◑Ninth indictment /
Psychology and sociology have replaced the Scriptures with regard to the family.
I have a ninth indictment and this is very important to me as an older man with a young family. I didn’t get married until I was 30. My had something of a little brain tumor for the first eight years. We couldn’t have children and then, oh, praise God, a child was born and then another and then another and then, who knows?
Psychology and sociology have replaced the Scriptures with regard to the family.
My dear friend, pastors, leaders, think about this. Our churches or our Sunday morning services—better said—are so cosmetic. Just because there seems to be beautiful worship and the sermon went well and people seem to be moved, that is not evidence. I will tell you what evidence is. The home, the marriages, the families.
Judges 17:6. “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.”52
If I talk to people because I go for all kinds, I find a godly man who has raised godly children and I go and I latch on to him. But in most cases do you know what I find out? The people I talk to in church all of it is wive’s tales and sociology and this and that and every other thing, what is right in their own eyes and can’t give me one biblical verse. But every once in a while I find a man and a woman who set themselves to set their family according to Scripture and the difference is overwhelming.
When I am on an airplane I love to do this. Men will sit down beside me and they will go, “What do you do?”
I go, “Oh, I’m a husband.”
They go, “Oh, what else do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a father.”
“What else do you do?”
“Well, if I have any time left over I preach a little.”
What does it matter if a man win the whole world and lose his family? And let me just put it to you this way. Based upon what are you raising your children and loving your wife? Based upon what? If you can’t start going into Scriptures right now and pulling them apart and showing me how your family is founded upon it, I can assure you, you are a captive of psychology, sociology, the whims and the lies of this age.
You see, you don’t have the right to do... You have no authority, sir, apart from the Word of God.
Look at Genesis 18:19. “For I have chosen him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring upon Abraham what He has spoken about him.”53 What a beautiful thing?
And listen, Romans chapter 12 verses one and two. Well, verse two tells us that the will of God is perfect. So if you ever come up with this idea as a man of God, “I am sacrificing my family for the sake of the ministry,” I will tell you, you are a bald faced liar. You are sacrificing your family for the sake of the little kingdom you are trying to build because the will of God is perfect. That means I do not have to violate the will of God with regard to my family in order to fulfill the will of God with regard to the ministry.
God doesn’t need you. He does desire that you be obedient, that you be obedient.
I just want to give you two examples. Now before... It is like when someone asked me one time, “Brother Paul, are you against evangelism?”
I said, “Yes and no. I am not against biblical evangelism, but I am against the way you are doing it.”
“Are you against Sunday school and youth groups?”
“Yes and no.”
I want to explain something to you. Now, for some of you I am not going to be enough and for some of you I am going to be too much. I just want to use these two things to point out what is wrong with us.
Sunday school. No matter what denomination you are a part of, if you are a part of some denomination that is kind of organized I can assure you that your denomination spends multi millions of dollars on Sunday school material, multi millions of dollars of conferences, on teaching teachers how to teach Sunday school, on doing everything in the book to promote Sunday school. I know that for a fact.
Let me ask you. How much money does your denomination spend and how many conference and man hours are put in to teach fathers to teach their children? So now you have found it, haven’t you? God doesn’t have a plan B. He has a plan A. You circumvent plan A, plan B won’t work.
Now I am not saying that children can’t come together in groups and be catechized or be taught or anything, but if that ever even begins to hint to supplant the ministry of the Father in the home, blow it to pieces.
Do you see what I am saying? Look at just that one tiny instance. Everything for Sunday school, everything for Sunday school. But there is hardly a conference in this entire country to teach men how to teach their children. And most of the time in the Sunday school it is nothing more than entertainment because the Sunday school teacher doesn’t have the authority to discipline your child. And even if they did they wouldn’t do it because they don’t believe in it.
That’s just one tiny instance. Let’s look at youth groups.
“Well, youth need to be together. You know, they need to be together.”
Ok, well, let’s look. Proverbs 13:20. “He who walks with wise men will be wise, But the companion of fools will suffer harm.”54
Who ever told you youth ought to be together? Who ever told you that? I’ll tell you who told you that. 1960s psychologists, generation gap. Youth are to be with adults so that they stop acting like naïve fools and join adulthood and put away foolishness which leads to destruction.
Now I am not saying you can’t bring youth together, but I submit if you do, have all their parents there.
And you say, “Well, what about the lost youth that come into our church?”
