Retain, Guard and Entrust God’s Word

Transcript

GRM 563
3/22/1998
Retain, Guard and Entrust God’s Word
2 Timothy 1:13-14, 2:2
Gil Rugh

If you’ve been around Indian Hills very long, you’ll know there are certain subjects that I return to again and again, passages of scripture we cover quite often. If you attend regularly there will be certain messages I preach you will know well enough to preach yourselves, and I will feel a success when you do that. Certain areas, I believe, are of foundational importance to us and we’re going to be talking about one of those areas as we review the matter of God’s word and God’s truth today.

Some of you maybe saw the question section in yesterday’s local Lincoln Journal, where they interview six people or ask six people the question, should linking same sex marriages to the erosion of family values be a legitimate campaign issue in the Governor’s race? I don’t want to get into all of that, but the question of the issue of same sex marriages and should that be brought up as a family value issue. Here we are in Lincoln, Nebraska and they interviewed six people and five of them said no. Let me read you some of the responses. No, it shouldn’t be an issue. I don’t see how same sex marriages erodes family values. Another person says, no, it’s horrible that something so ludicrous should be an issue, the things are not linked. No, there are better things to worry about. It breeches voter privacy. The Constitution forbids it. Now, this is obviously six people, not a broad sampling, but I think it does reflect something of the way people are thinking. The other thing that interested me in this, five of the six people said same sex marriages don’t contribute to the erosion of family values. The only person who said he thought they did was the youngest person questioned. We sometimes say that it’s the young people who are losing their way. But two of the people interviewed, one was 67 and one was 70, and both of those didn’t feel that the issue of same sex marriages and family values ought to be related. What that tells me is the influence that is eroding our society is not just among the young people. These people are older than I am and they don’t see any connection between family values and same sex marriages. They weren’t raised that way, but somehow the thinking of our day that has become acceptable has influenced them, and it has a tendency to influence us more than we would acknowledge, even as bible believing Christians.

When something is repeated often enough and forcefully enough, we begin to look for ways to adjust and adapt. We’ve all be in a situation, maybe it’s not even related to a biblical issue, where someone will ask a question and you’re ready just to give your opinion and someone else just blurts out how stupid it would be for anybody to hold such and such a view. All of a sudden, what, you think, I think I’ll save my opinion till later.
There’s just something about being in that environment where you sense a hostility and strongly voiced opposing opinions that make you begin to think, I’m not comfortable presenting an opposing view, same vein but a different vein.

I picked up out of a footnote of a book I was reading and there was a number of things I could have picked out, but I picked this person as an example. A person who is a professor of New Testament Studies at Harvard Divinity School. We think of Harvard as a scholarly center of training in our country and this is Harvard Divinity School of Harvard University. This professor of New Testament Studies encourages women students to write apocryphal text from the perspective of leading women in early Christianity. Now let me explain what’s going on here. This is not a course in creative writing, this is a course in New Testament Studies at Harvard Divinity School and the professor there encourages the female students to write apocryphal text, make up stories that would reflect the thinking of women from early Christianity. But these are apocryphal stories, you just make them up, what you think women would have thought and you get an idea that you would expect being taught in a center of scholarly learning is grappling perhaps with the text of New Testament and related issues, dramatical matters, historical studies and so on, that shed light on the New Testament. What were they doing? They’re creating stories from a woman’s perspective of how they might have taught. In the environment we have with leading feminists on which this woman professor is one, that create these stories which become the environment then in which they work their theology.

We see this expressed today with the emphasis, since we don’t have women preachers, broadly speaking, and women professors, we are not getting a woman’s insights on the scripture. Even Evangelical churches are beginning to talk this kind of talk. If we don’t have women teaching and women preaching, we don’t get a woman’s perspective on the scripture. You know what we are saying? That the scripture is not objective truth on its own, but the truth really comes from the persons studying and teaching it. So the truth does not reside in the text of this book, but it resides in me, and since I’m a man, I can only reflect truth as I would think it. So then you would need a woman to teach it and then, of course, you need the diversity of multiracial racial and multicultural cultural, because all of those will have their perspective and thoughts on truth, and what we do is erode the concept of this book is truth. It is truth and objective truth. It says what it says and means what it means. I study it to understand and appreciate what it says, understand what it means, but I don’t make it say what I would want it to say.

