Video Transcript: Presuppositions

Hello again. This is the second lecture in the series on practical ministry skills.  Today we're talking about presuppositions that I had in writing the book that  we're basing this on, and therefore the presuppositions behind this course, you  can find these in the book introduction that should have been your reading.  There we go. Our key verse for this lecture is II Timothy 2:15, work hard so you  can present yourself to God and receive His approval. Be a good worker, one  who does not need to be ashamed, and who correctly explains the word of truth. Being an effective minister for the Lord is like being effective at anything else.  You have to work hard. Just because God has told you and anointed you,  doesn't mean you're going to be a great success without you putting any effort  into it. God has given us free will. God requires us to present ourselves to Him  so work hard so that you can correctly explain the word of truth.  Presuppositions. I go into this course, this book, my ministry assuming a number of things. The first and most basic assumption is that the Bible is the Word of  God. It is inspired, it is inerrant, it is infallible. Now I don't let anybody else define for me what I mean by that. There are those who would say, Oh, if you say the  Bible is this or that? That must mean you believe all these other things. I don't  let them do that. But this is not a course about the Bible per se. So I will just say  to you that I understand the Bible to be the inspired Word of God, that the  authors who wrote it were inspired by God to write what they wrote. It is inerrant. It doesn't have mistakes in it, at least in the as they say, the original  manuscripts, what the original authors wrote, that's not claiming that any  particular copies or translations or certainly anybody's interpretation of it is  without error. All of those probably have errors, some of them quite  demonstrably. But the Bible, as the word of God, does not have mistakes, and it  is infallible. It cannot fail. So among other things, that means that the way God  wants you to do something will never contradict the Bible when properly  understood. If you're properly understanding what God is saying to you, and  you're properly understanding the Bible, there will be no contradiction if you are  not properly understanding let's put it this way, if there's a seems to be a  contradiction, that means you're not properly understanding, because God does  not contradict himself. There are many Bible passages on which sincere  Christians differ about the exact meaning, the exact application. What  specifically does this mean? What specifically is God asking us to do about it?  Should baptism be of babies or only of adults, or only people who have reached  some certain age. Should it be immediate or only after certain kinds of training?  Should it be by pouring or does it have to be by total immersion? Good  Christians, Bible believing, prayerful Christians, intelligent, educated Christians  who can read the original languages and know all that stuff come down in  different places on these and I don't think that bothers God. I don't think he says, Oh. Because you don't see it this exact way, then you're disqualified. God's not  upset about these differences. If something is really important to God, that we 

get it right, then he makes it very clear in the Bible, where the Bible is not  specific, I believe we're free to be creative now, the way God wants you to do  something again will never contradict the Bible, but just because it's not  specifically mentioned in the Bible doesn't mean God doesn't want you to do it.  This technology we're using right now is not mentioned in the Bible. I don't  believe that that means God is upset that we're using it. So first presupposition,  the Bible is the Word of God. And let me say this, there's a very subtle  difference. Some would say the Bible contains the word of God, and what they  don't say, but what they're meaning by that is that it also contains things that are  not the word of God. And so you can pick and choose and basically what it  comes down to, although they don't say it. For many people who believe that  anything they don't like or anything that doesn't make sense to them, they say,  well, that must be the part that's not inspired, and so I don't have to pay  attention to it. I think it's much more rigorous and much more faith filled, and  much more of the mystery of God that we recognize it all as God, and then try to work on our understanding. So the Bible is the Word of God where the Bible is  not specific, we're free to be creative. Third presupposition, God wants the  church to be in order. God does not want chaos in the beginning, in Genesis 1:1, the the Hebrew there can be translated that there was chaos, the spirit was  suffering, always, it's the Hebrew word is tofu. Boy, tofu before, who never mind  the Hebrew word. It's about all the Hebrew I remember anyway, and now I can't  remember that tofu, bro, the bofoo. Tofu. The bofoo, something like that,  anyway, means chaos. It means a mess. My point is God. When God created  the world, he brought order out of chaos. I do not believe he wants his church to  reverse that process and bring chaos out of order. God wants things done in  order, but that doesn't mean unless he gives us the specific order he wants it  done in. He just wants it done in some kind of order. We can be creative in it, but it's not to be just wild and crazy and going every which way. God wants the  church to be in order. The next presupposition is that cultural elements are  spiritually neutral. There is a lot of tendency to think, well, this is the way my  culture does it, and I live in a Christian culture, and therefore this is the Christian way to do it. And so this is how, if I go to another culture, I need to change them, to do things the way that my culture does it, because that's the Christian way.  Not necessarily, not necessarily, music is culturally different. What you wear is  culturally different, all kinds of things that differ in various cultures. How you  celebrate holidays, all of those things in general. I mean, if you can trace them  back to something pagan, and not just trace them back. But if they have actual  non Christian meanings and implications now that other people are going to look at and say that is non Christian or demonic, or whatever, you know, stay away  with those be discerning. But in general, we celebrate Christmas on December  25 that's a cultural thing. It doesn't say in the Bible what the date was, but it's all  right, I'm sure God doesn't care what date and if there are those that follow still. 

