Educational Mission

Educational mission, and that was just it's kind of kind of a broad topic and what I'm going to deal with here. Wow, I'm supposed to be done. Okay, all right, We're gonna go really fast. Okay, the pattern of two Timothy. I'm dealing with this from the standpoint of the church and its mission. And in our first session we talked about how missions understood properly is about the advance of the church and the planting of churches, right, that that when we understand missions properly, that's what's going on, and that other things qualify as missions to the degree that they participate in or support that work. Okay. And one of the things that I talked about that does that is education, and how the church in its advance has almost always seen education as a vital part of missions, both on the front end and the back end. On the front end in basic literacy, right, so that people can understand the word, and on the back end, and the training of those who would advance the gospel even further in the midst of those cultures. Because we want the work to be indigenous, right, We want the work to be indigenous with that word children, that word just means that we want the work to be done by people from within the culture. All right. We don't want Christianity superimposed on another culture, our by a foreign culture. So we don't want people from Asia going to European cultures and forming this Asian movement within the European culture in the name of Christianity. That doesn't acknowledge the culture that's receiving whatever they're bringing. So what we want to do is bring the Gospel into a culture. We want to acknowledge the fact that, because of linguistic and other issues, that the most effective and efficient way for the Gospel to spread in that culture is that individuals within that culture who are inculcated with the Gospel would then take the Gospel further in that culture than outsiders ever could. Okay, that requires education. Okay. The pattern of Two Timothy gives us a picture of this, and it gives us sort of a theological foundation for it. When you read two Timothy, there are two sides of a coin. One is preserve and proclaim the Gospel as given by the Apostles, and the second one is to endure the hardship that inevitably will follow. These are the two sides of the coin, and we see it in every chapter of Tewo Timothy. There's four chapters, and we see each of these things in every chapter. We see preserve and proclaim. Look at me in that second timoty one eight. Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord nor of me his prisoner two one, thirteen and fourteen. Follow the pattern of sound words that you have heard from me. In the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us, guard the good deposit intrusted to you. So this is about preserving and proclaiming that testimony, that good deposit, and that pattern of sound words Chapter two one and two. You, then, my child, be strong by the grace that is be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, in trust of faithful men who will be able to teach others also. And now you're preserving and your proclaiming Chapter three thirteen to fifteen. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus Chapter four, verses one through four. I charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus, who is judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort with complete patience and teaching, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and will wander off into myths. This is why it's so important to preserve and proclaim. Okay, the Gospel has to be preserved and proclaim. Think about this. Here are the apostles, and the apostles are basically the ones who are communicating this gospel message that they've received from Christ. It's important that this message be written down. The apostles are not going to live forever, and they know they're not going to live forever, and also they know that they're being persecuted right and because of this persecution that is coming. Their lives are being cut short. If their lives are cut short before they have preserved this gospel and proclaimed this gospel and equipped faithful men with this gospel so that they could propagate this gospel, then this gospel is forever perverted or forever lost. So this becomes incredibly important to them. And here is Paul in prison, knowing that he's about at the end of his life, and he's doing precisely that with young Timothy and encouraging him to do it. Also endure hardship. This is the other side of it. We get to preserve and proclaim, and in every chapter you see that, but you have to endure hardship because hardship will Chapter one, verse eight, Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord Jesus Christ or me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God. Share in suffering for the Gospel by the power of God. I love this verse because again we talked about some of the errors in Word of Faith teaching, and one of the things that people have come to believe in this sort of name and and claim it Word of Faith world is that if you're suffering, it's because you've done something wrong or because you're not believing enough. And we believe that the power of God is there just to deliver us from suffering. He says, Share in suffering for the Gospel by the power of God. Power of God is not delivering us from suffering. It is strengthening us in order to endure suffering. Amen one eleven twelve. For which I was appointed a preacher and apostle and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do. He's not suffering because of disobedience, and he's not suffering because of a lack of faith. He's suffering because his part and parcel of his responsibility as a steward of the Gospel of Christ. Chapter two, verses three and four. Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ. Jesus, no soldier gets engaged in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him. Share in suffering as a good soldier. Eight nine. Remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in My Gospel, for which I am suffering bound with chains as a criminal because of his faithfulness to the Gospel Chapter three. You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and suffering. So much for the idea that persecutions in suffering are associated with a lack of faith or faithfulness, because he starts with his faithfulness and then he culminates in his persecution and suffering. That happened to be in Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra, which persecutions I endured. Yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. Remember those promises that we talked about yesterday that we rip kicking and screaming out of context. God makes a promise to Israel, and we bring it over and as though it's our promise, you know, so on and so forth. Remember how I said you can't do that, how you have to interpret it first and then apply it. Well, you don't have to do that with this one. That's your promise. You can claim it anytime. Those who desire to live a god in life and grast Jesus shall be persecuted. I haven't heard many people praying that one Lord, we claim our persecution in Jesus's name, while evil people and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. Yet there are certain questions that people ask that just make Scripture popp into my mind and it says, you know what, we need to read our Bibles more. We need to read our Bibles more because there's so many questions that we ask that the Bible answers. When people are asking about election and predestination, they ask the exact same questions that Paul answers in Romans nine. The exact same Christian people with Bibles that they read ask the exact same questions that Paul asks and answers in Romans nine. I've done it. I like, it's interesting you'd ask that question. I open up the Bible, show them in Romans nine, here's what you just asked me, and here's what Paul says. And they go, oh, yeah, that is in there. Because we're meditating on something other than the word. We're meditating on our doubts. We're meditating on our worldview that needs to be broken instead of believed and here's another one where people ask this question, and they ask it as though it brings God's faithfulness or sovereignty into doubt, and they go, why do all these false teachers keep prospering as though God's going I just can't stop them? Look at it again. While evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived, it's not a surprise that those proclaiming falsehood continue to proclaim falsehood, especially when in chapter four we see that people are going to heap up teachers in accordance with their own desires. Right, So these false teams creatures are necessary so that the wheat and the tears can be separated. Amen, so that falsehood can be identified. Paul says, it's necessary that there are divisions among you four five, as for you always be sober minded, endure suffering, do the working of an evangelists fulfill your ministry? What about the content to be preserved and proclaimed? The content a commitment to Apostolic teaching. This is a common Pauline theme, a common New Testament theme, and confessionalism is a guard and guide for this commitment to Apostolic teaching. One to one Paul an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, according to the promise of life that is in Christ Jesus Uh one to eleven, for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher. Why are these verses important? Here's why they're important. Paul and Timothy have a personal, intimate relationship, a father son relationship. How many of you know that Timothy was completely aware of the fact that Paul was an apostle, and yet he identifies that no less than twice in this epistle. Why because he's speaking from his apostolic authority and not just as a friend. That's why. That's why there's a commitment to what Paul is saying, not because of the affinity and affection between Paul and Timothy. Paul doesn't say, if you really love me now, Paul says, I'm an apostle, and I taught you as an apostle. You hold on to what I taught you because I'm an apostle. It's a common Pauline theme. We see it in Second Thesalonians two fifteen. We see it in Titus, chapter one and verse nine. It's also a common New Testament theme. We see it, for example in Acts two forty two and forty three, where they devoted themselves to the apostle teaching, but the apostles teaching, and so on and so forth. Confessionalism is a guide and a guard for this Second Timothy one, nine and ten. He saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the age began, and which now has been manifested through his appearing. The appearing of our savior, Christ, Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. And he tells him, remember Jesus Christ risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my Gospel. There are several phrases in Two Timothy that give rise to the very concept of confessionalism, the idea of the pattern of sound words. That phrase, in and of itself the pattern of sound words. There is a pattern of sound words. There are certain canonical hymns like this one. Canonical hymns basically are songs. There's certain things that are written in the Greek language that are written as songs, and there are canonical hymns. This is one of those canonical hymns, which means they were taking the basic truths of Apostolic teaching and putting them to music. They were putting them to music. This is why we don't hold to the salter only position. Okay, there are some Reformed folks who hold to salter only, which means the only thing that you sing in church are the psalms, right, because those are the only things that would be you know, authoritative for us according to the regular principle. But when you see canonical hymns, it argues against salter only. I believe we ought to sing the salter by the way, we ought to sing the psalms, psalms hymn spiritual songs, right, so there ought to be some psalter going on. But at the same time, these canonical hymns point to the idea of setting our doctrine to music, New Testament doctrine to music. Okay, we have this, We have examples of this, and this is an example. So hymnody is one of the ways that we have this guide. In guard creeds, the early creeds, the early creeds are just following on from these same apostolic teaching, these patterns of sound words, and basically what you have in the Early Creeds is there are people who early on are contradicting sound doctrine, and the Early Creeds, like the Apostles Creed, are putting the Gospel in a concise form and refuting those who are contradicting the Gospel. Okay, confessions, our confessions are important, and there are a lot of people who are anti confession, and folks, that's just wrong. That's