Expository Preaching

Colossians 1:15-20

COL-138

Galatians 5:13-16: "For you were called to freedom, brethren. Only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another. For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word in the statement, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' But if you bite and devour one another, take care lest you be consumed by another. But I say, 'Walk in the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.'"

Ephesians 4:30-32: "And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption, but all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ also has forgiven you."

Matthew 7:3: "And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?"

Luke 6:42: "Or how can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take out the spec that is in your eye,' when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite. First take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the spec that is in your brother's eye."

Romans 14:10-12: "But why do you judge your brother? Or you again, why do you regard your brother with contempt? For we shall all stand before the Judgment Seat of Christ. For it is written, 'As I live,' says the Lord, 'every knee shall bow to Me. Every tongue shall give praise to God.' So, then each of us shall give an account of himself to God."

Romans 12:17-18: "Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of men, if possible. So far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men."

Romans 12:19-21, "Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine. I will repay,' says the Lord. But if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him drink. For in so doing, you will heap burning coals upon his head. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

2 Timothy 3:16: "All Scripture is inspired by God, and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work."

This morning we direct our attention to Colossians 1:15-20, our subject is "Hymn in Honor of Christ," segment number 28.

This morning, I was chatting with two of our men in the office. And we were talking about the issue of salvation. And one of the men said that he had spoken to a lady recently who said that you must walk down an aisle in a church in order to be saved. And he said, "How do you know that?" And she said, "Because my spirit tells me so." And he said, "But Jesus and Scripture say that being saved is not a matter of doing something, but of believing what Christ has done for us in covering our sins and accepting." And he pointed out that if her principle were was true, that for some 45 years or more, he thought he was a Christian, but he wasn't. He was saved in Madison Square Garden in New York, but he did it by believing in Christ as Savior, and he never got up out of his seat and walked down the aisle. So, he said, "What the Bible says is just the opposite of what your spirit is telling you. So, when you have the two which are different, which are you going to believe?" She thought a moment and said, "I'll listen to my spirit."

What she was saying was, "I'm going to act the way I feel about this – the orientation to emotions. This is a classic example of what has happened by the denigration of expository preaching at the local church level. Preachers who are not using the church service in the age of grace, the age of the church, when we have the full counsel of the Word of God revealed to us and made known to us, as never before, in the history of mankind. And they are not explaining the Bible to people. And when you say that, they get mad at you, as saying bad things about other churches.

What they don't get mad at you for is for saying the truth about what other churches are doing. Yes, there are some good ones out there who are doing their job, but by and large, this is not the case in Christianity. So, this poor lady can, with complete aplomb, say, "I'll listen to some voice inside of me that tells me what is the truth. I won't be discouraged or dissuaded from what I want to believe by what the Bible says."

This orientation to emotions to glorify what we think, instead of what God thinks, is not uncommon. This lady is a prime example of what is the result of people not being taught the Word of God. One of the things that I have noticed more and more, as an expression about one being saved, is described as asking Jesus to come into your life. From the highest, most mighty pulpit of the land we're hearing: "Asking Jesus to come into your life."

This is totally unbiblical, and it is an enormous deception of Satan. Nobody is going to get to heaven by asking Jesus to come into his life. What you have to know to be saved is the gospel. You have to know that you can't do anything to help God get you into heaven, but that God has done it all for you. And He will give it to you as a gift, if you'll take His word for the fact that He's done it for you. That's what it means to believe the gospel. That's what it means to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. It's trusting Him in terms of what He has done for us. And that is so easily clouded over by some little cute praise: "Inviting Jesus into your life," and all the other variations of everything under the sun except the biblical term: "Believe, and be saved." Salvation is an acceptance. It's accepting something that God has done. If it's anything else, it's going to be something that you have added, or that you are going to provide for him.

I said to the men, "Another thing that is so distressing to me, and that I have so little use for is the attitude that Christians have towards somebody who is reared in a godly home; someone that was taught the Bible; and, some young person has had an opportunity to know the things of God, and then comes to a stage of life where it's all thrown overboard, and the guy becomes the lowlife type. And then, someplace down the line, he comes to his senses, and realizes that his parents and the Word of God they gave him were right, and he changes. And he comes back to a principled Christian life. And everybody goes gaga over it. What did they do with him? "Please come and speak to our youth group. We want you to talk at church." Everybody wants to hear what he says.