Different calendar and celebrate Christmas on a different day, or celebrate  Easter on a different way day. I know there are different cultures, different  understandings. I don't think God cares about that. He wants us to be seeking to do the best that we can in our situation, for his people, cultural elements are  spiritually neutral. Next presupposition, and this, this is a big one for me. Every  Christian has the ability and the responsibility to learn how to recognize the  leading of God's Holy Spirit. Let me say that again, every Christian, every  Christian, has the ability. That means you can do it. If you're a Christian, you can do this. And the responsibility. If you're a Christian, you should do this. God  wants you to do this. He's going to hold you responsible for doing this. The  ability and the responsibility to learn. And it's a learned skill you don't  automatically know it, to learn how to recognize the leading of God's Holy Spirit.  God speaks to us today. Christians, by definition, have the Holy Spirit within  them. It comes with being born again. When you're born again, your human  spirit that was broken is made new. It's regenerated, and the Holy Spirit of God  comes to live in that new human spirit. And then the process of Christian growth. Now you have two spirits. You have your new godly spirit or nature, but you still  also have the old human nature, the old fleshly nature Christian growth is  learning more and more to learn how to let the godly nature take charge and be  in control. But it's a learned thing, learning how to recognize what ideas, what  concepts, what things come are coming from the Lord and what's coming from  some clever advertising and what's coming from, as they say, the world, the  flesh and the devil. You can learn that now that doesn't mean that we accept  things blindly. Just because somebody says, God told me, yes, I believe God  speaks to people. Do I believe that because somebody says God told me this,  that I have to accept it blindly? Let me go to this little cartoon. God told me last  night, if you didn't buy me a bike before this summer, he'd make you go bald.  Well, that that's not why I went bald. I bought my kids bikes, I think, or at least  none of them came and told me that. But it is easy for some people to  mistakenly or intentionally claim God told me this, therefore you have to do that.  I tell people if God, if they come and tell me, God told me I'm supposed to give  them $100 my answer is fine, when God tells me that, then you'll get your $100  but I'm not going to do it just because they say God told me I had people I knew  in college. One guy in particular went to a girl and told her, God told me you're  supposed to marry me. Now that may be, and I've known other situations where  it more or less happened that way, but that girl is absolutely not obligated to  marry the guy just because he says God told him, if God wants her to marry  him, God will tell her also. So we also should not expect our people, as pastors,  as ministers, as leaders, to blindly accept everything that God told us, just  because we're in that position doesn't mean that we're going to get it all right.  And you know, it's an amazing thing. God does not get upset when we question  that, or when people question that. Yes, there are places verses in the Old 