Well, what are they seeing now? The lost youth come in to your Christian youth in Church and they see almost the same thing they see in their own home, no parents, kids teaching kids. Or one guy a little bit older with mousse in hair teaching your kids.
But what would happen if lost youth came into your church and they saw the children there, the youth in a loving, wonderful relationship collectively with their parents and they would go, “Whoa. I have never seen anything like this before. His dad, look at him. He loves...I mean he loves his dad. I mean look at the... So is this Christianity?”
You see, my dear friend, let us say... I am no doctor, but a man comes up to me with a bleeding forehead and he says, “Brother Paul, I have been everywhere. No one can diagnose my problem.”
And I say, “Well, I am no doctor, but I’ll follow you around for 24 hours.”
And I notice that every time the hour strikes if it strikes one he hits himself in the head with a brick one time. If it strikes two he hits himself in the head twice with a brick. If it strikes 12, he hits himself 12 times in the head with a brick.
After observing this, cautiously and carefully, taking notes for 24 hours, I come up to him and I say, “You know, I think I have figured out your problem. I am no doctor, but I think I have figured out your problem.”
It is that pathetic among us, church. Why do our children do what they do? Why is everything...?
It is like one old dear saint, someone asked him one time, he wouldn’t let his teenage son go out with a young lady to be in some private place. And they said, “Don’t you trust your son?”
He said, “No, I don’t trust my son. What ever made you think that? I don’t trust his dad. I wouldn’t put his father alone with a woman that wasn’t his wife and yet I have much more to lose than boy. I have much more control of my will than a teenager with raging hormones. So what would you... What would make you ever think I would do that?”
We violate biblical principle after biblical principle after biblical principle and then we wonder why everything is a mess.
◑10th, Displine yourself for the purpose of godliness
Lastly, just real quick turn with me... You know when I say real quick I am speaking an allegory or something. Go to 1 Timothy. I was listening a few months ago as to all the horrendous things that are happening to our—I don’t know what you would call them anymore: republic, democracy, country, I am not really sure, socialistic state—and I was so burdened as I sat there listening and I was saying, “Oh, God, what can I do? I would, right now, Lord, honestly with all that is in me I will jump in the middle of the fire. I will... If there is a charging rhino I will jump in front of it. Just tell me what to do. Do you want me to go to Washington and just stand in front of the White House and preach until they throw me in jail? I am tired of just preaching to Christians and in churches and all of this. God, just... The country is going to hell. Just throw me. What do you want me to do? Just throw me at them.”
Verse one of chapter four. “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith,”55 1 Timothy 4:1, “paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.”56
Now, he goes on to basically tell young Timothy that all hell is going to break lose in culture, that everything is just going to be maddening, men as beasts.
I was with Conrad and Mbewe a few months ago and I heard him preach. They call him the Spurgeon of Africa and rightly so. If you get a chance to listen to him, listen to him. He is one of my favorite preachers in the world. And he said this.
He said, “In Africa we no longer fear of beasts. We don’t run from beasts. We fear men and run from men.” He was talking, of course, about depravity.
But he said here that, “Just the world is going to come unglued, Timothy.”
Now what does he say, too? Verse six. In “In pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, constantly nourished on the words of the faith.”57
And right there this text just started unraveling for me. Paul, yeah. The world has lost its mind. Everything is going to happen. It is under my providence, but listen to me. Here should be your reaction in the midst of all hell breaking loose, in the midst of apostasy, in the midst of persecution. Here is what you need to do. Be constantly nourished on the words of faith.
We always want to run out there and do something. We want to fix something. God is seeking men of character, polished, swords. First of all, son, be “constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following.”58
This “you have been following” is very important. I think it is indicating to us that a simple intellectual study of Scripture will not, will not achieve the goal that God has for his men. They must obey it. They must begin following. You cannot learn doctrine well until you follow the doctrine you learn.
And then he says this. He says, “But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women.”59
My dear friend, let me tell you something. All this Emergent Church stuff, much of the Church Growth stuff, all of the cultural sensitivity, throwing out the window biblical sensitivity, it is just a bunch of little boys wanting to play church without the power of God on their life. And I will stand on that statement.
It is a lesser than David trying to fit himself in Saul’s armor. To the wind with it.
The more you trust in the arm of the flesh, the less you are going to see of the power of God.