However, over here is another young person. This person, reared in a godly, Christian home, is always positive; always opened; he always listened, and lived according to the good guidelines of that person's parents. Does anybody pay attention to him? Does anybody say, "You were raised under a Christian context, and a Christian home, and Christian instruction, and you're faithful to it. You didn't throw it overboard. We want you to talk to our youth group. We want to hear you at church. We'd like to have some people come and speak with you." Do they look to that? No. They look to the lowlife that are losers, and I don't care how far they've come back to their senses. I'm not interested in listening to losers myself. But I am very much interested in listening to the person who is a winner, and had the good sense to believe to begin with.

Now, why is there that kind of an attitude among Christians? Because nobody has taught them the Word of God. They don't know the principle about shaking the dust of your feet off the negative type. They don't understand the principle of turning away from the resister, and going to the one who is receptive. They don't know anything about objective conduct of their lives, because they've been robbed of expository preaching – preaching that explains what the Bible really has to say.

There was this indifference toward the Word of God in Israel in the Old Testament, and this indifference toward doctrinal instruction, on the part of the priest whose duty it was to give that instruction. And the result was that Israel, in time, became a very doctrinally ignorant people. They didn't know the commandments of God. Hosea 4:6 says that the result of this was that: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge (the knowledge of the Word of God), I also reject you from being my priest. Since you have forgotten the Law of your God, I also will forget your children." The result in Israel of people not being under expository teaching was that Israel drifted off from God. When they came up against the evils of the society and the pagans around them, they couldn't cope with it. They were not able to deal with what Satan was throwing against them.

It was the divine duty of Israel's spiritual leaders to teach the Word of God. They knew that. This was no big secret. For example, when Moses wrote Deuteronomy, his closing commentary to guide the nation, he was very explicit about the fact that the priests are to teach the content of Scripture to the people. Beginning at Deuteronomy 31:9-13: "So, Moses wrote this Law and gave it to the priest, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. Then Moses commanded them, saying, 'At the end of every seven years, at the time of the year of remission of debts, at the feast of booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God, at the place which He will choose, you shall read this Law in front of all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, the men and the women and children and the alien who is in your town, in order that they may hear and learn and fear the Lord your God. And be careful to observe all the words of this Law. And their children, who have not known, will hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live on the land which you are about to cross the Jordan to possess."

That's very clear: "You priests know the Word of God. You have been trained in it. You are to teach the Law. And every seven years, when all debts are canceled, and everything is straightened out again, that sabbatical year, you're going to have lots of time, and you're to gather the people together for monstrous Bible conferences. You're to gather the whole families together, and you are to reiterate, through expository preaching, what God has to say, so that they will know how to live. Whether they choose to obey or not is something else, but they will know how to live.

In the last book of the Old Testament Bible, in Malachi 2:7, we have this same principle: "For the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge. And men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." The priest, the one trained and the knowledge of the Word of God, that's where you should have a right to look – not to your stupid neighbors and friends and family members, who don't know any more about the Word of God than you do. You look to the person who has the background and understanding of the Word of God, and who has the ability to communicate it. The failure of the priests resulted in the rejection by God of them. God says, "You're not going to be my priest anymore." But that didn't make them stop operating as priests. They just got on TV, and they ran big programs, and they had big operations that brought in vast sums of money. They were no longer doing God's work, but they were having a ball out there, playing on people's emotions, and enjoying the good life, when God had long since walked away from them. And the sad thing was that, while God walked away from these priests, they continued to be accepted by the people – the very people that they were shortchanging. The people stayed with them.

What on earth is wrong with people today? Most of them don't know they're being shortchanged. That's what's wrong. They're impressed by the hoopla that surrounds church operations, and they think that all is well. And they will not tolerate anybody telling them that they are not being taught the full counsel of the Word of God. "The blessings of God," Hosea said, "will not come down upon the children, because the parents are ignorant of the mind of God which is contained in the doctrines of Scripture, and therefore, they have wrong-headed parents. And wrong-headed parents give wrong-headed advice and guidance to their children. It is the wrong-headed parents who have no problem about allowing their children to be absent from the instruction. The thing all falls in line together.

Expository Preaching

"Expository" means "explanatory" – a preaching that explains what is in the Scriptures, on the basis of all the Scriptures connected together. It is not just some little isolated verse that has no connection with anything else, but the total structure of Scripture, so that it's all consistent and non-contradictory.