just wrong. It's wrong. You know, you hear things. I'm a you know, I'm a Southern Baptist. We're members of the Southern Baptist Convention, whether they like it or not. And one of the things you hear from our fellow Southern Baptist is, you know, Southern Baptists are not a creed ole people. We have no creed but Christ. Actually that's a creed. No creed but Christ. That's a creed. But aside from that, how about this, You just let the Jehovah's witnesses in, and you just let the Mormons in. No, no, no, no, no, no, we didn't. Well why not they can agree with no Creed. But Christ they can agree with that. Yeah, but when they say Christ, they mean this. When we say Christ, we mean that. You just gave me confessionalism. Now we got the Bible. We don't need creeds. We got the Bible. You just let the Mormon and that Jehovah's witnesses right back in. By the way, you also let the Roman Catholics in. No, no, no, no, on on when we say Bible, this is what me we mean the sixty six books, they got the apocrypha. Don't look now, you just got confessional again because you defined what you mean when you say Bible. That's confessionalism. Okay, everybody's confessional. Some are just hypocritical liars that act like they're not confessional. Okay, but we're all confessional, all of us. Because the Bible's really big, and you've got to define what you mean when you say Bible. You got to define what you mean when you say Jesus. You got to define what you mean when you say Salvation. You got to define what you mean when you say Okay, so the confessions and then catechisms are made to support and teach confessions, okay, it creeds, catechisms and confessions connect us with the historical church. They connect us with the historical church. We don't reinvent the wheel in every generation. We're connected to the historical Church. We're not the first people to love Jesus. Amen. They also clarify our doctrine. They clarify our doctrine so that we can divide properly. There must be divisions among us. Those divisions need to be made for right reasons, and doctrine is the right reason to divide. The modern Church movement, one of the things that it's done is it's moved us further and further away from confessionalism. Why because if you really want to grow a church big and fast, you hide your doctrine so that you have a huge tent and everybody can come under it, and you have you know, a confessional statement on your website that can fit on a postcard and that anybody can agree to. Right, so that anybody and everybody can come in. There needs to be division so that we can worship with clear conscience, and so that we can actually get along with each other. Because when we you ever heard the term fences make good neighbors. Amen, Fences make good neighbors, keep your stuff out of my yard, keep my stuff out of your yard, and we can be friends. But you take down the fence and all of a sudden, you're building over into my yard and I'm building over into your yard. No, we need our fences so that we can be good neighbors. So we need to know where those areas of disagreement are so that we can continue to move forward on those areas where we agree. I have many, many, many Presbyterian friends. We disagree on the nature of covenant, we disagree on the nature of the church, and we disagree on how you enter the church and baptisms on and so forth. But hey, once we know where those disagreements are and we understand the incredible unity that Westminster and Second London have, oh we can do so much together because we're not pretending that these other things don't matter. Okay, And then when people come to our church when they have certain convictions, we can say to them, hey, based upon those convictions that you have, we think it would actually be better for you to go to this kind of church because you're not going to be happy here. That just people in the church growth movement they hear that and they just dire or does not compute, does not compute, does not compute. Everybody needs to be here. We need to convince everybody that this is where they need to be. We need to be whatever we know just okay, fine, you know, we just we just won't we just won't deal with that. And then what do you do? You become a mile wide and half an inch deep in order not to offend, and you don't stand firm on anything. It's a guide for discipling children and new converts. When we talk about discipleship, what do you use for discipleship? We use creeds, confessions, and catechisms. That's what we use. Why are we trying to reinvent discipleship? And what dies discipleship look like now? In many churches? Well, first class, you know, it's like a four. There's four classes the discipleship class. You know, there's the one O one, two oh one, three oh one, and the four oh one, you know, and the one on one. You know, you make sure that you're saved. Do you understand the planet salvation? You know? Then you get to the two o one and you learn how to have a quiet time, you know, you get to the three on one, your assession of your spiritual gifts, and you know, you get to the four oh one and we call that discipleship. Then people leave and they know nothing. They know nothing, as we'd say in Texas, they don't know come here from Sickam, but they've been through the discipleship class. Man, you take some people through the early creeds, you take them through your confession. I'm in the middle right now of teaching our class. Before people can become members of our church, there are two classes that they have to take, and I teach both of those classes on Sunday mornings before church. One of them is a ten week class. In our confession. We take ten weeks and we go through the sixteen eighty nine, and then there's a six week membership class after that, and then there's an interview process and so on and so forth for people to become members of the church, so that they know who we are, we know who they are, and there's unity. There's unity. And after we go through it, you hear that in yougo, man, that's a long time. Nobody comes through the end of that saying that was too long. They come through the end of that going that was awesome. And the reason that we started doing that is because we had this sixteen eighty nine class. We didn't used to do the sixty and eighty and nine class. It was just our six week membership class. Then I taught sixteen eighty nine class as a as