Hebrews Lesson 165 July 2, 2009
NKJ Psalm 119:9 How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.
Let's open our Bibles to Romans 14. We've been studying the principle of the ministry of one believer to other believers under the terminology of "one another" coming out of Hebrews 10:24 where it states that:
NKJ Hebrews 10:24 And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works,
To stir up, to stimulate, to provoke, to excite – various different synonyms can be brought in there to bring out the idea that this is the idea where one believer is engaged with another believer for the purpose of getting us to think about how we can apply Scriptures in our everyday life, especially within the local church and toward other believers.
So we've gone from looking at Hebrews 10:24-25 to looking at a topical study where we're focusing on how we are to be engaged with one another. That's the Doctrine of One Another. We've gone through various points looking at the original Greek word that focuses on this aspect - one person towards others in a group. The main command that I think everything comes under is the command to love one another which is used 15 times in the New Testament. It's mentioned by all the different authors of the epistles: John, Paul and Peter. I think that all of these different commands exemplify different aspects or facets of that idea of loving one another that we have in John 13:34-35 that the new commandment that we are to love one another as Christ has loved us. That's the main command.
So one aspect of that command is that we are to encourage one another. This is stated in passages such as Romans 1:12. We also looked at passages in 1 Thessalonians 4 and 1 Thessalonians 5 that we're to encourage one another. That is not just the idea of saying things that are motivational. It's not just saying things that are uplifting. It is the content. It is encouraging people with specific teaching from the Scripture.
We are to do this because we are members of one another. Romans 12:5, Ephesians 4:25 emphasize the fact that there is interdependency among members of a local body of believers. We are an extended family; it's not just different individual people coming together just to get teaching and then to go about their lives apart from the local church. But there is to be interdependency within those members. They get to know one another. They find out how they can pray for one another. They find out how to encourage one another, and they get to know one another.
We're to give preference to one another in honor. This is especially true when you have personal problems with other believers. So we are to be gracious towards one another and to honor one another.
The 6th point – we're to be of the same mind to one another, which means we're to think the same way. That has its ultimate basis in the Word of God, passages like Romans 12:16, Romans 15:5.
The 7th point getting into Romans 14, touched briefly on the 8th point. But I want to go back and hit a few more things on the 7th point before we press on. We're to be building up one another.
Romans 14:19 says:
NKJ Romans 14:19 Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.
There we have a present active subjunctive, which means that this is a command. It is a first person plural command. It's used in the subjunctive mood; and it has the idea the force of a mandate. This is something we should do.
NKJ Romans 14:19 Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.
…or literally the things by which we may edify one another. That's our word allelon there.
So there are a couple of things we ought to note here in Romans 14. Verse 13 is a hinge verse. Some translations will put this as a conclusion to the previous section. Others will put it at the beginning of the last paragraph (verses 13 through 23). It's key verse.
Paul says:
NKJ Romans 14:13 Therefore let us
Once again it's that first person subjunctive command – let us.
not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way.
Now there's a contract here in the context between this command, which is a prohibition to not judge one another in contrast to the command that we do have in verse 19.
NKJ Romans 14:19 Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.
So on one hand we're not to judge one another and then on the other hand we are to edify one another. So we come to understand the meaning of those two words because they're used in a contrastive context. Now Romans 14:13 uses the same word for judge as we have for resolve (the New King James translates it). The New American Standard I think has a little better translation "but rather we should decide this." I think "decide" has a better sense there. But both of those words judge and resolve (or decide) translate the same Greek verb, krino. This is the word that we find in passages such as John 3:18:
NKJ John 3:18 "He who believes in Him is not condemned;
Krino
but he who does not believe is condemned already,
Krino – I think it's katakrino there which is the intensified form of it. But it's the same idea.
because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
So this word krino has a lot of different meanings, a wide range of meanings. It's the same in Greek as it is in English.
Every now and then you'll come across Christians in some context and they'll say, "Oh well, you're just judging somebody else."
Well, what do you mean by judging somebody else? It's the same word that's used in passages like this one, prohibition of judging. What does it mean to judge someone? The Greek word as I said has a wide range of meanings. The root idea is to separate. This is related to the Hebrew concept. A word that we have in the Old Testament that is often translated discernment is the word bin. That has the idea of being something between things. So you're making distinctions or separations between things. To do that you have to evaluate things and then you have to set up categories. You have to distinguish between this thing and that thing. That is the root idea in making a judgment. It is evaluating the various characteristics of someone and making distinctions or separations. So judging or the word krino has that root idea of making distinctions or separations between things. It comes to mean to judge. It comes to mean to discern which means simply to evaluate circumstances.