Now, Satan has had a very great success, obviously, in directing the local church service away from the worship of God through the teaching of the mind of God in the Word of God. People are robbed, consequently, of their right to know – their right to know spiritual phenomenon. In their lack of understanding, yet, they will perpetuate the fraud, strangely enough, which is being played upon them by continuing to give their offerings. The Bible is clear what you should get when you come into a church service. And yet, though people don't get this, they'll put money in that offering plate. They'll put money in that offering box. They'll send it in through the mail. They'll do everything they can to support it with their time and their efforts.

2 Timothy 4:3-4 says this: "The time is going to come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickle (emotional orientation, and emotional domination of the soul), they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths." And there's where we are today. Christians, who want to have their emotions tickled, and therefore, they want to have their own desires fulfilled. It is like this lady said to one of our men: "I'll listen to my spirit (whatever that is in her). I won't listen to the Word of God. That doesn't get the priority.

So, these people are going to turn their ears away from the truth, and they'll listen to myths. They'll listen to what the preacher thinks. They'll listen to his experiences. They'll listen to what he believes. And they'll listen by watching his showmanship: his praising of the Lord; how great God is; and, carrying on in front of people so that they say, "Yes, that's true." But come the crunch of facing Satan and evil, they're dead in the water. They do not have the equipment to be able to live the Christian life.

So, the pastor-teacher has to be able to teach spiritual phenomena. 1 Timothy 3:2 puts it this way: "An overseer (the elder pastor-teacher) must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach." This does not mean "able to be taught," as some have tried to distort that. The Greek words says, "able to teach." If he doesn't have the ability to convey spiritual truth, he's not going to be able to do it. That's different than teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic. It takes a special gift to be able to convey spiritual truth, so that it clicks in the minds of people. Whatever else they do with it, it hits home. They understand. They grasp it. If he does not have the ability to teach, he will get sidetracked into what churches do in giving people what they want, and what people think they need, or doing what is the in-thing in church operations. Churches love to imitate one another on doing what is the in-thing to do.

Now, if the pastor-teacher is not teaching, and is not explaining the Bible, it is because he is not using what we have referred to as the HICEE Technique: Hermeneutics; Isagogics; Categories of doctrine; Exegesis; and, etymology. And he's not doing that through a book of the Bible. Those of you who have attended Berean Church for some time, it doesn't take you very long to walk into a church, and to be able to evaluate what it is doing, and whether it is worth anything. Now, I don't care what kind of programs it has. I don't care what wonderful things they have for the youth to do. I don't care for all of the summertime activities and everything else, and how dedicated the kids may be to that. If there's not a knowledge of the Word of God, it's nothing.

Have you ever noticed how much of what the Y M C A does, in the way of social activities and recreational activities, is identical to what churches do? And churches think they're doing God's work? Those are areas that the Y M C A and the Y W C A do a whole lot better. But they're not claiming to be explaining the Bible to people. They're not claiming to be delivering the mind of God to people. They're only claiming to be operating within the context of biblical principles. But when it comes to all the programs, that has nothing to do with the personal development of Christians. You can run a whole summer camp. You can go all summer long running summer camps, and think that you're being wowed by it. But it won't take me very long to walk through your camp, and listen and watch, and I'll know whether you got a bunco world operation that's a Y M C A, or whether you have a camp which has a spiritual impact at every turn of that child's life for the week that you have him.

That's a big difference. How will you know it? You won't unless you know the Word of God. That is the difference. A pastor who is not teaching cannot say what Paul said in Acts 20:26-34. Listen carefully, and you tell me if your experience, with what goes on in the Christian community today, you could say this represents what is generally being done by the people in the pulpit: Paul is meeting with the pastor-teachers from all over the city of Ephesus. He's about to embark on the ship and go to Jerusalem. So he wants to leave some significant words to these men to guide them and to instruct them, because he will never see them again. God has made that clear to them. He will never see them again. And when at the end, just before he embarks on board the ship, he tells them that, and they all break down weeping. They're crushed by the realization that this man is led by God. And if God says you're never going to see them again, you're not coming back. They know that that's true.