And all of this kind of thinking going around. We find the Evangelical church and Christians often don’t realize that they are on a slide and they are moving a slide that is going down. They are up here on the slide maybe and others are down here, but they’re on the same slide and are going to the same place, because once you let go of the concept this is absolute, unchanging truth, then it will be a process of adjustment and change like we have seen take place in some of the mainline denominations.

They just didn’t wake up one morning and say, we no longer believe the bible. How can the Methodist church be caught up in debates over whether same sex marriages are right or wrong? Then of course you get a collection of pastors together and they pass judgment. It is not wrong!

You think John Wesley would have voted that way, Charles Wesley, the early leaders in the Methodist church, no. What happened? They didn’t just wake up one morning and say you know; I’ve decided we don’t believe the bible anymore. It happened in little pieces as you let go of the scripture and you adjust your thinking.

So we come to today where we say something it’s a black and white issue, open your bible and read a verse. That never crosses their mind. It can’t be resolved on that level, it’s much more complicated than that. What they have really done is abandon this book as truth and now truth has to come from the collection of thoughts which are drawn from where our society is today. Erosion continues to go on. This issue of truth resides in the person and not outside the person in any book or anything, is a major issue today, it’s an interpretation issue, a hermeneutical issue, even among Evangelicals, sad to say.

I want to start out by looking at some verses in Psalm 119 with you as a little bit of background and reminder. I’m coming from the foundation that the bible is God’s truth.
It is God’s truth and thus eternal and unchanging. It has been given to mankind, with the intention that we would know and understand it, that we would believe and submit to it.
We’ll just pick up a few verses out of Psalm 119, toward the end, verse 142. “Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your law is truth.” The law, the Mosaic law was the scripture as David had it. He says it is truth. He doesn’t say it contains truth, that it’s part of the truth, your law is truth. Look at verse 151. You are near, O Lord, and all your commandments are truth, not some of them.

We have the Jesus seminar that exists today. You know what these are? These are supposed New Testament scholars, who study the gospels, then they get together and cast votes on what they think in the gospels are truly the Word of Christ. It was at the gospel of John only one verse made it, but in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, that is not even part of the inspired scripture, a large portion of it was accepted as genuine. I mean here you’ve got men with colored chips, or whatever, casting them out, you know, this color chip means you think strong probability it is, this colored chip means doubtful it is, another color chip solidly convinced it’s not. I mean this is the way we handle truth. Men who can call themselves scholars sit together and put out this kind of nonsense, when you could have turned to Psalm 119, verse 151 and it says, “All your commandments are truth.” Another way of saying, everything God has said is truth.

Look at verse l60. The sum of your word is truth, and connected with that everyone of your righteous ordinances is everlasting. This is not only truth, it is everlasting truth. This is not, well, truth that would have been true in the day in which it was written, but we live in a different culture, in a different day, that was cultural for them. No, you understand this is the transcultural God. Everyone of your ordinances is everlasting. These verses that we are reading were written 3,000 years ago, in a different part of the world that has a totally different culture. You know what, they are just as much true today, 2,000 years after Christ, as they were when the psalmist wrote them l,000 years before Christ, because it’s the word of God.

Back up to verse 89 of Psalm 119. “Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven, your word stands firm in heaven forever.” Men can debate it, can decide they like it, don’t like it, submit to it, reject it, but the truth stands. This word is truth, it is unchanging truth.

Just jot down Isaiah, Chapter 40, verse 8. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God abides forever.” You know in the context he’s not primarily contrasting the word of God in grass and flowers, because the whole context there says all flesh is grass and all the glory of man is as the flower of the grass. The grass withers, the flower fades. Man and his glory comes and goes, but “the word of God abides forever.” Many great and powerful, rich and influential people have come and gone in the last 3,000 years and they are just, if anything, a footnote in history. At best, if you go back very far, just ruins of what they built, but the word of God is fresh and alive and true today.

Turn over to the New Testament to 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 7. How sad it has come, that man is so set in his rebellion against God, so set against the truth that God has given, that he makes himself an absolute fool in trying to conjure up ideas and thoughts that will enable him to make some sense of life, given some meaning and purpose to life, without having to acknowledge the existence of the true and living God. So now that we come with the absorbing of Eastern mysticism and so on into even our society and culture, the idea that God is within and truth is within and you need to discover yourself, and we are creating our reality and we’re making our own truth, so we should write our own stories which will then become our religious environment. Could it be any clearer that we worship the creature rather than the Creator. Amazing, I become god, my stories, my thoughts become truth. How foolish, how ridiculous, how stupid. But man has to do something, and he keeps coming up with something and that idea finally gets demolished and he has to come up with something else.