Testament that talk about honoring the prophets and believing the prophets, and all of that is right and true, but in the new in the Old Testament, only the  Prophets had the Holy Spirit since Jesus, since he went back up into heaven  and sent His Holy Spirit down at Pentecost on everyone and the promise is for  everyone, we all have the Holy Spirit so we can all judge and listen. Acts 17:11  This is from the New International Version now the Berean Jews, the Jews who  lived in the city of Berea, were of more noble character than those in  Thessalonica. Okay, he's comparing the Jews. And the reason it's Jews is  because those are the ones Paul went to first and preached in the synagogues  to the Jews. He preached to them first before he then expanded out to the non  Jewish, Gentile believers. What he's saying here is that the Jews in the city of  Berea who heard this were more noble, a more noble character than the ones  who lived in the city of Thessalonica. Why? For they received the message with  great eagerness, that's that's one. But then they examined the scriptures every  day to see if what Paul said was true. They examine the Scriptures every day to  see if what Paul said was true. Paul did not get upset. Luke, who was writing the book of Acts didn't get upset. God did not get upset because the people didn't  take Paul's word for it. He was happy. He was glad. He praised them. He called  them noble, because they went back and checked it against the Bible. And that  is what God wants us to do that is what God wants our people to do. You preach a sermon, you give a message, you give some advice. You want your people to  go back and check it against the Bible, because you might be wrong. I  Corinthians 14:29, let two or three people prophesy and let the others evaluate  what is said. Prophecy is just hearing from God giving a word from the Lord. I  think the Lord is telling me this. Check it against the scriptures and let other  spiritually mature people evaluate it also. This is how God works in this post  Pentecost age, when all of his people have the Holy Spirit, so every Christian  has the ability and the responsibility to learn how to recognize the leading of  God's Holy Spirit. We need to be training our people to do that. First, you need  to know how to do it yourself, and second, you need to train people to do it. I'm  going to pass on something that sounds kind of crazy, but I was told this when I  was young, when I was in school and learning how to do this. The guy that was  leading the course there wasn't even really a professor. He was more of a  teaching assistant or whatever. But he said, Here's how the Lord taught him to  hear his voice. He said, go to the grocery store and ask God to show you which  can of beans he wants you to buy. Now God doesn't care which can of beans  you buy that. God leaves that to your free will and in your mind and everything  else. But the point of this is that God so much wants you to learn how to hear his voice that he is willing to say, Yeah, buy that one. No, don't buy that one. And if  you did it wrong, so you bought the wrong can of beans, no big deal. But you  can learn, and we need to teach our our people this next presupposition,  differences of opinion among Christians don't bother God. What bothers God is 

when we don't handle those differences in a Christ like manner. You get online  and you start calling people names, and for you, you start running down the  neighboring church because they don't see this verse the way that you see it, or  they they organize their church differently than you do differences of opinion  among Christians. Don't bother God. What bothers God is when we don't handle these differences in a Christ like manner, the Bible is our starting point. If the  Bible is clear, then we don't have to go any farther. But as I said before, many  Christians disagree on their interpretation of Bible verses that are not totally  clear. And so then you go to three other areas that the founder of my  denomination, John Wesley, kind of laid out, and I think they make perfect sense for anybody you start with the Bible, but if you're having difficulty understanding  that seeing where it applies, it's an issue about something that the Bible doesn't  address because it wasn't invented. Something along those lines, you go to  historic Christian understanding, what have good Bible believing. Christians  down through the ages believed about this issue. If that doesn't still bring it  together, then prayerful discernment. You pray and you put all of these together.  You pray and ask God to show you. And you say, Is this reasonable? What  makes sense? In other words, I'm going to see if I can turn on this picture in  picture thing here. So let me see. I guess I there. We are. There I am. I'm still  there in essentials, unity in non essentials, Liberty in all things. Love that St  Augustine, African saint from Gee 1500 years ago, something like that. In  essentials unity. There are certain things that we need to believe, that if you  don't believe, then you're not, by definition, not Christian. Okay, there's one God. There's the Trinity. Jesus is God essentials. And the essentials, the definition of  essentials of what it means to be Christian, we all need to work together to  agree in non essentials liberty. Should a pastor wear a robe or not? You know,  things, all kinds of things like that. What? What's involved in ordination, all kinds  of things, where people run things, do you have bishops, or do you have  committees, or whatever? We have liberty in those areas. We allow people the  freedom to go the way that we believe God wants. They believe God wants  them to go. But in all things, in all of it, we show the love of Christ. We  demonstrate we share the love of Christ, because Christ loves us all, all of us  who are loving Christ and seeking to do the best we can according to our best  understanding of him. There we're all brothers and sisters, and we love each  other. And Jesus said that's how the world will know that we follow him, is if we  love each other, they'll see how we deal with our differences in essentials, unity  and non essentials, liberty and all things love. So what are the essentials? There is a historic creed called the Apostles Creed. The apostles didn't write it, but it  was written way early, like 300 something. Ad, shortly after the persecutions  ended, and the Christians from different cities were allowed to get together  openly and talk about these things and compare what they were all teaching and what they believed, and hash out, what is it that really God is telling us about 