So, here in Acts, Paul is on the spot: "What on earth shall I say to these men? What do they need to do? What should they be doing when these Christians in this important city of Ephesus are gathering in these house churches all over this city? When these elder pastor-teachers stand up, what should they do, and what should they watch for, so as not to get sidetracked from their mission? Act 20:26-27, "Therefore, I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men:" "Nobody can accuse me of having failed to do something for you that has brought upon you personal disaster, physical or any other kind." That's what he means: "I'm free of the blood of all men." How can he say? "For I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God." The King James Version says, "The whole counsel of the Word of God." I like that: the whole counsel; the whole purpose; and, the whole gamut of Bible doctrine: "I've been here a long time in this city, and I've been teaching regularly, and you have it all. I've given you instruction in doctrine. Expository preaching is what I've been all about, and you know it.

Acts 20:28: "Be on guard for yourselves, and all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." It is his job of these pastor-teachers to shepherd the flock. What does a shepherd do? He leads them to where they can be fed. Act 20:28, "I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing flock." In come the negative-volition crowd who say, "No, no, no. There's something more than this objective teaching of the Word of God. We have to have something to be able to carry us through our week – something to be able to help us make it through our week. And with that, we're back to the lady who's going to listen to the spirit within her rather than the Word of God. Paul says, "They're going to come in. They're going to say, "Stop being a teacher of the Word, and start dealing with the emotions and the social life, and all the other things that people need.

Act 20:30, "And from among your own selves, men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them." Men are going to arise who are in the ministry. Your colleagues in the pulpit are going to go for the good life, and they're going to lead people away from the Word of God. It's happened. And the Scriptures warned us. And that's why we warned you that, in the general church community people, have been led away, as disciples of the leaders there. And they have been led away from the Word of God: "Therefore, be on the alert, remembering that, night and day, for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish each one with tears. And now I commend you to God, and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I commend you to the word of his grace – the grace of the church age doctrines. I commend you to that, because that's going to build you up spiritually, and the result is that it's going to give you a great reward among all the believers in heaven.

"I have coveted no once silver or gold or clothes. You yourselves know that these hands minister to my own needs, and to the men who are with me. And Paul says, "You know very well that when I ministered to you, it wasn't for the money. In fact, you know that there wasn't enough money. And I had to be using my own resources to provide the money. And I was very happy to do that. As God gave me the resources, I was very happy to do that. I wasn't in it for the money." And the reason he points this out is to say: "That's why I can say that the blood of no man is upon me. I didn't have to compromise. If I wanted it for money then I'd have to compromise. I'd have had to play ball with you. But I didn't do it for the money, and you have not been let out into a spiritual desert."

Most preachers cannot say that, and the reason for it is because they don't preach by the expository technique, which means that they don't deal with hermeneutical principles, and they don't interpret Scriptures on the basis of rules for interpreting. The fundamental one is literal interpretation, for example (the "H" of the acronym "HICEE," for "Hermeneutics." Secondly, they don't preach, taking into account, the background of the times when that book of Scripture was written. We call that "Isagogics" – the "I" of "HICEE." Then there was the "C:" the Categories." They weren't summarizing principles of doctrine for people. They didn't say, "Here's a summary. Let me go through it. This is what the Bible teaches about grace: bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. This is what the Bible teaches about giving your money. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing." So, in one blow, you have it all categorized for you. They weren't preaching according to the "etymology" (the first "E") – the precise meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words in the context. And finally, they weren't preaching according to the final "E" of HICEE: "Exegesis" – according to the grammatical relationships that are involved in the text to determine the meaning.

Now, you have to know something to be able to do that. So, people who sit down and read the English Bible, and they think they're going to be able to come up with a full knowledge of the full counsel of the Word of God are sadly mistaken. They'll get a great deal, and it should be done. But it is the Christian who has been taught the Word of God, and has a scaffold (a framework) of Scripture of doctrine upon which to build, who can indeed read the English Bible, and he'll understand it in a tremendous way. The "HICEE" technique is expository preaching. That's all it amounts to.

Now, God is going to hold every one of us, as church-age believers, responsible for our failure to attend an expository preaching local church which teaches from the manual that God has given for Christian living (the Bible), and teaches through a book of the Bible by this "HICEE" technique. And God is going to hold you responsible for going to a church like that. He will also hold you responsible for financing, with your offerings, and supporting, with your services, such a religious organization. You're not going to escape judgment for that. And that's what we are, at this point in time, as never before, because Satan is closing in fast. His time is running out, and he has to silence the avenues of truth that are left to people.

