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WRITINGS & SERMONS

JOHN F. MacARTHUR

American Protestant Minister and Educator

JOHN F. MacARTHUR 1939 - present John F. MacArthur received his B.A. from Los Angeles Pacific College, M.Div. from Talbot Theological Seminary, Litt.D. from Grace Graduate School and D.D. from Talbot Theological Seminary. From 1964 to 1966 he served as an associate pastor at Calvary Bible Church, and 1966 to 1969 as a faculty representative for Talbot Theological Seminary. In 1969 he became pastor of Grace Community Church, Sun Valley, California. He is the teachers on the radio program Grace to You. He has authored, or edited, over 30 books, including fifteen volumes of the MacArthur New Testament Commentary, and scores of articles and study guides, including the MacArthur Study Bible. He has served on the board of trustees of the Moody Bible Institute, as adjunct faculty member at Talbot Theological Seminary, and Dallas Theological Seminary. In 1985 he was named President of The Master's College, and, founded, in 1986 The Master's Seminary, where he serves as President and Professor of Pastoral Studies. CLICK ON THE CITATION TO VIEW THE ARTICLE SERMONS AND RESOURCES LISTED ALPHABETICALLY BY TITLE "A Call For Discernment" Sermon 1 - 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 Sermon 2 - 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 Sermon 3 - 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22 "The Apostle Paul in this text is saying you better examine everything and you better examine it carefully and you better find out what it is good and hold on to it and what is not and let go of it. That's one of those components in the basics of spiritual living. Unfortunately the church today has boundless credulity, anything and everything is accepted. It seems to me that if any one problem out strips all the others in the church, it is the utter lack of spiritual discrimination that characterizes Christianity. Bad decisions, faulty reasoning, superficial understanding, shallow knowledge, wide-spread ignorance have contributed more anguish to the church throughout her history than all the persecutions combined. Persecutions have taken their toll, but it is the inside chaos and the inside confusion over doctrine that has left the most scars on the church." "A Question About Tithing" "We are suffering today, in Christianity, from an absolutely pervasive greed. Our contemporary Christianity is so self-indulgent it boggles the mind. That is why we don't reach out to people, because we are consumed with feeding ourselves. It's a mentality that all of us fall prey to" "A Scriptural Critique Of Infant Baptism" "In any case, it is not what the gospel is about, which is personal faith, right? The great mark of the Reformation was salvation by faith alone accompanied by personal repentance! A baby can't do that. A baby doesn't have any faith. A baby doesn't have any part in baptism. It's no different than circumcision; a baby didn't have any part in circumcision. In fact, if you'd asked him, he'd probably vote against it. Baptizing a baby has no spiritual meaning to that baby. They got into a confounded viewpoint that somehow faith, and grace, and salvation, and regeneration, and entrance into the church is all dumped into that little baby at the point of which water's dumped on his head. It has nothing to do with the gospel of faith. That's why we have to call it into question." "A Tale Of Two Sons" - The Prodigal Son Sermon 1 - The Licentious Son - Luke 15:11-16 Sermon 2 - The Loving Father - Luke 15:17-21 Sermon 3 - Reconcilliation & Rejoicing - Luke 15:22-24 Sermon 4 - The Legalistic Son - Luke 15:25-32 And that, of course, leads to the third story which is the main parable. We have seen the recovery of a lost sheep and a lost coin. And here is the recovery of a lost son. But this story is intended to demonstrate the same thing, the joy of God over the recovery of a lost sinner. But this story goes even beyond that and it identifies the nature of repentance. Repentance has been mentioned in verse 7 and mentioned in verse 10, but never defined. In this story it is fully defined and for the first time in this story, the Pharisees and the scribes actually appear. They are a character in this story and we see them in all their ugliness, and so did they see themselves. And that's the surprise ending of the story. "Are Experiences A Valid Source Of Truth?" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 1 of 13 "Charismatic extremist can promote almost any idea they chose on television, or on radio, or in their books. And those who attempt to examine those in the light of Scripture are muzzled. I have been waiting for many years on one of these Charismatic Talk Shows to hear the host say, "That's not true; that is not true. That is not in the Word of God, we will not accept that.You cannot verify that by Scripture." That never happens, no matter what is said. It can be the most bizarre thing imaginable; it can be the most whimsical, the most self-generated interpretation of Scripture or experience, and no one ever stops and says, "Hold it! That's error; that's heresy; that's not true!" "Avoiding Spiritual Counterfeiters" - Study Guide Sermon 1 - How To Treat False Teachers - Part 1 - 1 Timothy 1:3-6 Sermon 2 - How To Treat False Teachers - Part 2 - 1 Timothy 1:7-11 Sermon 3 - The Pathology Of False Teachers - 1 Timothy 6:3-5 Sermon 4 - The Danger Of False Teaching - 2 Timothy 2:14b-19 Because of the many religious bodies existing in the world today, people are easily confused about how to differentiate them. But when you think about it, there are really only two religions in the world: the religion of divine accomplishment-- that God in Christ accomplished salvation apart from any effort of man--and the religion of human achievement--that men attain to salvation by something they do. The religion of divine accomplishment is the Christian gospel. Every other religion in the world in one way or another fits into the category of human achievement. Wherever false doctrine strikes a blow at the gospel, it will purport that man in and of himself can please God. "Baptism: A Matter Of Obedience" "You could sum it up like this: as a believer stands in the water, ready to be immersed, he could declare these words, 'I hereby confess in my willing submission to this divinely appointed ordinance, my glad obedience to the command of my Lord and Savior. In this symbolic manner, I show forth my identification with the one who bore my sins, took my place, died in my stead, was buried, and rose again for my justification. As Christ went through the dreadful reality of suffering and death to secure my salvation, so, by my immersion in water and emergence there from, I thus publicly declare my identification with my Lord in His death, burial, and resurrection on my behalf, with the intention hence forth to walk with Him in newness of life.' That's the sum of it." "The Believer And Indwelling Sin" Sermon 1 - Romans 7:14-17 Sermon 2 - Romans 7:18-25 "I believe that when an individual comes to Jesus Christ, there is planted within that individual a new creation, a new nature, a new essence, a new self, a new man. And that the great heartbeat and passion and cry of that new creation is a longing for the things of God. And over against that, a resentment and a hatred of sin. And that indeed is the spirit of the Apostle Paul as he writes in our text, look at it, beginning at verse 14..." "Beware The Pretenders" - Study Guide Sermon 1 - The Eternal Security Of The Christian Sermon 2 - The Description Of Apostates Sermon 3 - The Destruction Of Apostates Sermon 4 - Twice-Dead Men - Part 1 Sermon 5 - Twice-Dead Men2 - Part 2 Sermon 6 - How To Survive In The Last Days Of Apostasy "That evil has been around since the beginning of time, and it's still here. It is the abandoning of truth. It is not to be confused with mere indifference to the Word, for it involves an intellectual acceptance of the Scriptures. Neither is apostasy to be confused with error. It is not necessarily believing false doctrine. An apostate can acknowledge that certain doctrines are true, but fail to believe them in his heart. An apostate can acknowledge Christ without accepting Him. On the other hand, a true Christian could fall into doctrinal error, but that's not apostasy. Apostates have received light but not life. They have known and accepted the written Word, but have never met Christ, the Living Word. You probably know some people like that. There are people in the church who come all the time and know the truth, but have never acted upon it. Apostasy is a deliberate rejection of the the truth after it is known. Hence, it is the most damnable sin of all." "The Biblical View On Abortion" "To sum up what we are experiencing with regard to abortion in America, we could simply say, 'America, as a nation, is highly committed by law and by practice to a form of mass murder.' And that is really the bottom line. . . . It is estimated that perhaps as many as 75,000,000 babies will be murdered this year around the world, 75,000,000! That's probably conservative. It's more than all the deaths in all the wars, in all the history of the world. This kind of murder is shocking and I don't want to be too shocking, but I want to tell you how it is done and I hope that I don't offend anyone. The processes of abortion are somewhat frightening and bizarre." "Cain: The Portrait Of A Doomed Sinner" - Genesis Origins Series Sermon 1 - Genesis 4:1-5 Sermon 2 - Genesis 4:6-16 "So here is the prototype of the doomed. And he gives us the path to damnation. Here it is: Have a hopeful beginning, but offer unacceptable, hypocritical, self-righteous worship; resent God and His people; reject God's word and refuse to obey it; hide your sin by denial or redefinition; be obstinate when confronted by the divine Judge; and when being delivered from immediate death, make no repentance; protest only God's judgment and refuse to be broken under it; fail to appreciate God's common grace, which lets you live and enjoy His wonderful world; and settle defiantly into the system of Satan. Such are the children of Cain." "The Call To Repentance" "One of the elements at stake in this very very far-reaching debate is the matter of repentance. What is it and where does it fit? Is it an essential part of the gospel message or is it not? And I hope tonight as we look together at God's Word and consider some of the things that are being said by folks that we might get a clear understanding of what the Bible has to say about repentance." "Chosen By God" "Now the essence of this salutation as Peter begins his letter is to emphasize that those to whom he writes