He says this, “On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness.”60
Man of God, you want revival. So do I. We need an army, though. If powerful swords, if mighty, flaming pipes and swords and weaponry are to be dropped out of heaven for us to fight, then we must be the caliber of men who can yield those things and wield those things and fight with them with sound character. We should discipline ourselves to the purpose of godliness.
Young men, discipline yourself to prayer. Discipline yourself to the systematic reading of Scripture from Genesis to Revelation over and over and over and over again. Discipline yourself in your speech. Discipline yourself in the company you keep. Discipline yourself in when you go to bed and when you rise up. This is a war. Discipline yourself.
Young men, I can tell you this. Unless you are some exception, being born in the age that you have been born, if you are under 30, yea, even under 40, you probably lack discipline because you have never been able to work. You have never had need to work for your food and your fathers never made you work so hard that your bones cried.
The men who have accomplished much and been used of God have been men of labor in the ministry. This is hard and it will cost you everything.
And by the time you are an old man you will be broken, but strong in the things of God.
Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness; for bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. 61
Oh, my dear friends, who cares about your best life now? Eternity. The day you stand in those granite halls before the Lord of glory and kings and the greatest men on earth are divided and split and culled, some cast into eternal hell and some invited into eternal glory live for eternity.
These Olympians, how majestic they are, but only for a moment. They start training when they are four and five years old. They never do anything but train until they are 22. They run a nine second race for a medal they hang up and that’s it.
Cannot you give equal for eternal things?
Some of the greatest men of God have been men very limited in their bodies. In their abilities they were so limited that they had to focus themselves into one thing. It is the ministry.
“For bodily discipline is only of little profit.”62
It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance. For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God.63
This is not some martyr thing in which we uselessly give our lives to nothing only to be pulverized with out hope. No. We serve God and God will honor us. We affix our hope on that and that gives us strength, strength.
Oh this life is a vapor. I am 47, but yesterday I was 21. Where did it all go? It is a vapor? While you have strength, preach. I praise God that in his providence as a young man I spent myself in the Andes Mountains and in the jungles of Peru doing what I no longer have the strength to do.
While you are a young man, while there is strength in you, labor with all your might. Take those stupid video games of yours and crush them under your feet. Throw the TV out the window. You were made for greater things than these.
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If you are a child of the king nothing on this earth can satisfy you, nothing.
“Prescribe and teach these things.”64
Now, there is so much here, but look at 15. “Take pains with these things; be absorbed in them, so that your progress will be evident to all.”65
Let’s say that on a wooden table my child spills a glass of water. And by the consistencies of nature, the laws that God has placed in her, the water heaps up a bit on the table, so much that you can see it as a pool. You walk by it and you say, “There is water spilled on the table.” It is evident to all.
But then I come by and I take a towel and I lay it across the spilled pool of water and I lift it up.
And you say, “I no longer see any water. Where is it?”
It is absorbed in the towel.
Men, you are to be absorbed in these things of godliness and character. Men, I plead with you. Listen to me. This is so important. You are not errand boys. You are not to spend your days wiping the noses of carnal churchmen. Get yourself in your study. Drink deep. Be so absorbed in the knowledge and the knowing of God that people say, “Where is he? He used to be such a man about town, such a friend to everyone, such a personable fellow. Where is he?”
He is absorbed in these things.
We are men of God. We are ministers of the most high. There should be an otherness about us. We should have a distant gaze in our eyes towards a distant [?]. The greatest thing we can do for our people is to be men of God absorbed in the things of God so that when we open our mouths the Word of God comes out.
Where I go to church Jeff Noblett is the main preaching pastor. He has always given himself to study, but when I got there I talked to him and I talked to other leaders. And any time someone asked me something I said this. “Please do this one thing. Take as much of the burden off of brother Noblett as we possibly can and let him live in that study with God because I have got children out here. And the greatest gift that man could give to me is to study to show himself approved and to come out in that pulpit in the power of the Holy Spirit and proclaim, ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ correcting and rebuking, giving great promises and warnings. Please do that for me.”
Pastor, please do that for your people because he says, “Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; persevere in these things, for as you do this you will ensure salvation both for yourself and for those who hear you.”66
I want... Let’s just finish with this. This verse means almost nothing in the evangelical community today. How many pastors do you think and preachers take it seriously, “I need to pay close attention to myself to insure salvation for me and for those who hear me”?
I have a question, pastor, when was the last time you examined your own life to see if you were in the faith, to see if you really know him.
You see, my dear friend, I have great assurance when I study my own conversion, when I discuss it with other men, when I look over the...
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