehman Strauss was the pastor. We have some of his commentaries still. That’s where I met Marilyn. Where would I be? We went to a church he’s teaching the word. I voted no. In those days, parents didn’t know that kid’s votes counted. I voted not to leave the Methodist Church, what did I know. You know I’m a teenager, my friends are here. I don’t want to go to another church. We’re going there because the bible’s taught there. We need to get where the bible’s taught, so I could do that or find another place to live. At 13, it’s hard to do, so I went. The bible was taught there, it was sound, good interpretive principles. Marilyn’s older sister was married to the pastor’s son Richard Strauss, who is now at home with the Lord also, so I’ve had good influences. I have no excuse for getting off the track and hopefully you’ll have these good influences.

We have great teachers here, built in the word. From the kids, I get concerned people leave. If the Lord wants you in another church, you need to be there but I want to know, are your kids going to get sound teaching? We have people who pour themselves into teaching from a young age to build the word into lives. Don’t take that lightly. It’s a privilege to have that. I do a class for the nursery workers and the children’s church workers. They’re talking to me this morning about what they’re going to be teaching, raised Samson and the questions they’re dealing with, and want to bring it across, and I say, “What a blessing to have teachers from the young age up.” Our adult teachers, they can preach on Sundays. Well you appreciate their ability to handle the word, so we’re blessed as a church and we want to continue that.

When popularity goes down, when popularity--I’ve shared with you, and then we’ll be done. Harold Berry, back in the days when Indian Hills was exploding, and people were getting here early to get seats. Harold Berry said to me, Gil—Harold Berry was Theodore Epp’s assistant, went on to be Greek professor at Grace College in Omaha later. He says, “Gil, they’re breaking down the doors to get in and you are teaching the word. The test will be when they’re not breaking down the doors to get in. Will you still be teaching the word?” Well Harold, of course, but it is a test! You know it’s easy when people are just flocking and oh you’re wonderful and we can’t get a seat, move over, but what about when it’s not so popular. You know we have to teach the word in season and out of season and for us as God’s people we want it to be always an in-season time.

Let’s pray together: Thank You Lord for Your blessings the riches of Your word. Lord it’s a treasure that we would not take for granted. We would want it to be precious to us. Every word is precious, more precious than earthly valuables, gold and silver. Lord this is Your word. Every word has come from You. How awesome it is that You should speak, guide men in the recording of what You say, and preserving it so that in this day, we are specially blessed, to have it with us all the time. Lord times in history where getting a copy of a portion of the word was considered a treasure, and yet this is a treasure we have as our own, every day. May we not take it for granted? May it be precious to us and may we be in it. May we be growing in it that we might mature and be more faithful in our service for You. Thank You for this day. We look forward to the week before us. Lord use us wherever You send us, wherever You put us. Whatever we are about, may our lives be a manifestation of the work You’ve done in us in grace. We pray in Christ’s name. Amen.


---------------------------





2