are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. And thus does Peter take a theological plunge of profoundly deep proportions at the very outset of this letter. The lesson for us tonight is going to deal with the subject of election, or being chosen by God. " Sermon 1 - 1 Peter 1:1-2 Sermon 2 - 1 Peter 1:1-2 Sermon 3 - 1 Peter 1:1-2 "Church Leadership Series - Study Guide" The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:1 The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:2a The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:2b-c The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:2d-g The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:3 The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:4-5 The Call To Lead The Church - Elders, 1 Timothy 3:6-7 Qualified Servants Of The Church - Deacons, 1 Timothy 3:8-13 (1 of 2) Qualified Servants Of The Church - Deacons, 1 Timothy 3:8-13 (2 of 2) "A church is only as godly as its leaders. A pastor once said to me, "I think I've discovered why my church is not as effective as I want it to be: half of the men on my elder board are unsaved!" That may seem like an extreme example, but many churches fail to uphold the biblical standard for spiritual leadership. Such failures always impact the quality and integrity of a church's ministry. Quite often a church that is failing to have an impact on the world or that is experiencing strife and conflict within its membership will look to new programming or other peripheral things for answers, when the real issue may be unqualified leaders. That's the first thing to check. In his description of the qualifications for elders, Paul focused on the character rather than the function of an elder. A man is qualified because of what he is, not what he does. If he commits sin, he is subject to discipline in front of the whole congregation (1 Tim. 5:20). The church must carefully guard that sacred office." "The Cost Of Discipleship" "And yet in our society here, we have developed this incredible theology that says you can be a Christian and not worry about being committed. In fact you can be a Christian and not even be a disciple. Those who teach that would say yes there's no question in the New Testament about Jesus assigning a tremendous cost to discipleship. But you don't need to worry about that because that's second-level Christianity. First-level Christianity doesn't really have any particular cost at all." "Creation: Believe It Or Not" - Genesis Origins Series If Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 don't tell us the truth, then why should we believe anything else in the Bible? If it says in the New Testament that the Creator is our Redeemer, that God is not the Creator, then maybe He's not the Redeemer either. If it tells us in 2 Peter that God Himself will bring about an instantaneous dissolution of the entire universe as we know it, that God in a moment will uncreate everything, then that has tremendous bearing upon His power to create...the same One who with a word can uncreate the universe is capable of creating it as quickly as He desires. So what we believe about creation, what we believe about Genesis has implications all the way to the end of Scripture, implications with regard to the veracity and truthfulness of Scripture, implications as to the gospel and implications as to the end of human history all wrapped up in how we understand origins in the book of Genesis. The matter of origins then is absolutely critical to all human thinking. It becomes critical to how we conduct our lives as human beings. Without an understanding of origins, without a right understanding of origins, there is no way to comprehend ourselves. There is no way to understand humanity as to the purpose of our existence, and as to our destiny. If we cannot believe what Genesis says about origins, we are lost as to our purpose and our destiny. Whether this world and its life as we know it evolved by chance, without a cause, or was created by God has immense comprehensive implications for all of human life. "Creation: Believe It Or Not" - Part 1 "Creation: Believe It Or Not" - Part 2 - "Creation Day 1" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 1:6-8 "Now these words have to do with a waste place, a desolated place without inhabitants. Devastation and depopulation, without shape and form and without inhabitant. So when you see the words tohu and bohu in Genesis, it's not some tricky technicality that you're seeing there, it's just the word for devastation and emptiness. It was a waste place and there was no life there. That's exactly what it means. Maybe the best way to say it would be the earth was unfinished as to its shape and unpopulated. That's exactly what it means. And that's understandable when day one started. The material was there. There was time and there was space and there was matter, but it was unformed and unpopulated. The original created elements mentioned in verse 1, time, in the beginning; the heavens, matter...or the heavens space; and the earth matter. God created them, God spoke them into existence but yet they were undifferentiated, unseparated, unorganized and uninhabited. God had not yet shaped them and God had not populated the cosmos. So you have the raw materials mentioned in verse 1. . .time, space, matter. They are described, first of all, as unfinished as to shape and unpopulated as to inhabitant." "Creation Days 2 & 3" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 1:9-13 "The earth is still uninhabited, uninhabitable and not in its final form until day three. Before we go to day three I just want to stick something in here for your thinking. On the day that God created the expanse there was this tremendous cataclysmic movement of water coming off the earth and just literally moving to the extremities of the infinity of heaven. This great expanse that we know as space, the great expanse that we know as heaven takes its shape. And it came into being, just imagine the speed with which the whole of the infinite heavens were created. God then commands these waters that cover the earth to be collected or gathered into one place. The Septuagint uses the word "synagogue," a gathering place. All of the water surrounding the earth is now gathered into one place and at the same time verse 9 says, "God said, 'And let the dry land appear,' and it was so." So God separates the water from the dry land. This is just a simple statement, a simple sentence, but can you even begin to fathom the cataclysm that occurred when that was spoken by God? All of a sudden the material that is in its unformed condition, buried under the depths of the surface sea starts to move. And all of those necessary elements start to work to produce land, to push up to create the surface of land. The water moves, gathering itself into one place. Tremendous chemical reactions get under way as the elements combine with each other to form the complex of minerals, the complex of rock and soil, making up the solid earth as to its crust and its mantle and its core. Just a staggering act of creation." "Creation Day 4" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 1:14-19 "Evolution has struggled incessantly to explain all the bodies that exist in the universe, how they could have evolved out of spontaneous generation, all the trips to the moon, all the satellites sent into space, all of the orbiting paraphernalia have given absolutely no insight into how the universe, the bodies in the universe could have possibly evolved. And that's understandable, since they didn't." "Creation Day 5" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 1:20-23 "December 1996 brought the death of an evolutionist and astronomer by the name of Carl Sagan, probably the most well-known astronomer in the world. His perception was that life just sort of happened. And he ended up his life with absolute emptiness, absolute hopelessness. And near the end of his life he was interviewed by Ted Koppel on television. Koppel asked Sagan, realizing he was at the end of his life, that he had spent his life in science studying the universe as an astronomer, he said, "Do you, sir, have any words of wisdom for the people of the world?" To which Sagan replied, and I quote, "We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a hum-drum star that is one of 400-plus billion other stars that make up the Milky Way galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a large number, perhaps an infinite number of other universes. That is well worth pondering," end quote. He thought about it and he thought about it and he thought about it and he never let God be a reality. In the end, the most brilliant evolutionist only knows that the universe exists. He doesn't know how, he doesn't know why, and mostly he doesn't know who the creator is. How sad. Everything in the universe points to God the creator. Even Albert Einstein said, "Of course there is a massive intelligence behind the universe, a man is a fool who doesn't believe that." And then went on to say, "But we could never know Him." The humanistic evolutionist refuses to see what is obvious, refuses to meet the God who wants to be known. "Creation Day 6" - The Creation Of Man - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 1:24-27 But there are two lies in particular that provide the basic paradigm for modern culture, two lies. Lie number one is that life is random. That is that the way things are is just the way they kind of happened with nobody planning and nobody carrying it off, it just sort of evolved that way. Life is random. There is no purpose to it. There is no reason for it. There is no sovereign unfolding plan being carried out by a designing and powerful creator. Life is just random.To put it another way, the universe as it exists was not created by God, nor is God the authority over this creation. It's just a matter of chance, random chance. Second lie...first one, life is random...second lie, truth is relative...truth is relative. The Bible is not the Word of God. The Bible does not give us the truth about right and wrong, life and death, morality and immorality in the past and the future. There is no authority beyond yourself. Life is random, truth is relative.Now those two lies are so established in our society that people hate the Christian world view which opposes those lies. "Creation Day 6" - The Creation Of Man - Part 1 - Genesis 1:24-26 "Creation Day 6" - The Creation Of Man - Part 2 - Genesis 1:26-27 "Creation Day 6" - The Creation Of Man - Part 3 - Genesis 1:26-31 "The Creation Of Man" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 2:4-7 "Folks, there's no evolution here. There's no time here. There's no process. There's no mutating. There's