We are to evaluate leaders in the local church. Someone, according to 1 Timothy 3, who wants to be a leader in a local church; then this is a good thing. But then Paul says there are certain qualifications for deacons. There are qualifications for pastors. So it's important for a congregation to be able to look an individual and question them and observe their life and to make decisions based on that evaluation. Is this person ready to be a pastor? Is this person ready to be a deacon? Is this person qualified to teach in Sunday school? That's the same idea. You're judging them.
Some people say, "Oh, we can't judge anybody."
Well, you don't understand the concept. We are to evaluate; we are to form opinions. That's another way in which the word is used. If you have an opinion about anything you're forming a judgment about that. You make a decision as to who to vote for when you go to the polls. You are making an evaluation. You're forming an opinion, and you are making a judgment. You're deciding on one person instead of another person.
Krino also has the idea of considering something or thinking it through. It's a thought word that involves or assumes a certain set of standards according to which these evaluations or patterns are applied to a set of circumstances.
Then there's a negative connotation, which is the idea of condemning someone, putting yourself in a position where you're in the position of God and so you're going to look at actions in their lives and say that person is sinful. You're putting them down. You're acting toward them as if you are God. That is the negative sense. That's what the prohibition is about which relates to the idea of condemning others. There is a sense in which you positively condemn people. If you're sitting on a jury, you have to make an evaluation. Then you have to condemn them judicially.
But this is condemning them in the sense of slander. This is condemning someone in the sense of anger or bitterness and it's contrasted with edification in verse 19.
So we can't take the command of verse 13 out of context. We can't take the command of verse 19 out of context. So we see here it's a great teaching tool where Paul is explaining these actions by means of comparison and contrast. That's how we learn things. We don't just learn things by rote, although that's one way to begin learning many things. Eventually we have to start thinking on our own and so we have to be able to discern not only the differences between statements that are clearly opposites (180 degrees opposite). We have to begin to discern and understand the various shades that come between those two polar opposites. That's how a person learns to think. That's what you have to do as a prep school teacher in teaching Sunday school. That's what pastors should be doing is teaching by means of these kinds of contrasts showing shades of differences. It's not a matter of putting down what other people believe; it's showing why. For example if I'm teaching on sanctification and we believe that the core of sanctification is walking by the Spirit and this is related to the filling of the Spirit (filling of the Spirit is a passive concept). You're to be filled by means of the Spirit. Walking by the Spirit is the active side that engages your volition. When you're walking by the Spirit you are being filled by the Spirit. That is helping you to think in terms of precision by comparing, contrasting some of the ideas and also showing that there are people who believe that the filling of the Spirit for example is just a term for maturity. So the command to be filled with the Spirit is simply a command in their view to be grown up.
But the problem with that is that the context around Ephesians 5:18, for example, talks about the fruit of the Spirit. The Majority Text in Ephesians 5:7 and also the fruit of the life according to the alternate reading there. But the fruit there is parallel to the fruit that you find from the Spirit in Galatians 5:20-22.
If you look at these and you say, "Okay is somebody claims this position…" Then you have to look at these other passages in Scripture that show you why there's a problem with the way they're expressing that. So you look over here and see the way I've expressed this in terms of the filling by means of the Spirit solves those problems. You look at things in terms of prophecy the same way. It helps people think by teaching other ways in which you might hear somebody teach something and it helps you as a listener to think more precisely, more clearly, more correctly.
When you're teaching in other areas of Scripture, you talk about for example, the trinity. You should be able to answer questions like why do I believe in the Trinity? You should be able to answer basic questions. Why do I believe that Jesus is eternally God? If a Jehovah's Witness were to knock and your door and they were to show you John 1:1 in their New World translation which says that "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a god", could you defend the deity of Christ and show why that's a wrong translation? You don't have to necessarily know Greek. Trust me; the person at the door doesn't know Greek any better than you do. But you have to understand some principles. Are you trained enough to be able to do that? If you're talking with a co-worker, can you do that?