We have the truth of God, as God’s people, and in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 7, as Paul talks about the revelation God has given he says, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves.” Here we’re told that God has spoken and what He has said has been written down and entrusted to human beings. It was communicated from God through human instruments, like the apostle Paul, like David, who wrote so much of the Psalms. He spoke through earthen vessels and this treasure of truth is passed on from earthen vessel to earthen vessel, so that it could be abundantly clear, that the dramatic transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ is a testimony to the work of God, not of man. “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

I want to talk about, for the remainder of our time, our responsibility to this truth. Nothing new, nothing complicated, but I am very concerned that the drift in the Evangelical church begins with a departure from the basics. A weakening on that which is foundational and thus, it ends up with a loss of truth as its heritage, if you will.

Come over to 2 Timothy, chapter l. What I want to do is look at a series of commands Paul gives to Timothy here. We’re going to jump into I say the middle of this, not literally the middle, but in idea. Then this evening in our study I want to go back and look at the commands, if you will, that surrounds these commands and put them in their context, help us to appreciate the kind of ministry that we are being called to with these commands.

2 Timothy, as you are aware, is Paul’s last letter. It was written to Timothy who led the ministry at Ephesus, one of the churches in Asia Minor and the vicinity of Colossae. We just finished studying the letter to the church at Colossae. This is Paul’s last letter. He is in his imprisonment in Rome, that will culminate in his execution, as he writes this letter.

Later he will say the process that will culminate in his martyrdom has already begun, as the process of trials are underway. Things have gotten so intense, that those who are with him there from Asia have abandoned him, he says at the end of Chapter l. The heat was on, so to speak. People with Paul had come to the realization Paul is not going to escape this time, he’s not going to be delivered this time. They had begun to think there’s not much future for us in sticking it out, because we could get caught up in Paul’s trials here and problems and experience a similar fate. So, they were bailing out on the apostle Paul, as he writes this letter. It’s at the end of this letter where he refers to the fact Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, we looked at in our study at the end of Colossians.

But Paul is concerned that Timothy stand firm and strong and his exhortation to Timothy is part of our inspired scripture, it is an exhortation to us as well. I want to look at three of the commands that Paul gives to Timothy, picking up with verse l3. He gives three commands, you can mark them and then we will look at them, you may have them marked from previous studies we’ve done on this passage. The first is “retain” in verse l3, retain or hold on to, given as an imperative, a command. The second command is in verse l4, “guard” or keep, protect, and the third command we’ll look at is down in chapter 2, verse 2, middle of the verse, “entrust” or commit. There are other commands that we’ll look at in our next study tonight, but I want to focus these three commands, because they talk about the responsibility that we have to the truth of God. To the truth of God that is forever settled in heaven. To the truth of God that has been committed to us, vessels of dust, earthen vessels. What is our responsibility? What was Timothy’s responsibility, as in affect, you have a changing of guard taking place. Paul realizes soon he will be martyred, and it will be left to Timothy and to others to carry on the ministry of truth. What must they do?

The first command in verse 13 is retain the standard of sound words, which you have heard from me in the faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus. Retain, present imperative, means to have it in your possession, be holding on to this. Back up in chapter 3 of 1 Timothy, regarding the deacons. They are to be men, in verse 9 of 1 Timothy 3, who are “holding.” That’s the participial form of this word. Holding, retaining, the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. Holding on to, having in their possession, having a grasp of the word of God. That was a requirement to be a deacon.

Over in Titus, chapter 1, just after the book of 2 Timothy, the book of Titus, chapter 1, verse 9, regarding elders. They are to be holding fast, there’s our word again, holding fast, retaining, having possession of the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching and truth which was taught by Paul and other apostles. They may be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict. See these dimensions, both positive and negative, exhort and refute. So, you have to have the word of God in your possession.