no survival of the fittest. There was no pre-Adamic man of any kind. There is no pre-human man. There is no transitional man. And I'm telling you: I am constantly amazed and I suppose amused at the bizarre, unfounded, confused machinations of evolution that have created nothing but an inexplicable, irrational, unprovable, chaotic complex of tangled schemes to explain what God said in one Verse. One Verse. That's the creation of man." "The Creation Of Woman" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 2:18-25 "It wasn't anything he saw that was in any way compatible with him. So Adam comes to the conclusion that in all the creation he, alone, is alone. He has no kenegdo, no counterpart, no partner, no companion, no one suitable to come alongside and be with him and help him to 'multiply, being fruitful and fill the earth.' And since there was in the animal kingdom no creature capable of a relationship to man, God made one. Verse 21: 'So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on the man.' God is the original anesthesiologist. And God is the original surgeon. And He: 'Caused a deep sleep to fall on' Adam, because God was going to do an operation. And it says: 'He slept.' He slept while God operated. And here was the operation. The NAS says: 'He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.'" "The Curse On The Serpent" - Genesis Origins Series Sermon 1 - Genesis 3:14-15 Sermon 2 - Genesis 3:14-15 "It is true that man was the friend of God. And that in the temptation, man distrusted God, disobeyed God, believed Satan, became the friend of Satan and, therefore, the enemy of God. And that is evidenced in Verses 8 to 13. You find man and woman hiding from God. God they view as somebody who will invade them with negative impact. They see God as the enemy; they see Satan as the friend. But God says in Verse 15: "'And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel.'" This is the reverse immediately of what Satan must have anticipated. God is still the sovereign Judge. He is still the God of the universe. He is still in charge of Satan. And he says: "'I will put enmity between you and the woman.'" I'm going to make you the enemy of the woman. You are not going to have your way with that woman. You're not going to have your way. She's not going to be the friend of Satan and the enemy of God. I'm going to change that. And I think by "the woman," He is also encompassing the man as well. Because when He says, "your seed and her seed," He has to incorporate the man with the woman to produce the seed." "Dead Faith - Living Faith" Sermon 1 - "Dead Faith" - Romans 7:14-17 Sermon 2 - "Living Faith" - Romans 7:18-25 "To sort of paraphrase James, faith plus nothing equals nothing. James, for example, describes the kind of faith that equals nothing, he calls it "dead faith" in verse 17, verse 20 and again at the end of the chapter in verse 26. Dead faith. Now inevitably, people with dead faith always substitute words for deeds. They want you to believe that they are what they say when you must understand that we are what we do. Trust not in words, trust only in movement. True faith will always be seen in works. Dead faith will not be seen at all." "Dealing With Habitual Sins" "It is the nature of man, even the nature of a believer, to be easily entangled in sin. It happens so easily, and frankly there are certain sins which more easily entangle each of us than other ones. Each of us, in our own lives, have certain propensities for specific kinds of sins. It can be becausewe have in the past life cultivated habits of sin which now plague us even after our salvation. Itcould be because in our spiritual weakness even after becoming Christians we continued to develop habits of certain types of sin; certain specific sins that now we find more easily than others do entangle us." "Deception And Judgment - When Jesus Christ says, "I never knew you."" Sermon 1 - "Empty Words" - Matthew 7:21-23 Sermon 2 - "Empty Hearts" - Matthew 7:24-29 "And there's one other reason why the few is only a few. Not only the deception of the false prophets, but listen to this, self-deception, self-deception keeps people from entering the narrow gate. J.C. Ryle, Bishop Ryle wrote, "The Lord Jesus winds up The Sermon on The Mount by a passage of heart piercing application. He turns from false prophets to false professors, from unsound teachers to unsound hearers." And Tasker the commentator adds, "It is not only false teachers who make the narrow way difficult to find, it is a man may also be grievously self-deceived that adds to the difficulty." In other words not just the false prophets but we can deceive our own selves into believing we're Christians when the fact is we're not." "Deliverance: The Neglected Doctrine" Sermon 1 - Introduction Sermon 2 - Deliverance: From Error To Truth - Part 1 Sermon 3 - Deliverance: From Error To Truth - Part 2 Sermon 4 - Deliverance: From Sin To Righteousness - Part 1 Sermon 5 - Deliverance: From Sin To Righteousness - Part 2 Sermon 6 - Deliverance: From The Temporal World To The Eternal Kingdom "Ours then in the work of evangelism is a work of rescue. We on behalf of God have been sent out to tell sinners God has a rescue plan. God who is by nature a deliverer, the only deliverer has a deliverance plan by which He will deliver the sinner from all those things that damn him. In fact, there may be no better way to understand the power of God's Spirit in the believing sinner's life than to understand that the Spirit is working a work of deliverance. When we talk about conversion and when we talk about regeneration, when we talk about new birth, being born again, new life, transformation...when we talk about these matters of grace we are really talking about being delivered from certain things. In fact, deliverance, as we shall see in this series, defines what it means to be a Christian." "Doctrine Of Scripture" "Now let me give you a basic definition of the doctrine of biblical authority or inspiration. Just listen to it and then if you want to jot it down I'll repeat it again. Here is how we can sum up the basic doctrine. God superintending human authors so that using their own individual personalities, experiences, thought processes and vocabulary they composed and recorded without error His revelation in the original copies of Scripture." "Does 2 Thessalonians 1 And 2 Prove A Pre-tribulation Rapture? "It does not. If you're going prove a pre-tribulation rapture you can't do it here." "Does God Do Miracles Today?" - Charismatic Series - Sermon 5 of 13 "A miracle then is an extraordinary event wrought by God that cannot be explained by any natural means. That would be the technical definition. It might sound something like this, A miracle is an event in nature, so extraordinary in itself, and so coinciding with a prophecy or a command of a religious teacher or leader as fully to warrant the conviction on the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by Him." "Does God Promise Health And Wealth?" - Charismatic Series - Sermons 12 and 13 of 13 Sermon 1 of 2 Sermon 2 of 2 "In Word-Faith religion the believer uses God, whereas, the truth of Biblical Christianity is, God uses the believer! Word-Faith theology sees the Holy Spirit as a Power to be put to use for whatever the believer wants. The Bible teaches, however, that the Holy Spirit is a person who enables the believer to do whatever God wants. It is absolutely the opposite of Scripture. Many Word-Faith teachers claim that Jesus was "Born Again" so that we might become "little gods." Scripture, however, teaches that Jesus is God and it is we who must be born again." "Does God Still Give Prophecies?" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 3 of 13 "It has been a curiosity to me and should be to us, I think, that if God is still giving revelation, the only ones that He gives it to are Charismatics! Nobody else seems to be getting revelation with the exception of the founders of various cults. But apart from the cults and the Charismatics I don't see people within the framework, the broad framework of Christianity, claiming revelation." "Does God Still Give Revelation Today?" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 2 of 13 "If someone were to write an anthem for the Charismatic movement it would have to be titled, "God told me! God told me!" you hear that over and over again. Strange prophecies abound in the Charismatic movement; in fact, it is well nigh impossible to turn on a Charismatic television station or a radio station without being exposed, almost on a daily basis to some new "Words from the Lord." I was watching one today and sure enough, "The Lord said, the Lord said, the Lord said," was repeated again and again. " "Does God Still Heal?" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 9 of 13 "And a final note; according to Scripture, those who possess those abilities to heal could use their gift at will. That's not true of the contemporary healers because they don't have that gift. They play games with people's minds, the power of suggestion. They prey upon people, making them believe things that aren't really true and they use deception." "Does Luke 21:34-36 Speak Of The Rapture Of The Church Or A Partial Rapture?" - Q and A "The thing that I believe we have here is the tribulation. So we aren't even here. You see a pretribulation rapture completely makes that passage understandable, we're gone." "The Fall Of Man" - Genesis: Origins Series - 7 sermons The Fall Of Man - Part 1 - Genesis 3:1-5 The Fall Of Man - Part 2 - Genesis 3:6-7 Confrontation In Eden - Genesis 3:8-13 The Curse On The Woman - Part 1 - Genesis 3:16 The Curse On The Woman - Part 2 - Genesis 3:16 The Curse On The Man - Part 1 - Genesis 3:17-19 The Curse On The Man - Part 2 - Genesis 3:17-19 "Now this is by far the saddest event in history, obviously. All problems, personal and environmental...all that is wrong, evil, immoral, incomplete, all that is decaying, all that is inferior, all failure, all disappointment, all weakness, all sadness, all sorrow, all pain, all disillusionment, all trouble, all discomfort, all remorse, all regret, all conflict, all hate, all jealousy, all envy, all bitterness, all vengeance, all fear, all crime, all selfishness, all confusion, all lies, all deception, all error, all intimidation, all manipulation, all deviation, all distortion...everything that fails to be as perfect as God is came from this one event. This then is a monumental event. It truly defines life in our universe. It is the reason for all imperfection and death." "From Trouble To Triumph Series" Sermon 1 - "From Trouble To Triumph" - James 1:2, 12 Sermon 2 - "From Trouble To Triumph" -James 1:2-4 Sermon 3 - "The Purpose Of Trials" - Selected Scriptures Sermon 4 - "From Trouble To Triumph" -James 1:5-11 Sermon 5 - "Whose Fault Is Our Temptation?" -James 1:13-17 Sermon 6 - "Born To Holiness" -James 1:13-17 "And no doubt you can remember, if you've read that wonderful insight into human wisdom that we know as the book of Ecclesiastes these familiar words in chapter 2, 'Therefore I hated life because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me for all is vanity and vexation of spirit.'  