If you're sitting in a classroom and you hear a professor say, "Jesus never claimed to be God. Jesus was just a man".
Could you answer that? Could you raise your hand and say, "You know, that's not true. There are passages in Scripture where Jesus says He was clearly said He was God."
He might come back with a statement like "That's not really in the Bible."
Can you engage that? Do you know how to answer those questions?
Peter says:
NKJ 1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear
One of the reasons I'm mentioning that is because this is how, even if you are in a classroom and you don't overtly engage a professor (most times you shouldn't because of the nature of the authority in the classroom), but can you in your own mind, in your own head, provide answers or are you just blindly sort of saying, "Well you know. That's what I've always heard is that Jesus is God and so they must be wrong."
You don't know why. You just decided that you're going to choose to be intellectually unengaged. You're just going to blindly accept whatever it is that your pastor or your church teaches. We have to be able to think the Scripture says. We have to have discernment. Discernment comes from understanding why we believe what we believe and why the Scripture says things the way it says things.
One of the reasons that I'm saying that (emphasizing this) is there is a new book that's out by Ken Ham called Already Gone. Ike and Mark and I are reading through it now. Mark has had the opportunity to read more of it than Ike and I have. This was a study that was commissioned by Answers for Genesis. One of the men on their board is in that business. He's in the business of doing surveys, market analysis, marketing and all those kinds of things. So they worked for a while, worked with some other polling groups in developing a pretty solid instrument they could use to evaluate why young people are no longer going to church.
We've seen numerous studies over the last ten to fifteen years from George Barna and his polling group out of Virginia and various others have seen that anywhere from 80 to I've seen as high as 87% of teenagers who have grown up in church by the time they're at the end of their first semester or first year of college no longer believe what they claimed to have believed that they were taught by their parents. Throughout their twenties they are not going to church. They're not engaged at all in anything Christian. They have basically given up on Christianity. So 80% of those who are between 20 and 30 that grew up in Christian homes, grew up going to church, grew up going to Sunday school, grew up many of them active in their youth groups, things of that nature have no involvement whatsoever 6 months after they leave home and go to college.
Now what causes that? That's an interesting question. Part of it is of course because the young people that are interviewed for this come out of all kinds of different churches: Baptist churches, Episcopal churches, Presbyterian churches, Lutheran churches. Frankly they're not taught anything in those pulpits and they're not really taught anything in the Sunday school classrooms. A lot of the reason for this comes from the way in which the Bible has been taught them. It is sort of disconnected events. You have the story about Jonah and the whale. But they don't know why that occurred in Israel's history, what it has to do with the gospel, what the symbolism of the 3 days and 3 nights are, and how that is significant. They might at a superficial level, but they can't really connect it to anything that goes back to the Abrahamic Covenant or goes forward to the cross.
So they're taught. Charlie uses the illustration of like a pearl necklace – a whole lot of pearls with no string that connects them.
So the Bible is never perceived as unified book of truth. They don't know anything about Genesis 1 through 3. If you were to ask them - when did God create the heavens and the earth and when did the events of Genesis 1 take place? They have no idea. Was the flood of Noah a worldwide flood or a local flood? They have no idea. How do you know the Bible is the Word of God? Can you give me 3 reasons why you know Jesus rose from the dead? They have no idea. They're never taught this anywhere in anything that they've learned in Sunday school or in church. So they're not sure the Bible is true because nobody has ever tried to answer those questions. They can't interconnect the doctrines that are within the Bible to historical events.
Now this is what was so brilliant about Charlie's ministry in developing the framework concept. Back in the early 70's when he went up to Texas Tech in 1967, he realized very soon that he had all these college kids in his church who were getting blasted in the classroom with professors who were specifically targeting Christians and Christian ideas. These kids couldn't figure out what any of the answers were, and they'd never heard this before. They were so ignorant about their own Bible that they couldn't intellectually defend it just for their own sake. So he developed that whole framework concept. That preceded all these other ministries that have come up since then on worldview ministries and everything else.
So the solution that Ken Ham and these guys have in the book Already Gone is really the solution that we've instigated as the core foundation, philosophy for our prep school and the kind of teaching that answers questions and prepares young people to be able to go out and survive in the cosmic system without being shipwrecked in their faith because the church failed to give them the kind of teaching that they were supposed to have.