Well, it's your life, and you will answer as a Christian to God for your choice in the local church that you support, and behind which you throw the support of your life. You can go with the crowd motivated by the fame of the church; the size of its membership; the prestige; and, the money; and you'll lose your life because you will fail in the mission that God has for you. You'll have a good time in the process. Yes, you will have a good time in the process of that life, but it will be a great tragedy that you are dissuaded by these externals, and you sat there and never spotted that the word was not being taught in an effective way. Oh yes, the Scripture was read, and the Bible was explained, but not enough verse-by-verse through a book of the Bible, so that maximum understanding could be grasped.

What you need to do is live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God which is taught to you by a legitimate pastor-teacher. And you need to be loyal to Jesus Christ in an evil age, and great will be your roared in heaven if you do that. Turn your back upon the hoopla and the rah-rah crowd, and go with the simplicity of the New Testament church, which gathered for the apostles' doctrine.

We appointed out to you that among these new unique relationships that exist between Jesus Christ and His church are a variety of figures. We've had the figure of Christ as the shepherd, and the Christian as His sheep. We've had the figure of Christ as a vine, and the Christians as those who are attached to Him as branches. We've had the figure of Christ as the chief cornerstone of a building, and Christians as the living stone forming the structure. We've had the figure of Christ as the High Priest, and the Christians as His priests. All of these are relationships which were unthinkable in the Old Testament, dramatically different in the New Testament, and evidence that Israel and the church are two separate entities in the work of God. You can't mix the two in any way whatsoever.

The next figure is in Ephesians four, and what an important one this is – so important that this is the one that Paul referred to in our passage here in Colossians 1:18, where he spoke of Christ as the head of the body, the church. Christ is the head of the church, which is His body. Ephesians 4:11-16 explain that relationship. And this is indeed one of the most revealing. Let's read it. Ephesians 4:11-16. "And he, God the Father, gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastor-teachers." In Ephesians 4:11, God the Holy Spirit declared that there were four special gifts for communicating revelation from God. There were four specially-gifted types of men who had various capacities and various categories of a special ability to communicate truth. They were the prophet, who was able to tell you what God thinks at a certain moment, and what He wants you to do, plus telling you about the future. No prophets exist today. We had the apostles. They were appointed by the Lord because they had seen Jesus Christ alive after the crucifixion, and they had supreme authority in the early church until the pastor-teachers came on. We have no apostles today. Then we had evangelists – men who have a special knack for proclaiming the gospel, so that people get it, and they know what to do to get into heaven. And then he gave category number four: pastor-teachers. After the evangelist is through, then the pastor-teacher takes them over, and trains them in doctrinal principles, so that they're capable of living their lives, and not being made fools of by Satan, or any of these dumb Christians who are operating on what their spirit tells them – their emotional life guidance.

Ephesians 4:12, why does He do this? Why has He given these pastor-teachers? "For the equipping of the saints." In this verse, there are three Greek prepositions. The first one is basic, and it is the word "for," which is the Greek preposition "pros" P R O S. The preposition "pros" connotes face-to-face. Isn't that interesting? "For the equipping of the saints? How does the pastor-teacher equip the saints? How does he equip them to live the Christian life and to serve God? How does he teach them? He teaches them what's in the manual of the Bible? That's how he equips them. And how does he do that? That's in the local church service, where he is explaining doctrine, and going through a book of the Bible verse-by-verse, on the HICEE technique: hermeneutics; isagogics; categories of doctrine; exegesis; and, etymology. That's how he equips the saints. This is a military term. This is giving them the means for spiritual combat. And he equips them with the Word of God.

Then it has two more prepositions in this verse, and these two prepositions are linked to this first one. "Pros" (face-to-face teaching) is then followed by the preposition "eis" (ice), I C E, which links it to pros. And then the third preposition is "eis" again. It links to the second. So, what you have is a chain reaction. And if the first one ("pros"), face-to-face teaching, is not done, everything under it cannot happen. Do you see how serious this verse is? "For the equipping of the saints." This is the pastor-teacher instructing objectively in doctrinal principles. Why? Out of that will result the work of service, so that the Christian is able to serve God. He learns how to deal with his sin. He learns how to stay in temporal fellowship. He learns all the basic categories of Scripture. He learns the way God thinks, and then he's able to serve.

That's why, when you're born again, you should shut your mouth, basically, and open your ears to an instructor in the Word of God until you get a basic understanding and a scaffold of framework on which to serve. Instead, people are told, "Go out and start serving God." But you're not equipped. If they did this in the military, and this is military language, you'd be killed in the first offensive, because you do everything wrong on the field of battle.