And then verse 23, 'For all his days are sorrows and his travailed grief, yea his heart takes not rest in the night.'  Trouble, trouble, trouble, vanity day and night, life seems but trouble and trouble alone. Frankly even for Christians, even for those of us who are the children of God, there's a constant kind of facing of trouble, a constant facing of trial in a very troubled world.  And evenwhen we sort of get our own little world under control somebody invades it and messes it upinevitably.  And you will know that if you've had a group of kids over to your house lately.  No matter how you protect your insulated little world, they have a way of doing damage to it. And they are but a small illustration of how life is.  We do everything we can to protect ourselves to get the perfect peace and comfort, but inevitably trouble comes either from outside or from inside." "God, Creator And Redeemer" - Genesis Origins Series - "And this is what the angel preaches, here's the everlasting gospel. This is the same message that's always been preached. It's never changed. "Fear God and give Him glory." Beloved, that is the message. "Fear God and give Him glory because the hour of His judgment has come and worship Him who...Him who...what?...made the heaven and the earth and sea and springs of water, the creator...the creator." The eternal good news is fear God and worship Him, that's the good news of salvation that God can be reverenced and God can be worshiped, God can be glorified. The sinner can come and be brought into a capacity to know God and to adore God and to glorify God through the forgiveness of sins. The angel will preach the age-old gospel and the age-old gospel is this, folks, the Creator has become our Redeemer...the Creator has become our Redeemer. The same God who created in the end will be bringing judgment in anticipation of His recreation. This is the constant identification of Scripture that the Creator is the Redeemer, that the Redeemer is none other than the Creator who created absolutely everything." "God: Is He? Who Is He? What Is He Like?" Sermon 1 - "God: Is He? Who Is He? What Is He Like?" Sermon 2 - "God: Is He? Who Is He? What Is He Like?" Sermon 3 - "God: Is He? Who Is He? What is He Like?" "The Bible says this about God in Psalm 90, verse 2: "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst form the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." Now there's a great doctrinal statement about God. It tells us that God is the only God, Thou art God. It tells us that God is the eternal God, from everlasting to everlasting Thou art God. It tells us that God is the creator God. Before the mountains were made, before You formed the earth and the world. That's quite a statement about God. God is the only God. God is the eternal God. God is the creator God." "God's High Calling For Women" Sermon 1 - 1 Timothy 2:9 Sermon 2 - 1 Timothy 2:10-11 Sermon 3 - 1 Timothy 2:11 Sermon 4 - 1 Timothy 2:12-15 "Now in looking at our passage, I want you to note there are six features in regard to the role of women in the church that the Apostle deals with: their appearance, their attitude, their testimony, their role, their design and their contribution. Each of these opens up a whole area of thought and understanding to us." "God's Invisible Army" - ANGELS Sermon 1 - "God's Invisible Army" Sermon 2 - "God's Invisible Army" Sermon 3 - "God's Invisible Army" "So I think we ought to study angels. Two hundred and seventy-three times God refers to them, that's worthy of our attention, wouldn't you think? And by the time we're done with this study, you're going to have a total sensitivity to an entire universe full of new creatures that you have never really understood before, but with whom you will spend your whole eternity. So you might as well get to know them. You're going to be mingling around with them forever. No sense in going up there and saying, "Who are you?" They were there before you came anyway." "The Good Shepherd" Sermon 1 - John 10:1-10 - "The Good Shepherd" - The Door To The Abundant Life Sermon 2 - John 10:11-21 - "Christ: The Good Shepherd" "Now what sets this up very simply is this, in verse 39 to 41 of chapter 9 Jesus had told the Pharisees that they were blind, that they could not see, could not understand Him. Now that's very important. He's told them this before, hasn't He? And they illustrated it. "You don't ever get the message, you don't understand. You are blind, you do not understand." Then to illustrate that they don't understand, He speaks in a very clear and very lucid paroimia and sure enough, they don't understand. See. What He's attempting to do is illustrate to them the truth of His statement that they are blind. Now the others who are there, the disciples and the blind beggar, evidently they understood the message. It's obvious. But the Pharisees who have been blind by their own willful unbelief, blinded judicially by God, let them alone, Jesus said, they're blind leaders of the blind, they are then face to face with a living illustration that indeed they are blind. And when you get down to verse 6 it says, "They understood not." And so the paroimia is a great way to illustrate their blindness to them. And that's the purpose it serves, first of all." "The Good Samaritan" - FINDING ETERNAL LIFE Sermon 1 - Finding Eternal Life - PART 1 - Luke 10:25 Sermon 2 - Finding Eternal Life - PART 2 - Luke 10:25-28 Sermon 3 - Finding Eternal Life - PART 3 - Luke 10:25-29 Sermon 4 - The Good Samaritan - PART 4 - Luke 10:30-37 "Here we meet one who is among the elite. Here we meet one who belongs to the religious establishment. And this encounter gives us insight into how you evangelize a person one to one. Now this person, this lawyer unnamed, has a privilege that is beyond estimation. He has the opportunity to have a conversation about eternal life with the One who is Eternal Life Himself. His privilege cannot be overstated. And the result makes the story all the more tragic. Here he is face-to-face with the eternal life, asking the right question and going away to face eternal death. It's a horrific loss of opportunity. But in the process we learn what is necessary in doing effective personal evangelism the way Jesus did it". "The Great Supper - An Invitation To God's Great Banquet" "But at the dinner hour, which Jesus called the acceptable year of the Lord, the moment when the meal was ready He sent His slave, God did, to say to those who had been invited, 'come for everything is ready now.' This could be John the Baptist or Jesus and the apostles, all of them. The messengers come and say, 'it's time now, the kingdom is ready, the door is open, the meal is provided, salvation is here'. Jesus said to the synagogue crowd in Nazareth, He said 'today, these things are fulfilled in your ears.' The pre-invited guests were given the second invitation. Everything is ready. The king is here and the kingdom was offered to them." "The Grip Of God Series" - SALVATION-SECURITY Sermon 1 - "The Extent Of The Believer's Security" - Romans 8:28 Sermon 2 - "The Recipients, Source and Certainty of Security" - Romans 8:28 Sermon 3 - "The Purpose Of Salvation" - Romans 8:29 Sermon 4 - "The Progress of Salvation" - Romans 8:28- 30 Sermon 5 - "Salvation Is Irrevocable" - [Part 1 of 3] - Romans 8:31-32 Sermon 6 - "Salvation Is Irrevocable" - [Part 2 of 3] - Romans 8:33-34 Sermon 7 - "Salvation Is Irrevocable" - [Part 3 of 3] - Romans 8:35-39 "Well this all ties together. This is really a monumental important passage. We are secure, we're secure forever in a no- condemnation status because of the intercessory work of the Holy Spirit and because of that intercessory work of the Holy Spirit and because of the ongoing intercessory work of Christ at the right hand of God and because it is the plan of God and the whole of the trinity is in harmony that all who have been predestined before the foundation of the world will be brought to glory, that plan is unfolding. Not just because it was said, because it was said and it is being done. And again I say to you, there are no restrictions in verse 28 at all, absolutely no restrictions. Due to the consummate cooperative work of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, everyone who truly comes to faith in Christ will be brought to glory. That's why John says, "They went out from us," when somebody departs from the faith, denies Christ and leaves, "they went out from us because they were not...what?...of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us." Why? Because that's the Father's plan, that's the Father's will, that's the Son intercessory goal and that's the Spirit's intercessory goal...to sustain us in a non-condemnation status to bring us to glory." "Growing A Healthy Flock Series" Sermon 1 - "The Shepherd's Responsibility" - 1 Thessalonians 5:12 Sermon 2 - "The Sheep's Responsibility" - 1 Thessalonians 5:13 "And so, this section will be instruction for life in the church, very practical, very basic, very straight forward, very direct. And the church needs a good healthy dose of this kind of instruction, believe me. If there's anything that grieves my heart across America, it is the fact that we have so many unhealthy churches, so many churches that do not know the power of God, the presence of God, the peace of God, the joy of God, that do not experience all of the blessings of God that He pours out to those who are walking according to His will and moving ahead toward being like Jesus Christ. We have many many unhealthy churches. It's a continual grief to me to talk to pastors who are so deeply burdened because they are in a church that demonstrates a lack of spiritual commitment. It also is a grief to me to hear from people who are in churches where their leadership is not committed to spiritual growth and development. This country is filled with busy churches and some big churches but many unhealthy churches. One rather cynical writer looking at the church said that the church reminded him of Noah's ark. Of what he said, 'If it weren't for the storm outside, you couldn't stand the stench inside.' That's a cynical view of the church. That's a jaded view of the church." "How Do Spiritual Gifts Operate?" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 7 of 13 "This examination and this test must be held up in the issues of spiritual gifts. As we look at these people who say they are prophesying in Jesus' name, and casting out demons and doing miracles, we want to be sure of two things: one, that their lives back it up, and two, that what they do is consistent with the Word of God. So I want to help you to evaluate that, if I can, tonight. And I want to refer to some of the more well known of these Charismatic leaders today because they're so very public, and they represent the kind of thing that is going on that has to be tested." "The How, Why, And When Of Creation" - Genesis Origins Series Sermon 1 - Genesis 1:1 Sermon 2 - Genesis 1:1 "We could say then that Genesis 1:1 gives a general and inclusive account of creation. God created the heavens and the earth. You cannot make a broader statement than that. That covers everything. That's a way of saying God created everything in the universe, everything that exists, whether you're talking about galaxies, or whether you're talking about nebulae or solar systems, whether you're talking about those things that are at the farthest reaches of the universe in space, or whether you're talking about the smallest grain of sand, or whether you're talking about a bacterial microbe on the planet earth, absolutely everything was created by God. He is the creator of all things visible and invisible, and all things means everything from various ranks of angels, every form of life from whales and elephants to viruses. Everything, all things include every form of energy, every form of matter, the speed of light, nuclear structure, electromagnetism, gravity, every law by which nature operates was created within the framework of this creation. All things...all things. Behind the creation of everything in the universe stands the living God who had eternally existed as God but had not always been creator. But here He becomes creator and He creates everything...absolutely everything." "The Implications Of Evolution" - Genesis Origins Series "We believe that it is reasonable to assume a creator for the complexity and the variety of this creation. But we don't have to just trust our rational understanding, because we have a record in Genesis 1. We have been talking about also the fact that it's such a sad thing to see evangelical Christians deny the truthfulness of Genesis 1. They just flatly say it isn't what it says. They deny the scripture. Now you are treading on some serious ground when you strike a blow against your reason, but you are treading on much more serious ground when you strike a blow against the revelation of God. It is blasphemous to deny the reality of Genesis 1. This is God's inspired, inerrant record of how he created the universe. This is it. Now if you accept an evolutionary view, you then go against your reason, which is a faculty that God has given you. It's part of personhood. And more importantly, you violate revelation, because God has clearly indicated that He Himself created the world. And Genesis 1 lays it out in absolutely clear and explicit terms. And we've gone phrase by phrase, word by word through that entire chapter. But then to say I am a materialistic evolutionist, I believe in evolution but it doesn't have any implications, is another act of idiocy. Of course it has implications. If we are nothing but the end of some evolutionary process, if we are just another kind of animal, if we are just educated apes, if we are just one step removed from a baboon, if we have just come out of the slime in the evolutionary animal chain by sort of natural selection, if we have been in this battle and happen to survive as progeny of the fittest along the way, if we are just part of what is material, it has tremendous implications. Tremendous." "The Incarnation Of The Triune God" - Philippians 2:6-11 "Now, as we face the reality of Christmas, I want us to see the true story and this time not from the perspective of Bethlehem or Joseph or Mary or shepherds or innkeepers or wise men or Herod or Old Testament prophets, but I want us to see the Christmas story from the viewpoint of the Holy Spirit of God as revealed to the Apostle Paul. And I believe it gives us the real Christmas story. The scenery isn't there. Bethlehem isn't the issue. Shepherds and wise men and Joseph and Mary and mangers and oxen, they don't appear in this perspective. But what is here is the reality of the incarnation. This is one of the greatest texts in all the Bible. It is, perhaps, the most profound statement of the Christmas story anywhere in the Word of God." "Is Christ's Return Imminent?" - TMS Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1, Spring 2000. "So on the one hand, the NT is permeated with an eager sense of expectancy and conviction that the blessed hope of Christ's return is imminent. On the other hand, we are warned about trouble and affliction that will precede Christ's return. How can we reconcile these two threads of prophecy? How can we cultivate a daily expectation of Christ’s return if these preliminary signs must yet be fulfilled before He returns?." "Is The Rapture Before Or After The Tribulation?" - Question and Answer "It's become kind of popular today, in the last two or three years, to believe in the rapture occurring at the end of the tribulation.  There has been three positions, historically, "pre-trib," "mid-trib," and "post-trib. What that means is the rapture occurs at the end of the tribulation: 'post-tribulation;' the middle of the tribulation: 'mid-tribulation;' the beginning of the tribulation: 'pre-tribulation.' Now if you wanted to catalog me I would have to claim to be a 'pre-tribulationist.' I believe the Church will be taken out before the tribulation.?." "Jesus' Teaching On Divorce" Sermon 1 - Matthew 19:1-6, Part 1 Sermon 2 - Matthew 19:1-6, Part 2 Sermon 3 - Matthew 19:7-9 Sermon 4 - Matthew 19:10-12 Sermon 5 - Matthew 19:1-12, 1 Corinthians 7:1-7 Sermon 6 - Matthew 19:1-12, 1 Corinthinas 7:8-40 "But while there are some different things and maybe some things that we'd like to recapture, there are some things about that early church that are identical to today. There are some things that they possessed that we also possess, namely the same message, the same Christ, the same Holy Spirit and the same Word of God with the same teaching, the same principles, and the same demands and blessings for our life. That doesn't change. And so, as we go to the Word of God and we touch life in the time of our Lord and life in the time of Paul the Apostle, we must hear what they say and understand that it is a direct truth for this generation. One of the really tragic things that happens in our time in the church is that people take the cultural standards and try to back them into the Bible, and eliminate anything in the Scripture that doesn't fit the way we think we need to live today. We can't do that to the Word of God without desecrating its purity. We must hear what it says; we must affirm its principles to be timeless for every generation. Now, one of the areas in which the Bible gives very clear teaching is the area of divorce and remarriage. We cannot alter that. We cannot change it to accommodate our quote/unquote "sophisticated day." We cannot back into the Bible with contemporary ideas and change the Scripture or eliminate the ones that we feel are an intrusion on our life patterns. We must objectively, openly hear what the Bible says. And our Lord gives us a very clear statement in regard to divorce." Living On Borrowed Time The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree - Luke 13:6-9 "So this is a dramatic illustration that tells those Jews in that massive crowd of tens of thousands of people you're on borrowed time and you don't have much of it left. But this is not just national. Let me give you four things to think about to complete this little five point implication list. He's talking about individuals here. It's a solitary tree. It's not just a solitary nation. It's a solitary individual. Everyone of us has to do something with Jesus Christ. And let me just have you think about this, those who have no spiritual fruit will be judged. If there is no spiritual life in you that comes only through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be cut down and cast into the fire as John the Baptist put it. That's eternal punishment." "Looking At The Cross From God's Perspective" "But for this morning, I want us to look at the cross in its relationship to God, to God Himself, God the Father. What did it mean to God? We know what Jesus' death meant to us. We know what it meant to the holy angels, it gave them a new verse to their great hymns of praise. We know what it meant to the demons, it was the end of their control of their own destiny. We know what it meant to Christ. But what did it mean to God? What did the death of Christ mean to God? How did it represent God? How did it glorify God? What is His perspective on that great event?" "The Lord's Day, Does It Matter?" - Genesis Origins Series "What does God expect of us? Well, all I can say is there aren't any rules. It's not legalistic. There aren't any commands; grace doesn't require, however, less than law. It just requires your whole heart. How much do you love Christ? How much do you desire to worship Him? To honor Him? How grateful are you for your salvation. There aren't any external rules to drop on you, and anybody who takes a whole lot of that Sabbath Law and drags it over and imposes, doesn't understand grace, and doesn't understand the line drawn between covenants that are dead and the New Covenant. Everything about the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant, including our day. I like our day better, don't you?" "Lordship Salvation Series" Sermon 1 - "The Lordship Of Christ" Sermon 2 - "The Nature Of Saving Faith" Sermon 3 - "The Call To Repentance" Sermon 4 - "The Cost Of Discipleship" "Nowhere in Scripture does it ever say a Christian is to make Christ Lord. If you're a Christian, He is Lord. And it does say, very explicitly in Scripture, that unless you acknowledge that fact that He is Lord, you could never be saved in the first place. That is obvious. Withholding the Lordship of Christ from someone, withholding from them the fact that they need to surrender their life to His leading, withholding from them that they need to confess and repent of their sin is to damn the person to a delusion that they're are saved when they're not. Withholding the Lordship of Christ from someone while giving them the gospel is a complete contradiction. The Bible says that salvation is granted only to those who acknowledge Jesus as Lord and are willing to submit their life to Him. To say that you should never