these things. And they so they called it the Apostles Creed, because, as I  understand it, they they understood this to be a summary of the apostles  teaching. And so very quickly, I want to go through that. And I encourage you if  you can. Learn it, memorize it, understand it, get it down into you, to the point  where if something comes up, if somebody advances an idea or a thought that  contradicts this, you can say that doesn't sound right, and you can go back and  you can check we have the Bible first clearly. But this is essentially the next  point, the summary of what historic Christians down through the ages have  understood about the most basic essential parts of Christian belief where do we  go? Okay, I believe in God the Father, almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I  believe in Jesus, Christ, his only Son, our Lord. I believe in God. He is the  Father. He is Almighty. He's all powerful. He knows everything. He's everywhere. He created everything. That's the first point one God, the Creator. Second point I believe in Jesus, Christ, Christ, of course, is the Greek translation of the word  Messiah, the Hebrew word Messiah, which means the deliverer coming from  God, who was promised throughout the Old Testament. And it implies all the  other things the Bible tells us about Jesus. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only  son. Now we're all children of God, and so that means the males among us are  sons of God in a different sense. We're adopted, but he is the only son. The only begotten, is the term natural born, if you will, of the Father's essence, his only  Son, our Lord. He's in charge of us. He's our Master. We have submitted  ourselves to Him as Christians, and He is our Lord, who was conceived by the  Holy Spirit. Now we're talking about Jesus. Who was conceived by the Holy  Spirit. No human father. This is talking about the virgin birth here. And so that  brings in the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, Jesus Christ, God the Holy  Spirit, three persons in one God, one God existing in three persons. We'll talk a  little bit about that in one of the future lectures. Born of the Virgin Mary, suffered  under Pontius Pilate. That puts it in a historical place, in time, in history, he was  a human being who suffered, was crucified, died and was buried. He was really  dead. Didn't just pretend to be dead, didn't just fool everybody into thinking he  was dead. He died and he was buried and he was dead, and He descended to  the dead. The historic understanding is that during those three days in the  grave, he went to Gehenna, or Shoal, the holding place for dead spirits. If you  want to understand that that way, that's a historic understanding of it. Bible  doesn't specifically say it that way, but he descended to the dead. And you can  read about this in Jude and II Peter and so on. I Peter and then, as we go on, on the third day, he rose again, the resurrection, proving that He is God. If you don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that's one of the essentials defining  characteristics of Christianity. He's seated at the right hand of the Father. That's  where he is now. He's in heaven, but he's going to come back and will come  again to judge the living and the dead. He's a God of forgiveness, but he's also  a God of holiness. He's a God of justice. So the things that we do are going to 

have to be answered for Jesus didn't stay dead. He rose from the dead, and  he's coming back. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the third person of God, the God in us, God in the church operating in the world today, the holy, universal church,  now the historic most English translations use an old English word for universal  which has unfortunately gotten confused with the name of a denomination. And  that word is catholic. There's some it's an old English word saying if somebody  has catholic taste, it means they like all kinds of food. Okay, universal, wide  ranging, but the whole universal church, meaning the church is everybody who  believes in Jesus, every place for all time, the communion of saints, the  forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body. That's our bodies. We're going  to be raised up after we die and go to heaven and the life everlasting. Amen.  And I believe that is the end of our time, so I'll see you next time. Thank you,  and God bless you.