is we read from Isaiah 55. I know we've had this one in the past, but we're going to read from Isaiah 55. We're going to read verses 1-11. Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the water. And you who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good. Let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to me, here and your soul shall live. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the sure mercies of David. Indeed, I have given him as a witness to the people, a leader and a commander for the people. Surely you shall call a nation you do not know, and nations who do not know you shall run to you because of the Lord your God and the Holy One of Israel, for he has glorified you. Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down and the snow from heaven and does not return, but waters the earth and makes it bring forth and bud, then it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater. So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish what I please. It shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Let's bow our heads in a word of prayer. Our Father, as we come into your holy presence again this evening, Lord, we wanna say thank you for your word. And Lord, even as we explore understanding your word, I ask, Lord, that you'd give us understanding, that the concepts and the thoughts that we talk about it, Lord, would be applicable to us, that they'd be useful to us, and that we'd be able to see them put to use. We ask this in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you, you may be seated. We are doing something a little different tonight, just like we did last week. We have finished talking about the inspiration of Scripture, the authority of Scripture, the truthfulness of Scripture, the clarity of Scripture, the sufficiency of Scripture. That's kind of the five points that scripture has always stood on, all of those things, that it was inspired by God, it's authoritative because it's been inspired for him, he's truthful, there's no lie in him, it's clear, it's understandable, and it's sufficient for every need of our life. It gives us guidance in every area that it touches. And then from there we went on and we started last week looking at the importance of how do we understand scripture. And this is a study of hermeneutics. And I kind of gave you some thoughts. There are some verses I built on, and some of these we've covered within the text, like on the clarity of Scripture. But 2 Corinthians 1.13, this is one of the verses that always is in my heart, for we write nothing, we write no other thing to you than what you read or understand." This is Paul writing to the church at Corinth, and he had some false apostles there and false disciples there that were telling the people, well, you know, Paul really had something else in mind underneath. And if you, you know, if you take this truth that you know underneath, all this stuff means something different. and Gnosticism in some ways, shape and form. And we see this even within the Charismatic community and of our day, as they'll take a verse and they'll take just a couple of words of Scripture and they'll push them to the nth degree. You know, my favorite example is there's life and death, those are in the power of the tongue. And you can hear some of the TBN preachers actually go so far as to say that we become God, small g, and we speak with the authority of God, speaking things into existence as God does, and God needs our tongues to do it. And then they quote that verse. And within the context, that verse is very clear, very simple. It just means your tongue is powerful. It has the ability to build someone up, to tear someone down, to spread hurt, or to spread healing. You know, if we gossip about people, if we exaggerate, if we talk about people's faults, you know, I can't stand that person, you know, they're always doing this, they're always doing that. And when this starts to come out, it just tears everything down. And this is all it's saying. It's saying the tongue is powerful. It's not trying to compare us to God. And this is one of the reasons I want to talk about it, and I want to go through different examples of how we study the Bible, how we see Scripture identified, and how we understand what it says, where the limits of that are, because there are limits. And so we've looked at it. That's the first verse, 2 Corinthians 1.13. We looked at also Psalms 119, 160. Psalms 119, 160. Now this is better in the NAS than the ESV. It's got a different meaning. In the King James, it says, all your commands are upright and true. And in the NAS, it says the sum of your commands is truth. The sum of your word is truth. And I like that idea of the sum. Those of you who remember your math know that sum is an addition problem. 2 plus 3 or the sum of 2 and 3 equals 5, right? Story problem, you've all had those. And when one of your kids come up and says the sum of two and three is six, you go, wrong. And when they say it's four, you go, wrong. It has to be five. And this is the exact thing God is talking about in his word, that when we get the sum of God's word, we can put all of it together without adding anything, without missing anything, we've reached truth. We've reached truth. And that becomes important. Just this last week, I had a discussion on salvation, and salvation is always the core doctrine. I hope people don't get tired of this, but salvation is who's going to get to heaven, who's truly in the kingdom of God, who's truly a member of the church, who is, you know, somebody is dying. How do you lead them to the Lord? Where do you point them? And there's so many aspects of salvation. It's definitely more than a prayer. It's God changing the heart on the inside. He's the one who has to answer the prayer. So even though somebody prays, I can't assure them based on their prayer that they're saved. I have to see God has answered that prayer, has given them a new heart, has given them desires, has given them the gift of repentance, 2 Timothy 2.26, given them belief and faith, Ephesians 2.8 and 9, and it's producing fruit. And so I'm always looking and always interested in salvation. So there is a view of salvation, comes out of Dallas Theological, that's called free grace. And free grace says if at any time, and this is, I think I'm doing accurate justice to the view, but there is a large body of belief and different views held within this, okay? Like any doctrine within the church, we have people that are closer and further away. But within this view is the idea that if at any point in your life you truly believe for an instant or a moment, so if you're eight years old and you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, He died on the cross to pay for my sins, if you believe that for you know, five seconds at eight years of old, God will save you even if