Part of that goes back to learning how to think critically. If you think about this, in every endeavor you're in. I don't know what kind of work you're in. I know what some of you do. Others of you I'm not sure what you do. But if you're a teacher, if you are a builder, if you're involved in business of any kind, you have to make evaluations and discernments. You read all kinds of different things. If you're in some kind of insurance business, you're going to look at different approaches to the insurance industry. You have to learn how to evaluate and think critically about different proposals and different ways of doing things. If you're a teacher and you go to different workshops, these workshops are the outgrowth of different philosophies of man: how man learns, what his basic hindrances are. What's the basic hindrance to education? Is it sin or is it society? So you have to learn how to think critically. If you don't learn how to think critically in any area, especially in Christianity, you can't function in life. That's part of the reason that this nation is in the problem it's in, is because people don't know how to think critically.
That's part of the idea here behind this word for krino. It's not just negative judgment, but it also has the idea of something positive. It's used both ways in 14:13. Therefore let us not judge or run people down verbally.
NKJ Romans 14:13 Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way.
In the context it's running down some person who says, "You know I don't think it's right for a Christian to do X", whatever X may be. Maybe it's dancing, maybe it's eating meat on Fridays, and maybe it's drinking alcoholic beverages, whatever it may be.
Some people say, "Well, I don't think it's right."
Well, fine. That's your decision.
Somebody else may say, "Well, I think it's fine."
But no matter where you come down on these gray areas, you should not be running down other people who may decide that in terms of their own personal spiritual life they should or should not engage in certain activities.
So Paul says:
NKJ Romans 14:13 Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this,
Or rather, make this decision.
not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way.
Then in contrast we have 14:19 where he says;
NKJ Romans 14:19 Therefore let us pursue
Once again this is a positive word for focusing on an objective.
the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.
In other words, don't major on irrelevant secondary issues that are not specifically addressed in Scripture.
the things which make for peace
…instead of getting all involved in arguments and divisiveness over non-essential things. Now non-essential things are not what are specifically stated in Scripture. We are to make issues over those things.
Too often people take passages like this out of context and say, "Well you know, some people believe the Bible is inerrant. Other people don't. Well, let's have peace. Let's all get along together."
No, that's not what Paul would say. You don't have peace at the expense of clearly revealed truth. But in other areas…
NKJ Romans 14:19 Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.
Now this word to edify is a noun here. So it should be translated a little differently: "things by which we build up one another". It is the Greek noun oikodome, which relates the process of building something. It can refer to the construction of some sort of edifice, a dwelling, a fortification, office building, grocery store, whatever. That's what it refers to. It's the construction of something.
In this case it's used in an idiomatic way to refer to the building up of a person's spiritual life, the strengthening of their relationship with God and their spiritual life. That's really the value that we use when we decide what are we arguing about, what are we going to do in life, what are we going to practice? Is this something that promotes spiritual growth, spiritual strength in other people or not? Each person has to make those decisions between them and the Lord in their own understanding of the Word. Foundationally that strength comes from doctrine. But it also comes according to the context of the passage; it also comes within the framework of examples. So I have in this slide added a correction at the bottom there of how this should be translated.
Let us pursue the things that make for peace and the things by which we may build up or spiritually strengthen one another.
So we are in terms of our personal relationships with other believers, we should be thinking in terms of what I'm saying, what I am doing. Is this something that is going to have a positive strengthening affect in someone else's spiritual life or not?
Now, I'm going to apply this to what I've taught in the past on soul fortification. All of you are pretty familiar with this so I'm just going to hit this in a quick survey type of fashion.
How is the soul strengthened? That's a question we should say. If I'm up here and I'm talking about a principle of application, I say, "Now what you need to do is when you're thinking about, situation with other people.
You ask in the back of you mind, "Well my conversion, my life style, whatever it is I'm doing, I need to focus on that which is going to produce a strengthened soul."
Where does that come from? That comes from what I've described as the soul fortress because there's a construction of something. You're building something. Line upon line, precept upon precept describes the doctrinal process. We learn a little about this, a little about that. We apply it as we go along and so there is a nail-by-nail, board-by-board, brick-by-brick analogy to the Christian life. It doesn't just happen. You don't grow by showing up in church once a week or twice a week. You grow in the same way you complete a project by making it an objective and a priority in your life. You're not going to grow spiritually if that's not the objective. The way in which we grow is through the foundation, which is the filling of the Spirit which is related to walking by means of the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the power base of the spiritual life. When we confess our sins, that's the drawbridge that takes us from being out in the world back into the fortress where we live in the strength of the Holy Spirit's provision.