talk about that, that all a person has to do is believe that Jesus died for them doesn't say at all enough." "Man In The Garden Of God" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 2:8-17 "All of the wonders of science and medicine and art and music and all the creativity of God put into the creation of man in His own image; to make beautiful paintings and beautiful jewelry and beautiful garments and beautiful buildings, and on and on and on it goes. All of this, God gave us to enjoy. It was all there for Adam to enjoy, with just one warning. God had furnished him a garden, and in it was everything he ever needed. Everything. And he had no trouble, and he had no anxiety for the future. And God gave him so many things to eat and so many things to enjoy, and he just gave him one prohibition: Don't eat of that tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That tree was the test. But man transgressed the prohibition and, like a child that disobeys his father -- the father had warned him what was good for him -- but the child disobeyed and, as children do, did harm to himself. He wasn't content with what the father had given him. He desired something more. He didn't want to stay a child under the supervision of a loving and gracious father. He didn't want to be just dependent on God. He wanted to know the world around him himself, and make his own choices. He wasn't content with the blissful life. So he was banished from it. As we shall see, the whole human race was catapulted into tragedy as a result. The Master's Men Series Sermon 1 - "Introduction: The Messengers Of The King" - Matthew 10:1 Sermon 2 - "Peter: A Lesson In Leadership" - Matthew 10:2a Sermon 3 - "Andrew, James The Son Of Zebedee And John" - Matthew 10:2b Sermon 4 - "Philip And Bartholomew" - Matthew 10:3a Sermon 5 - "Matthew And Thomas" - Matthew 10:3b Sermon 6 - "James The Son Of Alphaeus, Lebbaeus And Simon" - Matthew 10:3c-4a Sermon 7 - "Judas Iscariot" - Matthew 10:4b "In our ongoing study of this marvelous, thrilling account of our Lord's life and ministry, we find ourselves beginning a new section, a new dimension, as we enter the 10th chapter. This chapter is marked in the first verse by the calling and the commissioning of the disciples. And then in the second verse they are sent as apostles. It is a change in the pattern of ministry for our Lord, it is a critical part of the training of the twelve. It is a new phase in Matthew's presentation of the work of the King Himself. And I really believe as we go through this 10th chapter we're going to learn so much about discipleship, so much about what our Lord did, what He taught as He trained the men who would carry the baton after He gave it to them. And I believe that as you and I together go through this chapter our lives are going to be dramatically affected, as it touches us in regard to our service rendered to Jesus Christ." "The Nature Of Saving Faith" "The language of the modern message sounds vaguely similar to "Just as I am," but the difference in meaning is quite profound. Sinners today, you see, are hearing not only that Christ will receive them just as they are, but also that He will let them stay that way. Many erroneously believe that they can come to Christ, receive absolution from their sins or forgiveness, be granted the gift of immortality, or heaven, and then walk away to continue living life anyway they please, even choosing...as one well-known Bible teacher, author and theologian says, quote: "To leave God out and live according to the old nature." Beloved, that is the gospel we hear today. Come just as you are and go away just as you are. Jesus will take you just the way you are. In fact, He will let you stay that way." "The New Testament And The Mosaic Sabbath" - Genesis Origins Series "So no Sabbath observance on the part of man was instituted in Genesis two, that is a very critical point, because anyone who holds to Sabbath Law today, whether it's a Seventh-Day Adventist, or Sabbatarian Baptists, who meet on Saturday, or what other group it is, they all say, "Sabbath Law goes back to Genesis," but there is not any indication in Genesis, chapter two, that God imposed on man any Sabbath rest. As I said, all he knew was rest, because in a perfect world there was no work, only delight, as he enjoyed the wonders of the Garden. Again, I say, nothing is ever said, anywhere, in the fifty chapters of Genesis, about any Sabbath Law for man." "Open Theism's Attack On The Atonement" "Unfortunately, the major segment of this generation of evangelicalism seems to lack the will or the knowledge to decide whether open theists are wolves in sheep's clothing or true reformers. But let it be clearly stated: by any definition of evangelicalism with historical integrity, open theism opposes the very core truths that evangelicals stand for. And by any truly biblical definition, they are heretics, purveyors of a different gospel. Both of these charges are substantiated by open theism's abandonment of substitutionary atonement alone." "The Origin Of Evil" - Genesis Origins Series - Genesis 3:1-7 "The source of evil, the source of sin, is outside God. When God created angels and God created humans, he gave them intelligence. He gave them reason, and he gave them choice. And there is a sequence. I put those words in that order for a purpose. Intelligence gave them the ability to understand things. Reason gave them the ability to process that understanding toward behavior. And choice gave them the freedom to determine that behavior. Intelligence, reason, and choice. Bottom line: With what they knew, and with the ability they had to process that information, they would be brought to a choice. And whether angels or men, they would have the choice either to obey God or not to obey God." "Our God-Breathed Bible" "I hope you have an appreciation for the Scripture. I hope you have an appreciation for it not as a fettish but because it is the greatest treasure apart from God Himself that we have. It is His very word, His very self revelation. When people ask me why it is that I systematically teach through book after book, why it is that I pay so much attention to detail and to every verse and every phrase and touch all the words, it's because I understand them to be the words of God revealed to us from Him. And I would not second guess the necessity of those words being then presented, taught and understood by all of us." "The Parable Of The Four Soils" - Heart Condition Sermon 1 - Luke 8:4-15 Sermon 2 - Luke 8:4-15 Sermon 3 - Luke 8:4-15 "I suppose we could sort of say that the parable answers this question. What kind of response should we expect when we give people the gospel? Whether it's you on a one-to-one basis or me preaching a gospel message. What kind of response should we expect? It's really critical for us to know that, so that we don't become discouraged when we don't get the kind of response that we think we should get, or so that we don't somehow blame the gospel, as if it were inadequate to penetrate the heart or so that we don't blame ourselves, as if somehow if we were more skilled we might have a greater impact. What this parable tells us is that it's not about the skill of the sower. It's not about the seed, in that there's some good and some bad. It's about the heart. It's about the soil." The Parable of Brats "Style Versus Substance" - Luke 7:31-35 "These words of Jesus are directed at the people who are surrounding Him at the moment in which He spoke. He describes those people as brats. And while they are the immediate object of His words, the principle here is timeless. And there have been and there are and there will be brats by this kind of definition in every generation. He is speaking of people who respond to the gospel like a brat. The message of God to sinners about repentance, faith, forgiveness, salvation does not receive from them the response that it should." The Parable of the Rich Fool "The Doom Of The Materialist" - Luke 12:13-21 "There are only two realms which exist...one is the material realm and the other is the immaterial. One is the spiritual, the other is the physical. One is the natural, the other is the supernatural. There are only those two realms. Hypocrisy relates to the spiritual realm and greed relates to the material world...both the material and the immaterial world threaten to damn eternal souls. You get into the wrong spiritual teaching and the wrong spiritual influence and your soul will be damned. If you get into the wrong physical influence, the wrong material influence, and your soul will be damned." The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins "The Fate Of The Unprepared" - Matthew 25:1-13 This parable is intended to teach us about the suddenness and unexpectedness of the Lord's coming. It calls for us to be prepared for that unknown moment "Principles Of Judgment" Sermon 1 - Romans 2:1-3 Sermon 2 - Romans 2:4-5 Sermon 3 - Romans 2:6-10 Sermon 4 - Romans 2:11-13 "There are people like that today. They've been baptized. They go to church. They belong to a church. They keep the rules and they act on a moral basis outwardly. They're self-righteous. They try to do what's right and they just don't think they're going to be judged. They really don't. That's basically true. As one theologian said, "There is some kind of a still little voice in everybody that constantly convinces them that in the end it's going to be okay." And that's why you hear so very often people say, "Well, God would never do that to me. I mean, I've been a good person." The moral self-righteous people, frankly, are the hardest people to reach. They're much harder to reach than the reprobates who hit the bottom and have no other options. So Paul goes from the reprobates in chapter 1 to the moral people in chapter 2. And with great force and great clarity he points out that the ethical moral person, even the Jew, is going to find himself in the same hell as the Gentile pagan idolater if he keeps going the way he's going. In fact, get this one, if the heathen is without excuse, then the Jew is even more without excuse because he has more information and more knowledge." "The Promise Of Redemption" - Genesis Origins Series Sermon 1 of 2 - Genesis 3:20-21 Sermon 2 of 2 - Genesis 3:20-24 "What you have here in this amazing little section is the introduction of salvation, the introduction of redemption. And this is literally pregnant with meaning. Here is the true 'proto evangelium.' Here is the first gospel. Here is the first promise of the gospel unfolded, the plan of salvation, the plan of redemption. I can't resist saying again, as I often consider that here again, with very few words, with an amazing economy of words, God has said all that needs