Now come back to chapter 1 of 2 Timothy, verse l3, you note what he’s added. “The standard of sound words, which you have heard from me.” So, there is a body of truth that Timothy is required to have in his possession to be holding on to. That’s the foundation requirement. If you don’t obey this command, the others dissipate. If you don’t have in your possession truth, true truth as Francis Schafer said, then you can’t follow the rest of the commands that are given. If you have corrupted truth, if you have truth that has been adulterated, then you can’t fulfill the command “to retain the standard of sound words, which you’ve heard from me.” You see there is a set body of truth that has been entrusted to Paul and others who are recipients of scripture. He’s not going to tell Timothy he is to add to this, make corrections as you see them as you continue your ministry, add your insights to it. No, he’s to have in his possession and grasp the truth that has been entrusted to others, Paul in particular here.

Timothy had heard this and received this from Paul, “in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.” That’s how Timothy is to hold on to it. In the context of his settled faith in Christ and the love which is produced for others in the family of God, and thus is a motivation in faithfulness in handling the truth. We’re going to see this matter of you hold it in the context of your faith in Christ and the love which He’s produced in your life for others. The handle on the truth and the faithfulness in holding the truth becomes an identifying mark of a genuine Christian.

I am puzzled what is happening in our own day. I scratch my head and try to understand what is taking place in certain people’s lives. I was reading several accounts this past week of people who have moved from a position of calling themselves bible believing, Evangelical Christians to being out and out supporters of the occults, of the identifying of mixing of the bible with Eastern mysticism and so on, men who have moved from a position of writing, supporting the inherency of scripture to a position of advocating in books they’re writing, that God does not even know what’s going to happen tomorrow. You know, I say what is happening, how to people that start out seemingly so sound, end up here and I’ve come to the conviction in light of some verses we’re going to look at, that a person’s attitude toward the word, not just on a given day but over the course of their life, reveals whether they were ever truly saved or not. And one thing I’ve come to the conviction of is the devil can be an advocate of very good theology over the short term for the accomplishing of his purposes. He can infiltrate his teachers and his leaders in the context of the church and during that time when they’re being accepted and established, they promote very good theology. But then over time, their true character comes out and they begin to destroy the church from the inside.

So that moves us to our next point. Not only are we to have a good grasp on the truth of God that has been passed on to us, but we are commanded, verse l4, to guard the truth.
“Guard through the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us, the treasure which has been entrusted to you.” Strong, sharp command here, aorist imperative, “guard the treasure.” You have it in your possession. I’ve passed it on to you. Now you are responsible to protect it, guard it against loss, addition, destruction, change of any kind. There is to be no alteration in the message. Just a few verses we looked at and we could have spent the whole morning just multiplying verses, but if they are true, then everyone of God’s everlasting ordinances are righteous, forever His word is settled in heaven. What is there to change? What is there to improve? What is there to correct? You would be saying, and this is where the theologians that I referred to have come to the position that God doesn’t even know tomorrow, He’s a changing God. He’s a God who, at best, has a long history so He can guess about tomorrows more than you. Yet one of the men who has written that, if you were going to ask me one of the best books written in the last 30 years on the inherency of scripture, I would recommend his book to you. That was written 25 years ago of course. I say, how did that man end up where he is? Somewhere along the line, he lost sight of the responsibility to guard, to protect, to keep the word of God. That’s why I find myself drawn back to these passages again and again, not just for your benefit but for my benefit. I’m convinced he didn’t just wake up one morning and say, you know, I’m going to change my whole idea about God. But in little ways erosion took place. Adjustments in the handling of the word of God took place and you end up where you never thought you would be.

Look at the end of 1 Timothy, chapter 6, verse 20. You see Paul was burdened about this. “Oh Timothy,” 1 Timothy, chapter 6, verse 20, “Oh Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you.” See the responsibility, “guard what has been entrusted to you.” Be careful about what you add, Timothy, I’m sure you’re as smart as I am, you can make some improvements. No, guard it, “avoiding worldly and empty chatter in the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith.” Already in Paul’s day, there were professing believers who had wandered from the truth, because they thought they had acquired greater knowledge. Yet it’s a non-issue for the bulk of the church today, that all truth is God’s truth. We’ve hammered that so long we’re tired of hearing it.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been reading some material that has been recently published and foundational. The guy just mentions it in passing, it isn’t an assumption, all truth is God’s truth, we all know that. I say, writes with an Evangelical position, and he doesn’t even want to talk about it, we just know that’s true. Well, some of us don’t know that’s true, because if you use all truth is God’s truth for the excuse to bring other things to the word of God to make it more usable and more effective today, you’ve begun to use what is falsely called knowledge and you’ve wandered from the truth. There’s pressure to do this. We’ll see more of this in our study tonight.