So the soul goes into this position and then through the utilization of various promises that God has given in His Word, applying those to specific situations by operating on the principles of grace orientation, humility, teachability, relaxed mental attitude. All of those are different aspects of grace orientation as well as its application toward others, some of the things we've seen the commands that we've seen to honor one another. That's what we've seen in grace orientation. We also have doctrinal orientation. These two work together. Our thinking is aligned with Scripture so there's the constant learning of Scripture, learning what the Bible teaches so that we can then apply it.
As we grow we begin to understand that there's a destiny that God has for us, our personal sense of our eternal destiny. We're living today in light of tomorrow; the decisions that you make today shape who we will be in the future.
As we grow through all of these basic concepts, then our understanding of God expands and we begin to love God because now we know Him. We understand His plans and purposes so we are able not only to love God; but from that love we're able to love others, our impersonal love for all mankind. Then this leads to orientation towards Christ or occupation with Christ where He becomes the ultimate focal point and the by-product is that we have a stable happiness in our life. That's what protects the soul.
So when you're thinking about these questions of how do I conduct my life so that it pursues peace and edification with others, then this gives you these 9 categories which includes the filling of the Holy Spirit plus confession of course which is a way of being put within a position where' we're protected.
Confession doesn't make it grow. That's what I like about that diagram. Confession is simply the way to get in there. Confession isn't what builds the edifice. So we're building that edifice throughout all of our Christian life. That's how I came to put all these dynamics together going back to looking at the process of edification in the soul, looking at the process of the various dynamics of the spiritual life, looking at the tools that God gives us to solve problems. We put all of that together into a much more dynamic sort of model for the spiritual life. So the 7th point is that we are to build up one another.
The 8th way in which we have "one another" used within the body of Christ is also found in Romans, Romans 15:7 that we are to accept one another. This word that is used for accept here is proslambano. The verse says:
NKJ Romans 15:7 Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.
The pros is an intensified preposition that's a prefix to the word lambano which has the basic idea of taking or receiving or accepting something into someone's society. It's the idea of acceptance. Somebody new, a stranger, comes in. We don't know how they are. Many of us are rather suspicious. I think it's typical in American culture. We're rather jaded.
"I don't know that person so I'm not going to talk to them."
But this is the idea that we're to receive one another. There is a sort of openness, an invitation to accept others because they're part of the body of Christ if they're believers just as much as anyone else. They got there the same way we did. We are dirty rotten lousy sinners, obnoxious to God and so are they. They can change and become wonderful people exhibiting all the attributes of Christ if they study the Word just as we do. So we are to look at people and accept them in terms of who they are in Christ or who they can be in Christ.
NKJ Romans 15:7 Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.
So once again that pattern goes to Christ. Now I know that you think that Christ received you because you're so special and wonderful and how could He possibly think any less of me. But He thought less of all of us because we're all obnoxious. We've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So we're not any better than anybody else so let's get over that and have a little grace orientation. This would be an application again of that grace orientation honoring one another. Here it's under the idea of receiving one another as part of the family.
The 9th "one another" brings into bear another idea that is an interesting idea to think about. And there are some warnings here that I must insert. We are to admonish one another. Now God assumes that you're going to have a little maturity and good sense whenever He commands certain things. So you don't run around admonishing and trying to straighten out everybody. Now that's always a maturity process.
I remember when I was young, in my 20's and in seminary. As I've gotten older matured in the ministry, I've seen this with especially with 20-somthings who go to seminary and they begin to learn at a faster rate than they're growing spiritually. That's the nature of the animal. You're advancing at high speed to pick up all this academic knowledge and you begin to realize that there are certain problems out there and people just aren't addressing them. You find out that you really have figured it out and you can start straightening everybody out. I have been at the front end of that from several people over the years. It's always interesting. They're usually in their second year of seminary, maybe their third year. They think they've got it all figured out. So they begin freely casting their pearls before swine, you might say. Actually it's the other way around. They're the swine and they're throwing dirt in front of everybody else actually. So we have to have good sense.
