The New Testament Church & the Sabbath Question

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

1. 0:00:00

   Now, why am I going to address this again? Because it seems there's a lot of people out there that have heaped to themselves many teachers. But there's little understanding, it seems, about true New Testament order, New Testament leadership, and even how the church itself should function as a New Testament church. So this morning we're going to look at that, and we're going to start this morning. And then we're going to go to 2 Timothy chapter 4, is where we're going to start first. Now, I have very few slides this morning for PowerPoint, so Kevin's just going to put the scriptures up. But if you have your Bibles, please turn to the passages, because today is a teaching, and we're going to cover a lot of scripture. So 2 Timothy, I guess I ought to get there, huh? 2 Timothy chapter 4. Now, this ought to be familiar to many people, but again, I feel it's important to read it. So starting at verse 1, now let's remember the Apostle Paul, who stood in all fivefold ministry offices. He was an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, and a teacher, was addressing this to the young man that he was training and had laid hands upon and ordained to the fivefold ministry to be a pastor, okay? So this is leader to leaders here, and we're going to address the subject of, does the church have leadership? We've got a bunch of people out there that thinks if two or three people meet together in the home, that that's the church. No, that's fellowship. A church has God called leadership. Now, I know a lot of people think that's a dirty word today. But as you're going to see, God has established an order of how the church of Jesus Christ, the New Testament church, is supposed to operate. There's a fivefold ministry, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers, that are assisted by elders and deacons, and I'm going to address all that. And this morning, I think we're going to make it clear how a New Testament church is supposed to operate, and we're going to answer the question, should a church meet on Sunday or Saturday? Because I'm sick and tired of this nonsense that I keep hearing. In fact, there was a brother, one of the things I saw even this past couple of days, a brother I don't even know, took an excerpt of one of my sermons about scientism and exposing the whole heliocentric lie and all that stuff, and he took a little excerpt out, and he posted it, and of course, he's getting a bunch of views, and I'm finding people taking excerpts of the sermons from our church here

2. 0:03:02

   and getting thousands and thousands of views on just little clips. But he had a clip he pulled out, and I just happened to scroll down to the comments, and the comment said, well, this guy, this pastor, this preacher, he's a hypocrite because he doesn't keep the Sabbath. I thought, okay, y'all wouldn't believe how many comments, questions, and how much mean negativity I get over this subject, but I'm going to deal with it thoroughly from the Scriptures this morning about how a New Testament church should operate. I'm going to read these passages, and you can accept them or reject them, but it's Bible. And right now, there's a lot of people out there, there's tens of thousands of teachers. Well, you can go on the Internet, you can go on the radio, and you can find them. You can go on TV and radio, you can find thousands and thousands and thousands of teachers, but that does not mean that they are true leaders of the church. Some of them, some of the well-known ones in the Internet land, admit that they are not called to church leadership. They admit that they are not called to be pastors or teachers or evangelists or prophets or apostles, and so the popular term is they're watchmen now. But folks, let me tell you something. If you follow all these teachers out there, you're going to be deceived if you don't stick to the Word of God and if you don't stick to what the Bible says about New Testament church, New Testament leadership, and how the New Testament church is supposed to function. I mean, we've got all this confusion out there and false teaching, but this is what Jesus said through, you know, Paul said to Timothy about the last days, because chapter 3 says in the last days, perilous times will come, and then he gives you this long list, and then he gets into chapter 4. So let's read chapter 4, verse 1. Paul to Timothy here, the young pastor, he says, I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing in his kingdom. Preach the Word, be instant in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lust or their own desires, shall they heap to themselves teachers having itching ears, and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables. Now before we leave this passage, I want you to see that he talks about there will be a time coming, and he was referring to the end time in particular. But he said there would be a time coming when the people of God, the church, the Christians, the believers, would not endure sound doctrine. That means they wouldn't like it. They wouldn't want to hear it. They wouldn't want to bear with it. They wouldn't want to take it. But they would heap to themselves teachers. You know why he uses the phrase heap to themselves teachers?

3. 0:06:03

   He said they want to heap to themselves teachers. That means to heap something. What does it mean when you heap something? You pile it up, right? There's a lot of it. So they heap to themselves teachers because they have their own desires. They don't want to follow sound doctrine or God called leadership. They want to do things their own way. And I'm just going to tell you, if you want to do things your own way, you will be able to find a teacher who will tell you what you want to hear. You will be, because they're out there. But he warns they will not endure sound doctrine. Now what is sound doctrine? Sound doctrine is when we don't take any one passage or two passages out of their context and don't compare them with all the others that address that subject. This happens so often. This is why we've got the confusion about should the church worship on Sunday or Saturday, the New Testament church. This is why there's all this confusion because simply, I'm going to say this, the Sabbath pushers that we must keep the Sabbath on Saturday are where heathens. Those pushers reject. They ignore what Paul said in Colossians, Galatians, and what the apostles decreed for the church in Acts chapter 15. Just ignore it. Or they say, we don't understand what they meant. It is mind-blowing. But there is these, and I'm going to call them, these Judaizers that are compelling the New Testament church to live as Jews, which Paul rebuked Peter for. These Judaizers are causing division in the church and they're heaping upon people burdens that God does not intend New Testament believers to bear. Now I know there are well-intentioned, when I did the radio show on this, I know there are well-intentioned Christians who just feel that that's their conscience and that's their conviction, and they don't believe it's a requirement on the rest of us. It's just something they want to do, and that's fine. That's fine. Listen, I don't care if you want to worship God on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The early church in the beginning, when revival was going on, as the Holy Spirit was poured out, it says they met daily. Obviously, God didn't have a problem with them meeting on Saturday, Sunday, Friday, Wednesday, Thursday. It didn't matter anymore.

4. 0:09:05

   But I'm going to deal with this. But first, I want you to see where he talks about they won't endure a sound doctrine. Now let's back up and look at church leadership real quick. Let's go to Ephesians 4. Like I said, we're going to be all over the Bible this morning. Ephesians 4. Now again, so Pastor Dean, there's a lot of churches out here, organized churches, organized religion, that they've abused their power, abused their authority, abused their positions, abused money, taught false things. Okay, all that's true. You know, practiced pagan, you know, compromised with paganism at times, just like churches celebrate in Halloween. I'm sorry, that's compromising with paganism and demonic worship, okay? But Ephesians 4, we're going to start at verse 11. Now the Bible says here, after Jesus died on the cross and he descended into the lower parts of the earth as he was dead for three days, and then on the third day he rose from the dead, and says after this he gave gifts to men. Now look at this, I want everybody to look at this. Verse 11, and he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting or the maturing of the saints, for the work of the ministry, and for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God as a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, but speaking the truth and love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. Now, let me back up, and I want you to look at this and get this clearly. We are, God says in the church, he gave gifts to men, and he calls a ministry to lead his church, so that the church won't be led astray by every wind of doctrine that blows around. Now, he gave five ministries, the apostle, the prophet, the evangelist, the pastor and the teacher. Now I believe, I know there's churches out there

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