to be said about the vast reality of salvation. Here in this text are given the necessary components for salvation. Here is the theology of redemption from man's side and from God's side. For here in the verses that I just read to you, five brief verses: From man's side, faith and repentance are introduced. And from God's side, atonement and security are introduced. And that, essentially, sums up salvation. Man believes with a penitent heart, and God provides atonement and secures the believing sinner for eternity. That is the sum of the plan. What is required of the man or the woman is to repent and believe. What is required of God is to provide atonement and secure the sinner. And it's all here. The salvation of sinners, their deliverance, their rescue from sin, has always been by faith and repentance through atonement and the power of God to secure us unto eternal life." "Proper Biblical Interpretation" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 4 of 13 "But I want to carry on our special study of "Charismatic Chaos," looking and evaluating the Charismatic movement from the Word of God, by focusing on the issue of interpreting the Bible. One of the things that allows for the Charismatic movement to continue, to move ahead, is that it is engaged in misinterpretation of Scripture. I know that is a strong thing to say, but it is true. The movement continues at really an amazing pace, not only in America but around the world. And as it moves and catapults itself along it does so at the expense of Scripture. There is, in my judgment, very little understanding, in the Charismatic movement, of proper Bible interpretation. Much of what exists in the Charismatic movement could be eliminated with just some very simple straight forward basic understanding of how to properly interpret the Bible. It falls technically under the title Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is a theologians word to explain the science of Bible interpretation. And Hermeneutics is a crucial building block in discerning theology. In fact, the absence of Hermeneutics or misunderstanding of it feeds the Charismatic movement. Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to base much of their teaching on poor principles of Bible interpretation." "The Proverbs 31 Woman" "If you ever happened to be rummaging through any old magazines or old newspapers, the kind you see in old bookstores, and in your garage or your attic somewhere, and you look at the women that are portrayed in some of the ads in the past, you see mothers rocking babies, and women in kitchens cooking dinner for families using some special product, or a woman sitting on a bed reading stories to her children. Pictures like that, images like that, almost sound like fiction in our world today. When you look at the woman in advertising today you see her dressed up in a slick business suit, swinging a briefcase as she sails down a crowded street. Or you see her in tights doing aerobics, or in a skimpy bathing suit, half-exposed. What is it that our society really views as the woman to be exalted, the woman to be honored?" "Reexamining The Eternal Sonship Of Jesus Christ" "To that end, I want to state publicly that I have abandoned the doctrine of "incarnational sonship." Careful study and reflection have brought me to understand that Scripture does indeed present the relationship between God the Father and Christ the Son as an eternal Father-Son relationship. I no longer regard Christ's sonship as a role He assumed in His incarnation." "Repentance: God's Highway To The Heart" Sermon 1 - Luke 3:6-7 Sermon 2 - Luke 3:8-14 Sermon 3 - Luke 3:15-17 Sermon 4 - Luke 3:15-17 "...we really do have a definition of true repentance, the kind of repentance that saves the sinner. But at the same time, because it is such a clear definition of true repentance, it is also an exposure of false repentance, or shallow repentance, or non-saving repentance. And this is of great interest to any preacher and any Christian because people have always been and still are prone to shallow repentance, they are prone to a false repentance. The message, the modern message of cheap grace, as it's often called, just believe in Jesus, that's all you need to do, the modern message that's often called "easy believism" in fact invites such shallowness and is at once 180 degrees from the message of John the Baptist. There was nothing about John's message that was easy. There was nothing about John's message that was warm and fuzzy. It was harsh, it was strong, it was confrontational, it was devastating because John understood how prone the sinner is to a shallow, superficial repentance that does not save." "Resurrection: The Key To Everything" "But the question is, what did the resurrection of Jesus Christ mean? What did it verify? What did it accomplish? What did it prove? Well I want us to look at several realities that are proven by the resurrection, several that are made incontrovertible and inarguable by the resurrection. And I think you'll find them very basic to the message of Scripture." "The Rich Fool: The Doom Of The Materialist" - Luke 12:13-21 "There are only two realms which exist...one is the material realm and the other is the immaterial. One is the spiritual, the other is the physical. One is the natural, the other is the supernatural. There are only those two realms. Hypocrisy relates to the spiritual realm and greed relates to the material world...both the material and the immaterial world threaten to damn eternal souls. You get into the wrong spiritual teaching and the wrong spiritual influence and your soul will be damned. If you get into the wrong physical influence, the wrong material influence, and your soul will be damned." "The Sabbath Question" - Genesis Origins Series Sermon 1 - "The 'Rest' Of Creation" - Genesis 2:1-3 Sermon 2 - "The Sabbath Of Moses" - Exodus 31:12-17 Sermon 3 - "The Sabbath Question: The Nature Of The Old Covenant" - selected Scriptures "It's noteworthy, I think...and you need to follow along with this thought...it's noteworthy that there is no mention of the word "Sabbath" here. Doesn't occur in Genesis, Chapters 1 and 2, the creation account. No mention of "Sabbath." That word is not here. And furthermore...I want you to file this...there is nothing said about man resting here. It is not appropriate to inaugurate here in Genesis some rest for man. That is to miss the point here. In fact, man isn't even mentioned here in connection with this seventh day rest; only God is mentioned. No rest for man is inaugurated here; no Sabbath for man is inaugurated here. That doesn't come until the Mosaic law." "The Salvation Of Babies Who Die"" Sermon 1 of 2 Sermon 2 of 2 "Some of you who tuned into the Larry King Show, a week ago Saturday, will remember that Larry fired a question to me on the air--it came out of nowhere--a question that reveals a nagging, troubling issue in the human heart. He asked me, "What about a two-year-old baby crushed at the bottom of the World Trade Center?" I answered, "Instant heaven." He replied with another question: "Wasn't a sinner?" I again answered, "Instant heaven." That's a compelling question: what about a baby crushed at the bottom of the Trade Center? What about any baby that dies? It's an agonizing question. It's a question that plagues Christians and non-Christians alike: "What happens to babies that die?" All kinds of strange answers have been offered in the past. We don't need to deal with those; we need to know the right answer. I said, "Instant heaven," and what was my authority for saying that? In a sound-byte environment like that, I didn't have time for an explanation and he didn't ask for one. But, you deserve one so I'm going to tell you why I said what I said." Satan - Genesis: Origins Series Sermon 1 - "The Character Of Satan" Sermon 2 - "The Fall Of Satan" "This, then, is Satan. Satan, who takes over the body of a reptile and uses that body as a vehicle to have a conversation that plunges the entire universe into sin. Now the question is: Where did Satan come from? And how are we to understand his character and his work? Now Satan, we are very familiar with as Bible students. He is described in the Bible in careful detail. We are glad that we know about his origin. That's very important. We're glad that we know about his character. We're glad that we know about his work, because we want to understand all of that. It's important for us to know about his origin. It's important for us to know about how it was that he became a sinful creature and became the tempter. It's very important for us to know that, lest we think that God was the creator of evil. If we didn't know about the origin of evil in this personality called Satan and the other demons who fell along with him, it might contribute to some assumption that God, in fact, is the creator of evil." "Satan Series" Sermon 1 - "Satan: Is He? Who Is He?"" Sermon 2 - "Satan: What Is He Like?" Sermon 3 - "Satan: How Does He Operate?" "If we're going to understand how best to win the victory, we ought to know what our enemy is all about. The better we understand our enemy the better we understand his inabilities. The better we understand his inabilities the more vulnerable he becomes to us. And that's what we want to do is look at Satan. Certainly not to glorify him, but to unmask him in order that we might see him for the corrupted and defeated character that he is." "The Scandal Of The Catholic Priesthood" "Richard John Neuhaus, do you know that name? Wasn't he the author of that document, that ECT document, Phil [Johnson], that Colson and all those guys signed? Richard John Neuhaus said he is not in favor of banning gay men from the priesthood. Quote: "I think we would probably discover we would be retroactively excluding a good many canonized saints over 2,000 years." End quote. Richard John Neuhaus says that: If we banned gays from the priesthood, we'd be banning canonized saints over the last 2,000 years. Is that a long-term problem? He doesn't have to say that. If I was him, I wouldn't have said that. Why would he say that? Because it really doesn't matter in the [Catholic] system." The Security Of Salvation" "Now, this is a subject that through the years has been very hotly debated in theology. There have always been those who have affirmed that you could lose your salvation and those who have affirmed that you could not and the battle has gone on through the years. The issue of eternal security, or the perseverance of the saints, or as lay men sometimes call it, the once saved always saved doctrine. And some in our time today, in many churches, some of you in your own backgrounds, some of you even maybe to this very day believe that a Christian can