There has to be a context of relationship with other people to admonish them. We have to understand what that word means in the Greek as well.
So Paul says in 15:14:
NKJ Romans 15:14 Now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren,
…addressing the congregation.
that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge,
Notice that come first before the admonishing one another.
able also to admonish one another.
Admonishing one another is based on a certain level of maturity and knowledge, and not just knowledge of the Word, but knowledge of how to deal with people and how to talk to people. This comes from growth and life experiences. So we are to admonish one another.
The Greek word here is the word noutheteo. The nou at the beginning of the verb comes from the noun root of a word that you're familiar with, nous, which means to think. It refers to the mind, the organ of thought. So noutheteo is a verb that is related to thinking. It has the idea of warning somebody in some context. It has the idea of advising somebody, of admonishing them. That would be a negative where you're saying, "Maybe you shouldn't do that." Or instruction, teaching can come under the category of noutheteo.
Now this is a word that's used in a number of different places. In fact back in the early 70's there was a professor at Westminster Seminary up in Philadelphia. Westminster was comparable to Dallas Seminary except Westminster was the Calvinist reformed version of conservative orthodox Presbyterianism. Dallas Seminary was the dispensational counterpart. Jay Adams was the man's name. Jay was asked to teach in the Pastoral Ministries Department and to teach counseling. He recognized that what was going on in most seminaries was that they were expected to go out learn all about these psychological theories and various psychological models rather than realizing that the Word of God was sufficient for handling the problems of life. That's what God had promised: that if we apply His Word and obey Him that we can face and solve the problems of life that we face, the emotional problems, the highs, the lows; all of these things we can handle by the application of His Word.
At times there are people who have blowouts on the road to spiritual maturity. They're lying in a ditch somewhere and we happen to come along and they look up and ask for help. We have to somehow know how to change that spiritual flat tire. So there has to be some knowledge there. I'm using that as an illustration of counseling, of just one person to another. We all have people in our circle of friends who at times go through problems, issues, challenges, things that are not quite as significant or determinative you might say.
"I've got a parent to deal with. I've got a child situation here. You've had some experience here. What do you think?"
..those kinds of things. That would come under this principle of advising, admonishing, teaching one another.
So he took this word and that became the word that he used for his kind of counseling which he emphasized. He called it nouthetic counseling.
For many years those who came out of a more doctrinal background spent a lot of time reading Jay Adams material. He produced various counseling manuals and one of his first books was called Competent to Counsel, which I read in 1972. It was very well done.
I haven't paid attention to what goes on there in awhile. I know that at one time Martin Bobkin who spoke here a couple of years ago at the Pastor's Conference on the importance of a sufficient Bible, the sufficiency of Christ in understanding this concept of counseling or advice giving to other believers that Bobkin was close to Adams. Every time he said that things in that movement had changed. I think Adams may have gone to be with the Lord recently. But that was his idea was that this is part of the ministry of the body of believers. He did hit on a truth there.
Then he began to institutionalize it. I think that's where the problem came. It is that we are all supposed to be prepared by the doctrine in our soul to be able to advise and counsel. I use that not in a bad sense, not in the sense of going through a 15 or 20-hour sessions with a psychotherapist; but just advising people, helping people to face the issues of life.
You have many examples of this. For example Scripture says in Titus 3 that older women are to teach younger women to do what? It doesn't say older women are to teach the younger women in the ladies' Monday morning Bible study. It doesn't say that. It says older women are to teach the younger women how to love their husbands. When they've been married 3 or 4 years and their husband has now embarked on a new career and he leaves at 5:30 in the morning and gets home at 8:30 at night.
The wife is saying, "You don't pay any attention to me anymore. I'm not important to you."
How do you handle that? What do you do when your husband all of a sudden can't get a job? He has been home unemployed for a year and a half. He hasn't shaved in 6 weeks. He's just turning into a couch potato. How do you handle that? How do you handle situations with your children? You know you need to discipline them, but you feel uncomfortable as a mother. You've never done that before. You get your emotions all caught up in spanking that sweet little sin nature than you produced. So you have to go to an older experienced woman who has had success being a mother and can give you advice and counsel on how to work through these life issues. That's what we see in Scripture. We've experienced that in one degree or another within our lives.
