SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/27/2018 8:48 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Exhortation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Acts 20:1a,
2b
Message of the verses: “And after the uproar had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples and when he had exhorted them and taken his leave of them…and had given them much exhortation”
I have to believe that the exhortation that Paul was
preaching with to the Ephesians after this riot does not go on nearly as much
as it should be going on in today’s church.
John MacArthur adds: “Preaching
that exhorts from the Word no longer holds the central place it held in the
early church (Acts 10:42; 13:5, 32; 14:7, 15, 21; 15:35; 16:10; 17:3, 13;
20:25; 28:31). Paul’s charge to Timothy
to ‘give attention to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and
teaching’ (1 Tim. 4:13) is too often ignored.
“The results of downplaying strong, biblical preaching
are tragic. When pastors neglect their
responsibility for ‘the equipping of the saints’ (Eph. 4:12a), then the saints
cannot do their ‘work of service’ (Eph. 4:12b).
As a result, the ‘building up of the body of Christ’ (Eph. 4:12c) does
not take place. The disastrous
consequences include lack of true unity (4:13a), imperfect knowledge of Jesus
Christ (4:13b), and lack of spiritual maturity (4:13c), resulting in immature
‘children’ who are ‘tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every
wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming’
(4:14).”
In John MacArthur’s commentary he continues with two more
pages talking about the preaching that goes on today in many places. I have to make a decision as to whether or
not I am going to quote this entire section as there are many good thoughts and
instructions in it that may benefit some who read these Spiritual Diaries.
I think that it best that I go ahead and quote this
entire section, which I will break up into the next two days for our Spiritual
Diary.
“Why is preaching being minimized? First, because of the widespread assaults on
the authority of Scripture. Never in the
history of the church has the Bible been subjected to the savage attacks it has
endured in the last century and a half. Skeptical unbelievers deny the
inspiration of the Scriptures, deriding them as the pre-scientific myths of the
Hebrew tribes. They assert that the
Bible is rife with gross scientific blunders historical errors, even moral blemishes.
“More subtle attacks have come from those within the
church. Some agree with the skeptics
that the Bible contains errors, yet claim that it is still authoritative. The absurdity of such a view is obvious,
‘for while it is no doubt a
mystery that eternal truth is revealed in temporal events and presented in
human words, it is sheer unreason to say that this truth is revealed in and
through that which is erroneous.
(Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ‘The Authority of Scripture,’ in Donald Guthrie,
J. A. Motyer, Alan M. Stibbs, and Donald J. Wiseman, eds., The New Bible Commentary:
Revised [Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1970], 10)
“Others affirm the Bible’s inspiration and
inerrancy but deny in practice its uniqueness as a source of divine
revelation. The claim that God speaks
today through prophecies, visions, and dreams denies that the Bible alone
contains ‘the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3)
and ‘everything pertaining to life and godliness’ (2 Pet. 1:3).
“Paul’s exhortation was firmly based on the
authoritative Scriptures (as were his writings—cf. Rom. 4:3; 9:17; 10:11; 11:2;
Gal. 3:8, 22; 4:30; 1 Tim. 5:18). Acts
17:2 notes that ‘according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three
Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures.’ To the Corinthians he wrote:
‘3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.’
He instructed the young pastor Timothy to ‘give attention
to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation and teaching’ (1 Tim. 4:13),
since ‘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’ (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
“The loss of belief in an authoritative Scripture
seriously undermines preaching. In fact,
there can be no truly biblical preaching if the Bible’s authority and singular
preeminence are rejected, since that would leave no divine revelation to
proclaim. What is left is humanistic
rationalism on the one hand or subjective mysticism on the other, both of which
are antithetical to biblical preaching.”
In my opinion one of the greatest things that causes
people not to believe the Bible as being true and authoritavely is the theory
of evolution, as I have written about in many earlier SD’s. Evolution not only effects those who are not
believers in that it causes people to believe that the universe is just one
great gigantic accident, and it causes believers to stumble when the read the
first few chapters in Genesis which clearly states that God created all that we
see in six 24 hour days. If you take this
part of Scripture and cause people to doubt it, then you can take other parts
of Scripture and bring about doubt in it too.
If creation is not true the perhaps salvation is not true either. You cannot pick and chose different doctrines
from the Bible and believe some are true and others are not.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “John.”
Today’s Bible
question: “The fruit of what tree was
Adam forbidden to eat?” (Hint: It was not the apple tree!)
Answer in our next SD.
6/27/2018 10:02 AM
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