Oh, the devil loves to have Christians who are out there serving the Lord who haven't been prepared (given the equipment) for spiritual battle. And if that's done, then you have the third preposition ("eis"): to the building up of the body of Christ, so that the Christian is able to serve God, and the result is that Christians are mutually edified by one another, and the unsaved are brought in and the church, the body of Christ, is built up.

It begins with equipping from the pulpit. Then they can perform the work of Christian service with their spiritual gift. Then the body of Christ gets built up. Now, if the first step, the equipping of the saints, is not done, which, in the general Christian community today, it is not done, everything else is smoke and mirrors. And sometimes I'm amazed. Christians come back, and they tell me what a wonderful operation is going on someplace. And I happen to know about the place. And I know that it's smoke and mirrors because I know that the pulpit is not a pulpit of expository preaching.

You not only have to have the gift, you have to have the training. And then you have to have the willingness to spend enormous amounts of time studying, learning, and preparing for that time you're going to step in the pulpit, and you're going to alert the people to what they need to know, such that they understand how God thinks. It's a beautiful system. You can see why the devil has botched it all up.

In Ephesians 4:13, this system is going to function until: "We all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ:" "To the knowledge (the 'epignosis') – the full knowledge." This is doctrine which is believed and functioning in your life so that you're a winner.

Ephesians 4:14: "As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried above by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming." How many Christians are brought down by smoke and mirrors? And sincerity will not protect you. How many Christians who have an opportunity to learn better; to know better; and, to be instructed, and they leave it. They abandon it, and they go with the emotional kick.

Ephesians 4:15: "But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, Who is the head, even Christ." And here's the relationship: "From whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love." There is nothing so awesomely powerful as a local church filled with people who have been well-instructed in doctrinal principles, who have grown up in spiritual maturity, and who have found their place of service, as per their spiritual gift within that local body. And that whole body grows up into a powerful, strong person working in the work of God. Everybody is dependent upon the particular work of everyone else, as per their gift and their place. That is a powerful, real, active functioning of the Word of God. And we build ourselves up in this way because of our love for one another. Nobody in that kind of a local church wants to see a weak member. Nobody wants to see a member who is subject to being brought down by Satan. And nobody wants to see anybody in that congregation who gets discouraged when Satan does bring you down, and when Satan does hit you away.

Sometimes, people tell me about some trial that they're going through, and it just goes on and on. They say, "I just don't understand what God is doing." And I can't come up and say, "Well, here's what He's doing," because I don't know. But I do know that He can be trusted, because I know doctrine. I do know that our times are in His hand. I do know that He is operating. He's doing the thing. And I do know that when you function on these biblical principles, things work.

$1,000 was needed to take care of an area of our ministry. I knew that there was a believer who periodically sends in a check. When that believer sends in a check, they send in $800. So, this last week I said, "Lord, this is now critical. I need $1,000 dollars so that we can get this thing paid off, and out of the way." And this week, when the mail came, here was a check from that person who periodically sends something in. And when I opened the envelope, it wasn't $800. It was $1,000 dollars. Aren't these accidents wonderful? Was I smart? Am I a great spiritual personality? No, I'm a worm like all the rest of the worms. But I do know that asking God on the principles of prayer conducted in the proper context performs the work of God. It's the only way it's done. And the only way I know that is because I'm so well-versed in doctrinal principles. I don't have to stand up in this pulpit and con the people. I don't have to get up and give one-liner jokes to amuse you, or to do anything else – to carry you through the service, and make you feel like you've had a good time. I guarantee you, when you walk out of this place at the end of one of our services, you have very good reason to flood those offering boxes with money – very good reasons indeed. And the Bible says, "Don't pay if they didn't produce for you."

If Christians were more faithful to that, we would indeed solve a great deal of these problems. Christ is the Head, and the church is His body. Israel was but an organization, a theocratic nation, separated off from God. Ephesians 2:12 refers to them as a commonwealth. Paul says, "Remember that you (gentiles) were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel." They were not his body; they were just a theocratic nation under God. But you are the body of Christ, and it is expressed as a local church organization. But the invisible Christ and the church that He is Head of is a living organism. And we who are members of that church – we all take part of what constitutes the deity of Jesus Christ. We're not gods, but we are in the power and the blessing and the guidance of the mind of God, because we know the principles of doctrine.

Tonight we'll go into the depths and the wonders of Christ Who is the Head of the church, his body, and we who are members of that church.

We thank You, our Father.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1995

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