There are mature believers we can go to and be advised how to handle these kinds of situations. But it's preceded by knowledge. So older women are to teach younger women how to love their husbands, how to love their children, how to be workers at home. Not all women are naturally domestic. Not all women are naturally clean and orderly around the house or good homemakers. They may not have come up in an environment like that.
So they need to learn from others "How do I take care of these kinds of things around the house? How do I be a good wife?"
Men have to learn how to be a good husband. There needs to be older men who do the same thing for younger men. It's just part of those friendships and relationships that are built within the body of Christ.
So this word noutheteo is often used in that kind of a context. So we admonish one another. This isn't a formal thing. It's not something that you run around looking for opportunities to admonish one another. It's just something that comes over the course of time and the course of growth.
The 10th "one another" is given in 1 Corinthians 12:25. So let's turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12.
This is one of the greatest studies we could do in understanding the dynamics of a local church in the body of Christ, the whole doctrine of ecclesiology. Unfortunately there are many times churches just don't spend enough time thinking about what the Bible says about the role of the local church.
In 1 Corinthians 12, the context talks about first of all the body of Christ which is the organism that is made up of all the members, every believer in the Church Age. So this involves of course believers from the time of the apostles all the way up to the present. Those who haven't been born yet or those who haven't been saved yet aren't part of the body of Christ yet. But we're a part of the body of Christ. It's just as real for John Nelson Darby even though he's with the Lord as it is for Louis Sperry Chafer who is with the Lord and us; and we're not. We're all part of the body of Christ. There's a unity there.
At certain times some elements are gone. Now at any given time in terms of a specific slice of time, there also has to be a spread of the spiritual gifts. God just didn't dump all of the gifts of pastor teacher in the 1st century or 2nd century or 3rd century.
We don't sit around and say, "You know Darby and Scofield and Chafer had such great gifts and such great abilities. Now that they've gone to be with the Lord, let's just sit here and continue to read their works and in some cases listen to tape recordings and not go forward."
In every generation you have other men that are given gifts of pastor-teacher; others who are given gifts of helps, administration, mercy all these other spiritual gifts. So in any sizable group of believers (and I would say 50 or 60 believers), you're going to have some sort of spread of spiritual gifts. God is still sovereign over the body of Christ and distributing these gifts so that there is a way in which different believers with different gifts can minister to one another.
So in 1 Corinthians 12 Paul talks about both the unity of the body that:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:12 For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members
That is, all the individuals.
of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.
That's that interdependency and the unity. So there's the diversity. There's the unity. There's the many. There's the one.
Verse 13 says:
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:13 For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free -- and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:14 For in fact the body is not one member but many.
So he goes back and forth showing the connection between the individual and the unity.
Then he goes in to talk about the different gifts that make up the distinguished, the different members of the body of Christ.
Now skip down with me to verse 23.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:23 And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty,
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:24 but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it,
NKJ 1 Corinthians 12:25 that there should be no schism in the body,
See God has designated each part and each part has a function. That's the thrust of the context.
but that the members should have the same care for one another.
So just because one person has that out front gift of pastor teacher or evangelist doesn't mean he should be honored or cared for any more or any less that everybody else. There is a sense in which those who lead well are given double honor, but that's a different issue. Here he is talking about we are to care for one another and be concerned for one another, not overlooking others because they may not be as well liked or as attractive as others.
1 Corinthians 12:25 uses the word merimna. That's the noun. Here it uses the verb merimnao, which is the form of the noun for this word. This is the same word that's used over in Philippians 4.
NKJ Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;
And later in 1 Peter:
NKJ 1 Peter 5:7 casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.
It's that idea of having care or concern for someone. So we're not to be anxious for anything in that negative sense of worry, in Philippians 4. But here we see the positive sense of that word which is to show care and concern and interest in helping one another. That's that same word. It has a negative sense and a positive sense. So we are to care for one another. We're to watch over and pay attention to those who have needs.
See that's one thing that I've noticed from the very beginning of this church. There seems to be a very nice sensitivity, and I don't use that word in the modern psychobabble sense but an awareness of what is going on with other people in the congregation. There are those who have difficulties and challenges at various times and people pay attention to that. They find out about it and they do little things that are not observed and not known and not necessarily orchestrated by the deacons. That's how it should be. That shows that individuals have a measure of spiritual maturity and interest in care and concern in the life of people within the congregation.