lose his or her salvation." Sermon 1 - Romans 5:1-2 Sermon 2 - Romans 5:2-5 Sermon 3 - Romans 5:5-11 Sin: It's Source And Extent - Genesis: Origins Series Sermon 1 - What Is Sin? - Genesis 3:1-7 Sermon 2 - The Breadth And Depth Of Sin - Genesis 3:1-7 "Genesis 3 explains the human dilemma. All the problems in the universe have their origin in the events of this historic account. [I'll] say that again: All the problems in the universe...physical problems, spiritual problems, moral problems, social problems, economic problems, political problems...all the problems in the universe have their origin in the events of this historic account. This Chapter, then, is the foundation of any true and accurate world view. And without this foundation, every and any world view is utterly wrong. If you do not understand the origin of sin and its impact based on Genesis Chapter 3, then your understanding of the world is wrong. Everything then is misunderstood; everything is misevaluated; everything is misread; everything is misdiagnosed, and hopelessly incurable." "The Sovereignty Of God In Salvation" - Ephesians 1:3-14 "Salvation is not a result of the will of man. It is not a result of the merit of man. It is not a result of some religious sacrifice on man's part. It is not a result of the love of man. It is not a result of the good intention of man. It is not a result of the purpose of man. And it is not to the praise and glory of man. Every aspect of salvation is born out of the purpose and the will and the plan of God that when it is accomplished it may be solely and only to the praise and the glory of God. God has saved us in order that He might be glorified, therefore all in our salvation belongs to His credit." "Speaking In Tongues" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 10 of 13 "There is no question in my mind that if you were to boil down the Charismatic movement as to its basic, several ingredients, one of them would be the affirmation that speaking in tongues is a gift for today. Not only a gift for today, but a gift to be sought by every Christian who wants the fullness of the Holy Spirit and the fullness of the blessing of God. It is so much a part of the fabric of the Charismatic movement that it is one of the primary things that they endeavor to teach the children in that movement." "Speaking In Tongues Series - Study Guide" Sermon 1 - "The Truth About Tongues" - 1 Corinthians 14:1-5 Sermon 2 - "The Truth About Tongues" - 1 Corinthians 14:6-19 Sermon 3 - "The Truth About Tongues" - 1 Corinthians 14:20-25 Sermon 4 - "The Truth About Tongues" - 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 "In previous lessons, we have learned that the gift of tongues was the ability to speak a foreign language. It was always a known language! For example, when the disciples spoke in tongues on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, verse 6 tells us that "every man heard them speak in his own language." But as we come to the Corinthian situation, we find that they had counterfeited the real gift of tongues and substituted an ecstatic kind of speech that was very common in pagan religions." "The Sufficiency Of Scripture" Sermon 1 Sermon 2 - Psalm 19 "There is, I believe, a strong and pervasive and somewhat subtle strategy unfolding today among those who call themselves "evangelical Christians." This is being masterminded by the arch enemy, Satan, and sadly being bought into by many many people in evangelical churches. This subtle strong strategy basically is an attack on the sufficiency of the Word of God. Now in all times and seasons, the Word of God is under attack. And we have to be somewhat careful and somewhat wary and somewhat watchful to discern how it's being attacked. I believe presently the attack on Scripture is primarily coming from those who deny its sufficiency for all matters of faith and conduct. One of the great statements of theology, of traditional evangelical theology is that the Scripture is adequate for all matters of faith and conduct. That is being attacked today." "The Third Wave" - Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 6 of 13 "The term the "Third Wave" was coined by C. Peter Wagner who is a Missions professor at Fuller Seminary and the author of several books on church growth. He is really the leading proponent of the Third Wave philosophy and methodology. According to Wagner, he said, "The First Wave was the Pentecostal Movement, the Second Wave was the Charismatic Movement, and now the Third Wave is joining them." And by that he means an inundating wave of the power of the Holy Spirit manifesting itself in visible ways. And while acknowledging the Third Wave's spiritual ancestry, that is, that it is the third of those three, Wagner nonetheless rejects the label "Charismatic and Pentecostal." In fact, most of the people in the Third Wave don't want to be identified in that way." "Triumphing Over Temptation" "When we fall and the test becomes a temptation, and the temptation becomes a sin, it is not that we are victims, it is that we made bad choices. We chose not to turn to the Word of God, but rather to listen to our own hearts and our own lusts enticed us." "True Belief" "So what is humble saving faith? If someone wrote you a letter and said, 'I don't know what believe means.' What would you say? Well, believe objectively means, that I believe in the historical truth that Jesus lived and died and rose again for me, and accomplished my salvation. I believe those facts. And I believe that He is Lord, and I acknowledge that with my mouth. From the subjective side, what does that mean? That means that, I submit to His leadership and rulership in my life. I pursue a loving personal relationship with Him. I hunger to turn from sin and to pursue holiness. I am broken over the guilt and the stench and the shame of my miserable sin. And I now view life seriously, not in the frivolity of the foolishness of my former ways. In other words, I reject myself and everything about me. That's humility. And he will lift you up." "What Is True Spirituality?"- Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 11 of 13 "Now we come to the next in our series that we have been studying on the Charismatic movement. Tonight we want to talk about the subject, "What is True Spirituality?" In Romans 12:2 we find a good starting point for our thinking tonight, and that is this statement by the Apostle Paul, "Do not be conformed to this world; but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Transformed by the renewing of your mind. Many Charismatics believe that you can renew your mind and achieve holiness without any conscious effort. They would say, some of them, that sanctification can come to you through an experience, effortlessly; sometimes even through subliminal conditioning." "What's Inside The Trojan Horse?" - The Seeker Friendly Church Model "Church leaders reacted to the world's indifference, not by a return to strong biblical preaching that emphasized sin and repentance, but by a pragmatic approach to 'doing' church-an approach driven more by marketing, methodology, and perceived results than by biblical doctrine. The new model of ministry revolved around making sinners feel comfortable and at ease in the church, then selling them on the benefits of becoming a Christian. Earlier silence has given way to cultural appeasement and conformity. Even the church's ministry to its own has changed. Entertainment has hijacked many pulpits across the country; contemporary approaches cater to the ever-changing whims of professing believers; and many local churches have become little more than social clubs and community centers where the focus is on the individual's felt needs. Even on Christian radio, phone-in talk shows, music, and live psychotherapy are starting to replace Bible teaching as the staple. 'Whatever works,' the mantra of pragmatism, has become the new banner of evangelicalism." "What Was Happening In The Early Church?"- Charismatic Chaos Series - Sermon 8 of 13 "Historically, Christians committed to a Biblical perspective have recognized the difference. And it is an important difference to recognize. Evangelical theologians, through the years, have drawn the heart of their doctrine from Bible passages intended to teach the Church. They have understood that Acts is an inspired, historical record of the Apostolic period, not necessarily viewing every event or every phenomena that occurs there, as normative for the entire Church Age." "Who Chose Whom?" - The Doctrine Of Election "This doctrine is at one and the same time, essential to understanding the church, and largely resented by the church, and therein lies part of the problem. I don't think it's wrong to assume that most people, who call themselves believers, do not accept the doctrine of sovereign election, and this fact alone skews severely their ecclesiology. So what we're talking about here is not something esoteric, but what we re talking about in this discussion is something completely endemic to the character and nature of the church, which informs how we do ministry." "Will There Be An Opportunity For Salvation After The Rapture" - Question and Answer "Who is this multitude? Who are these people that have been saved of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues? Who are they? Well that's the questions of verse 13: Who Are They? And from where did they come? And verse 14, "And I said to him, 'Sir, you know.' And he said to me, 'These are they who came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'" See, those people are saved during the tribulation, they have to be. That's clear." "The Work Of The Word" Sermon 1 - 2 Timothy 3:15-16 Sermon 2 - 2 Timothy 3:15-16 "Now a simple reading of those verses indicates to us five elements of the work of the Word...salvation, teaching, reproof, correction, training and righteousness. Those are the things which the Word does, which the Scripture produces. They're not new to me, they're not new to most of you, they're new to perhaps some of you. And as I thought about it I thought, "Well, it's pretty basic but it's also pretty important." "Why Raise The Dead At The Rapture If They Are Already With The Lord?" - Question and Answer Because at the Rapture you are going to raise their "bodies"--their spirits are with the Lord, but their "bodies" are going to come out of the grave, and the bodies will be reunited with the spirits. You say, "What's our body going to be like?" Just like Jesus Christ: 1 John 3:2, "We shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." And you read 1 Corinthians 15 if you want to know what you body is going to be like--that's exciting to read that.."

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