But things happen. I feel the pressure. Maybe that’s why I preach these sermons for myself, and you have to listen. Everybody comes together and you say, oh, and go away, Gil was preaching to himself again, he needed it, good. Well, feel your time was well spent, because I feel the pressure at times. If I preach this I know it’s only to raise questions. Here we go again, we’re against it, we’re refuting somebody. I’m trying to learn.

I’m reading a book on church growth and the man has reminded me repeatedly, positive preaching draws people. Lord, I want to draw people and he’s right. Why did you put so much of the wrong stuff in your book? But I feel the pressure. If I preach this what’s going to be the result? Here we go, and you feel the pressure, there’s a little bit of tension. If I spoke up this morning and said I want to preach about the problems of feminism in the church. You know, we feel that tension. So, one of the ways I fail to guard the truth is when I don’t refute that which contradicts. I don’t deny it, I just skip over it. But in my heart I know the reason I’m not addressing this is I’m trying to avoid trouble, I’m trying to avoid conflict and I’m trying not to offend people that might be here on Sunday morning who are not committed to the word of God. Who would walk out and say, well, if that’s what he’s going to preach about, I’m not going back there. So, there is the pressure that’s there for us, not to guard the word of God. We begin slowly by not denying anything, there’s just subjects we don’t address. They’re probably not most appropriate on Sunday morning. We don’t want to talk about sin on Sunday morning, we talk about it on Wednesday and Sunday night, but Sunday morning, you know, we have a lot of visitors. It just wouldn’t be the right time to talk about sin. Well, you know, pretty soon I decide there’s other things that wouldn’t be a good time to talk about either, homosexuality.

I want you to invite people whom you may know who are into homosexuality so that they may hear the gospel and be saved. But you know, you probably shouldn’t touch on that either. Pretty soon we just want to talk about positive things, and we all know who helped lead the way in that, Norman Vincent Peale, through Robert Schuller and now through many others in the Evangelical church.

Positive preaching works. Who would have ever thought that Robert Schuller would become the guru for the Evangelical church, not the Gil Rugh, the guru, get it straight.
Somebody will go out and say, you know, Gil Rugh said he’s a follower of Bob Schuller, I heard him. Get up and say I’m the Gil Rugh for Bob Schuller, no! The leading books for the Evangelical church, written by professing Evangelicals, being used in seminaries that acclaim to be Evangelical are written by men who have adopted Robert Schuller’s principles, by their own acknowledgment. I didn’t think I would see the day when the Evangelical bible believing church would believe that you have to adopt Schuller’s methodology in the Evangelical church. Tragic day, how did we get there? The little steps, but little steps. You watch your kids, you know, they take little steps, but they can take a lot of them, and we sometimes find these little steps go faster and faster. Very hard to pull it back once it begins to drift.

You’re in 2 Timothy, look over in chapter 4. Paul tells Timothy to “preach the word,” because, in verse 3, “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine.” That is a statement of inspired scripture. Preach it while you can, the time will come when they will not put up with it. Now I, as a preacher feel pressure. You, as a member of this fellowship of believers feel the pressure. If we’re going to continue to preach the truth when people will not put up with the truth, you know what we’re going to do, we’re going to shrink. We begin to shrink and to shrink, pretty soon we begin to feel the pressure. Something is wrong, we’ve got to turn this around.

Verse 4 says they’ll turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths, while they will listen to certain things. We’re going to hold to our strong commitment to the scripture, we’re not going to change our doctrinal statement, but we’re going to change our methods, and I want to assure you, I haven’t changed anything I believe. We’re only changing methodology here, and part of the methodology we’re changing is I’m no longer going to preach the whole counsel of God to you on Sunday morning. But be assured, your friends will come and stay. We begin to make adjustments in our thinking, that there’s something not quite right, but it doesn’t seem totally wrong, let’s see how it works out. Well, you know what happens, it begins to work out and pretty soon I adjust to it, pretty soon I can live with it, pretty soon I like it. In fact, pretty soon I can hardly tolerate teaching if it’s too strong on doctrine and I go away wondering why they would even teach that stuff on Sunday morning that’s not appropriate. How did that change happen?