So this leads to a similar idea that's expressed a little different way in Galatians 5:13. This is the point, the 11th point. We are to serve one another through love. So serving one another is related to the basic mandate of loving one another.
In Galatians 5:13 Paul says:
NKJ Galatians 5:13 For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh,
That is, for the sin nature.
but through love serve one another.
That's a positive command. Notice first of all he used a negative and then a positive. He's teaching by contrast. Don't use your liberty as an opportunity to fulfill your own self-absorbed agendas but through love serve one another.
The Greek word that's used there for serving is the word douluo. It's a command here, an imperative addressed to the whole congregation and it has the idea of being a slave to.
See in our democratic society when we often translate these words doulos it's more acceptable to say servant than slave. But in that context at that time in history that was the primary connotation of a doulos was a slave. Douluo wasn't just serving. It's be enslaved to someone. It has a much stronger sense to it. So through love we are to be enslaved to one another. Helping one another gives it a much stronger impotence. So through love we are to serve one another.
Then the aspects of that are played out in the rest of chapter 5. Verse 17ff all deal with the walking by means of the Spirit. This is a product of that.
Now we looked at caring for one another and one of the ways we care for one another is to serve one another. But another aspect of serving one another is what we see in Ephesians 4:32 as well as Colossians 3:13, which is to forgive each other because we're all going to offend one another to one degree or another in our lives and we can't go around wearing our feelings on our shirt sleeves. We need to be willing to forgive one another, be kind to one another. Those passages emphasize the model again is in Christ the same way that God in Christ has forgiven you.
Now we'll stop here with the 11th point and come back and talk about forgiveness again in Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3 before we press on. We'll get to that when I get back from vacation.
Ike will be here. Part of the role of a pastor in any congregation is to support, train, prepare, and mentor young men, new pastors for the future. One of the ways in which you do that is by showing up when they teach, encouraging them, listening to them, giving them that opportunity to learn how to exercise their spiritual gifts. Spiritual gifts don't just happen. It does mean that the day you get the spiritual gift of pastor-teacher when you're saved that you walk out and suddenly you can read the Bible and teach the Bible. You have to go through that process of training.
The only way you can learn to explain things is to stand in a pulpit and do it. So that's always been an emphasis in my ministry through the years is giving opportunities to seminary students, young guys to exercise their gift to learn how to use it.
You go through seminary and you have to take a series of classes on homiletics which is for those who come out of a doctrinal teaching type church like ours is just a waste of time. There are a few things you'll learn in terms of basic principles of any kind of speech or public speaking that are valuable; but there's nobody out there trying to teach anybody how to teach the Word the way we believe it ought to be taught. If pastors with some experience with this don't learn how to do it and pass it on those who are new, they're not going to figure it out. That's what many of us had to do.
I remember when I was first getting out of seminary I would take the passages that I was teaching and I would listen to Pastor Thieme teach that. I would listen to Charlie Clough teach it. I would listen to George Meissinger teach it. I'd listen to about 5 or 6 different guys not to hear what they said about the passage, but after you do the exegesis how do you go from that to teaching the principles. How do you go from that to teaching people how to think critically in light of what they learn from those passages? For years that's what I did trying to figure these principles out from these examples.
Trust me there's nobody out there and I meet weekly. We met this morning with several pastors and I've done this for year. They're screaming for this because nobody ever was able to take them through and teach them a methodology because somewhere along the line people got a mystical idea about the gift of pastor-teacher.
They thought, "Well, they've got the gift. Somehow they sit in their study, open their Bible and it's there."
That's a crock. That is the biggest garbage and idiocy I've ever run across in my life. Yet I run across people who think that all the time. It's part of our responsibility as a local church is to support, train, prepare future pastors like David Dunn. David is still in that process of growth.
The first 10 years a man is in a pastorate, he should never be taped. That's not a law, that's just my opinion because when he's between his 20th year and 30th year he doesn't want any of those tapes from the first 10 years to be heard by anybody. I've destroyed all of mine I think. You just don't want it because you're learning. You're trying to figure out how to make it without training wheels and it's an on the job training thing.
So David will be here on the two Tuesday nights that I'm gone and then Ike will be here on Thursday nights and Sunday mornings.
So let's bow our heads in closing prayer.
Illustrations