a midweek Bible study in my home and went through it a couple of times. Every time we went through it, members of the church after going through the sixty and eighty nine class said everybody ought to go through that. The next time we went through it, dude, everybody ought to go through that. And being the amazing effective leader that I am, what to my fellow elders, and I said, hey, man, I think everybody ought to go through this day night class. And so now we do and people are just going, man, yes, amen, how will youah? Praise the Lord? Thank you. And one of the things that we ask them to do is that during that ten weeks, during your family worship time, use the confession during your family worship time, break up the things that we're going to be dealing with in that particular week during the days of the week in your home, so that you go through it on Sunday morning in class and throughout the week with your family, and by the time they finish it, it's just it's it's an amazing experience. This is the discipleship, folks. This is discipleship. Okay, it exposes and guards against the cults as well. Right, So the Jehovah's witnesses come to your door and oh, I don't know what to do. What do I do? What do I do? Grab the Athenation Creed because Athenasius dealt with their heresy. Grab the Athenation Creed and say say, okay, you're a Christian and you know you'd like to talk fancy and all this. Can you agree to this and just start reading through the statement of the Athenation Creed? They can't, and it exposes their heresy. Okay, the content, but you've heard from me in the presence of many witnesses. Our preaching should be doctrinal, Our preaching should be expository, and our preaching should be exhaustive. This is corporate proclamation. Our corporate proclamation ought to be geared toward the exaltation of Christ and the equipping of the saints. Amen. Not five ways to have a happy life and four ways to reduce stress and see church growth. Preaching is therapeutic, not doctrinal, and it's crippling people personal instruction. It's time consuming, and it's risky. But that's exactly what Paul did with Timothy, and exactly what the church is called to do to give personal instruction. You can't give the same level of personal instruction to everyone in the church. I don't give myself to the same level of personal instruction to every man in our church. But there are some men in our church who are moving toward leadership and eldership, and I give more personal time and instruction to those individuals. Why because the Firs Timothy too too. I have a duty to pass these things on specifically to faithful men who are able to teach others. Also, everybody he gets the public proclamation, everybody gets the general instruction and stuff, but not everybody gets the same level of personal instruction and discipleship. Because I have a duty as an elder to pass things on to certain men because of their ability to repeat the process for the sake of time, Oscar. But with that one, this personal instruction Paul New timothy strengths and weaknesses. Paul prayed for Timothy. Paul New Timothy's family. Paul and Timothy served together. Paul and Timothy cried together. This is personal instruction. This is not seminary instruction. I'm not against seminary instruction. Again, just took a position as dean of a seminary, not against seminary instruction. But the reason I'm going to serve it this seminary is because it serves at the behest of a group of Reformed Baptist churches that are confessional Second London Baptist Confession churches. And the men who study there are members of those churches, under the authority of those churches, under the supervision of those churches, recommended by those churches, and growing and being monitored by those churches during this entire process of their training. Imagine that. Imagine that because this is a duty given to the church. This part here, it's a duty given to the church, the commission entrusted to the faithful. Men must be intentional and purposeful, and it must be selective. Called men, gifted men, qualified men and tested, improven men. You know our process. We have a two year process of training people for pastoral ministry and training them to be church planters and elders in the church. And train them and send them out of whatever. And they're people who just sometimes they want to do it just because you know, I just want to know more stuff. That's great, get these books to read. But this training program is not for people who just want to know more stuff. Everybody ought to want to know more stuff. Amen, we got something for people who just want to know more stuff. And you'll find that in the Family Shepherd's book. What we do for all our guys. This is different than what we do for all our guys. It's intentional. Seek to provoke called men. We want to provoke called men. You seek to equip called men. We seek to evaluate called men. And then continuity who will be able to teach others. Also listen to this from John Calvin. He again shows how earnestly desirous he is to transmit sound doctrine to posterity, and he exhorts Timothy not only to preserve its shape and features, as he formally did, but likewise to hand it down to godly teachers, that being widely spread, it may take root in the hearts of many. For he saw that it would quickly perish if it were not soon scattered by the ministry of many persons, And indeed that Satan did not long after the death of the Apostles, For just as if at preaching had been buried for some centuries, he brought in innumerable reveries which, by their monstrous absurdity, surpassed the superstitions of all the Heathens. We need to wonder, We need not wonder. Therefore, if Paul, in order to guard against an evil of such a nature and of such magnitude, earnestly desires that his doctrine shall be committed to all godly ministers who shall be qualified to teach it. This is why we educate. This is why we educate those who are called gifted and qualified. This is why we prepare them. We have to because we have a duty and obligation. This is why again you put this into context and creates confessions and catechisms. We're moving forward so that we have a guard and a guide, and all of a sudden, you see the protection in this, the wisdom in this, the continuity in this. Okay, this is the educational side of the mission. Amen, I'll stop there.