Acts, chapter 20, you can just jot it down, Acts, chapter 20, verses 28-32, Paul warned the elders at Ephesus, the church where Timothy is he’s writing to. “Be on guard for yourself and for the whole flock of God among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Know that from among yourselves, men will arise, speaking perverse things, seeking to draw away the disciples after them, from among your own selves, from within the church, among those who profess to know Jesus Christ and want to be faithful to Him.”
That’s where the false teaching will come and will draw away people from the truth.

Go back to 2 Corinthians, chapter 2, verse 17. Paul says, “we are not like the many,” and that word “many” is a translation of a Greek word, has a definite article with it, hoi, hoi polloi. We use it in English sometimes, the hoi polloi, the masses. We’re not like the hoi polloi, the masses, the many, peddling the word of God. Already in Paul’s day this kind of drift was taking place. For Paul says there’s an abundance of people who are corrupting. That word to “peddle the word of God,” means to adulterate something to make it salable. You make changes in your product so people will buy it. It’s not improvement, that’s why you’re a huckster, you’re covering up something. Paul says
“we’re not like the many,” not like the mass of people, not like the majority here, the many, who are adjusting the word of God to make it salable. That is such a danger. I fear for myself. Men I have admired I’ve seen drift. I fear that I would do that. I won’t wake up tomorrow morning and say, you know what, I’m not going to preach the word of God anymore. I would fear that I will begin to say, well, you know I’m going to ease up, I’m not going to cover that subject, but pass over that as we go through the word because there is no sense. We finally gotten settled down. I’m not going to ruffle any feathers now. I begin to do that there will be more and more that is unacceptable, less, and less that I am comfortable with.

Look over in chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians, verse 2. Paul says, “we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God.” Being crafty, adulterating the word, being clever, giving forth the scripture, but I’m not really giving forth the scripture as I should, because if I gave it forth as I should, it would have the same impact it had when Christ gave it forth, when Paul gave it forth. There would people who would say, I’m not going to put up with that, I’ll never be back.
But Jesus had to confront his disciples after everybody was leaving Him and ask, will you leave too? We want to have the same message with the opposite effect. People can’t get in the door because they should love it. Well, there’s seasons it happens at times, but it won’t happen long term, be sure.

All right, we’ve got to go quickly. Why do I tell you that? I need to tell myself that. 1 know you’d like to go quickly. Jude 3, we’re going to Revelation but stop at Jude 3, middle of the verse. “I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith.” We could just spend studies looking at just the verses where you have this kind of emphasis. Jude says I was compelled really by the Holy Spirit to ask you to “contend earnestly for the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints.” You know there’s a finality to the revelation of God, and you need to do battle for it. “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, ungodly persons who turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny the only Lord and Master.” They’d infiltrated the church. Jude said you have got to go to battle, wake up, you’re in a war here.

Look over at the end of Revelation, chapter 22. These are verses that apply particularly and specifically to the book of Revelation, but they show you God’s attitude toward His word. If we had the time we could go back to the Old Testament and start to look at the same things said in the book of Deuteronomy and so on. It’s God’s attitude toward His word. Look at Revelation 22, verse 18. “I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book; if anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in this book and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life from the holy city, which are written in this book.” That’s what I said earlier, I really think that a person’s attitude toward the word of God reveals whether they are truly believers are not. You sometimes have to see that over a period of time. Because if you add to the word of God or you take away from the word of God, you’ll have no part in the book of life or no part in the tree of life. You are not a child of God. You say, well, how could they have been so straight, so correct at one time. I have to say I’m amazed what has caused me to realize is the devil has much better theology than we give him credit for. He just does not have good theology over time, that’s the problem.

One other command. Come back to 2 Timothy. We’ll just mention it quickly, not because it’s not important, but it is somewhat self-explanatory. 2 Timothy 2:2, And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also. Deposit this, entrust it. The same word was used up at the end of verse 14 of chapter 1 of 2 Timothy, the treasure which has been entrusted to you, deposited with you. You now, take these same things. You note the emphasis on the same things, the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrusted to faithful me. There is a sentence. It’s only God’s revelation that needs to be passed on. My thoughts don’t need to be passed on. If Christ doesn’t come, I’ll be dead and gone. What I have said will be forgotten, but the word of God will go on and go on and go on.

This is the process. You entrust it to others. So it’s not just something I get into my possession and then I’m going to guard, like some of the scrolls you see. They get locked away and only on a special occasion you bring it out and you want to be careful nobody touches it, like some people’s family bible. You know, it’s put out in a proper place, but you sure don’t want anybody to touch it. Well, it’s all right, I don’t have any problem you have a special bible that has certain significance, and you keep it, but you ought to have a bible that’s well-worn and worn out. But you know what? The truth of God is to get passed on and passed on. There could be some danger there, because I can pass on this truth, but I have to pass it on as it’s been given. Now we are blessed. You have it in black and white format. Here it is. Pass it on, pass this truth on, in the power of God, who enables us.

Would you come back to 1 Corinthians, chapter 4. You know, I was watching a home improvement program, Bob Vela, “Home Again”, that’s what it was. No charge for the commercial. I don’t know why I watch these programs. I can’t do anything with my hands, and I don’t have any intention of building anything, painting anything, fixing anything. Marilyn will say, you know such and such broke. I say, what do you want me to do about it? And she usually calls somebody. But I like to watch. I was watching a program not too long ago and they were showing how cement blocks are made. They were showing you how to lay cement blocks and they thought if you want to lay cement blocks you ought to know how they’re made. I said, sure, I’ll see how they’re made, show me. They take you to the factory and you know at the end of the assembly line where they made the cement blocks, they had some that were rejects, and he picks them up and said, so these are the ones that didn’t pass inspection. They said yea. He says show me why they didn’t. He holds it up and there’s a real, real fine hairline crack in the block. I said, I’d use that, of course I would, I’m dumb. The guy who made it said, yes you can’t use that because if you put that in your foundation, water will get in. Water gets in and then it will freeze. He said, pretty soon you’ll have real problems. I thought of our theology. You know, if we’re not careful, we’ll say it’s only a little crack, it won’t matter. But you put it in, over time it will matter greatly. We don’t appreciate the damage that can be done by a little drift, a little bit of bad theology.

1 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 1. Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy. Isn’t our job simple. We have been entrusted with the word of God. What is one who is entrusted as a steward with the word of God to do? Be faithful. You know, Paul goes as far as to say it doesn’t matter what you think of me, doesn’t matter what others think of it. In fact, he goes on to say, you know it doesn’t even matter what I think of myself, it matters what my Lord thinks and says. So only His evaluation will matter. Now I remind myself, the evaluation of my ministry won’t be how many people came Sunday after Sunday to hear me, how well known I am, how popular I was. The evaluation will be how faithful was I. The measure of our “success” as a church, in accomplishing the work that God has called us to do is, are we faithful.

We’ve been entrusted with the word of God and all of our ministry, as a body of believers, in one way or another, is a ministry of God’s truth, carried out in a variety of ways as we minister to one another and minister to others. Are we faithful? So, the responsibility is simple. To focus on truth. We are to hold on to it, have it in our possession. That’s the start. We have the truth, the unchanging truth of God. I was reading of an unbeliever who was one of the finest Greek scholars in the world in his day, he’s dead now. He was an unbeliever, but he said those who think the problem is in the text of the New Testament, just have no understanding. I say it because people say, well you don’t know, there’s a lot of different possible changes. Here’s an unbeliever who says, if that’s your view, you just don’t understand. We have overwhelming assurance of what the text of our scripture is. We have that in our possession. Are we guarding it? One of our roles of the church is to be protecting the truth and standing for it, and faithfully passing it on, so that the next generation will have the truth in its purity passed on to them, by people who were committed to it and modeled faithfulness to it. Let’s join together in prayer.

Thank you, Lord, for your grace. Thank you for entrusting Your mind, Your thoughts, Your truth to our care. Thank you, Lord, for giving us understanding, that we might hear and know and by Your grace believe. Lord, we desire individually and as a church to be found faithful, to stand for the truth. To be divisive when we have to be divisive. To be confrontational when we have to be confrontational. To be encouraging, to always function in love with an unshakable faith. Lord, we desire this ministry faithfully proclaim truth, Your truth, until Christ comes. We pray in His name, Amen.