for the rest of your life you deny God and you walk away from Him. Now, they take out and they look at all the verses on faith and belief. And there's a lot of faith verses on belief on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, Acts 16 31, to the Philippian jailer. And those verses are held exclusively without looking at any other verses. And we were just in this morning in Sunday school and second, 2 Peter 3.9. I was close. Got to give me a break here. Every now and then they slip. The Lord is not slack concerning His promises, as some men count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish. Now, we all know that part of the verse and we quote it often, but listen to the last line, but that all should come to repentance. Now, free grace traces this movement and says it's just belief. If you try to add repentance to that, that's a work of man. But when you look at how Peter describes salvation in that verse, He describes salvation as the opposite side of the coin of belief. You can't have true belief without repentance. You can't have, according to James 2, end of the chapter 17 through 26, you can't have faith without works. If you do, it's a dead faith. So you must have a turning from sin and a turning to God. Those both happen within a true salvation. So you start to look at these verses, and even though you have maybe 15 verses called out on the free grace side, you take a verse like that, and you take Jesus who says, if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me, Luke 9, 23. For he that loves his life will lose it, and he that loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. And right there you have it. Again, this is a salvation call that we must turn and follow God. And you have 1 John, particularly in chapter 5 and in chapter 2, where he says, do not be deceived. He that does righteousness is of God. He that does evil is not of God. And that's the whole part of 1 John, that is, if we walk in the light, He is in the light. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. And then it continues on. That's your heading. God is light, in Him is no darkness at all. Then underneath it, it says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. If we walk in darkness and say we have the light, we lie and deceive ourselves, and it just continues off of this. If you have the light within you, You can't continue on in darkness. It's impossible. So this is the discussion. I'm sorry if I went too quick there, but this is where it happens. Every one of you, especially you boys, all right, I'm gonna just call you out, because you're here, but I want you to think about this. When you leave your home, okay, I left my home. I was, two days after graduation, I joined the military. I arrive at a Navy base. I go to church on my first Sunday off. First Sunday I can go. And they say, just stand outside the gate and the different churches will pick you up. Well, they also stand outside the gate and try to evangelize and convince you. And we have churches saying, you must be baptized to be saved. Others that are saying, it's the sacraments that'll save you and the Pope is correct. Others that are saying, no, all you got, you know, you just come to church and you take communion and you're saved. Others, you know, A whole view out there. And you initially start off with, what did my parents believe? They must have known the truth. But you're going to have to defend it yourself. You're going to have to know how the Bible works. to know what you truly believe and to study it because they'll come up with a verse just like Satan testing Jesus in the wilderness who said, cast yourself off this temple for it is written that his angels will bear thee up lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. And he had verses. but they were not according to the sum of God's word. Jesus would reply to him, thou shalt not test the Lord thy God. And because he knew the sum of God's word, he knew that Satan was using that out of context. And so it is with all of these other doctrines out there and churches and cults. Another verse. It's very important, 1 Corinthians 4, 6, and I'm just gonna give you one line in it. I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for these sakes that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written. Okay, now that's a danger I see even within the conservative evangelical church, that occasionally we go beyond what is written. We take our logic and we push it, and if this is true, then that must be true, then this must be true, then that must be true. And that's exactly how hyper-Calvinism came about, where it became wrong, according to that view, to preach the gospel. because God is already preordained, so therefore, God does not want the others to be saved, so therefore, and they just kept going. They kept going. So that's an important verse. 2 Peter also, 1.20, knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation. Also, incredibly good verse. If you are the only one that sees something in a passage of scripture, you're probably wrong. Okay? That's not to say God can't open up truth that you didn't know, but if you can't show it to somebody else who is also a believer and say, this is what I'm seeing, is it correct? They should also be able to see it. Scripture is clear. It teaches what it says. So with that, we started to look at doing the work. And we looked at Colossians 1, 21 through 23, and the idea that you can lose your salvation. It has a line in verse 23, if indeed you continue in the faith grounded and steadfast and are not moved away. And We talked about this last week and we went into the tenses of the verse that went before it. The verse that went before it says, you were once alienated, past tense, by your wicked works, but yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach. Also past tense. He has reconciled you. He has saved you. All past tense. And then it says, if you continue. So what does the if mean? Why the if there? It is not saying that you will lose your salvation. It's saying that if you turn away and you leave the faith, you were never saved. You were never saved. You never truly had God's work in your heart. Now, this is beyond my ability to truly judge at some point. There will be people who will stumble and fall, think of King David, but the reality of King David is that he repented. When he was confronted by Nathan, you are that man, he didn't argue, he didn't backpedal, he repented. And his repentance is beautiful. When you read Psalms 51, and I think there's another one as well that he wrote while he was repenting. And it's just gorgeous to see the reality of his heart, the clarity. He knew he was drying up and becoming parched as he couldn't come to the house of the Lord. He was hardening and there was a fear. as he was trapped in his sin. And after the prophet Nathan calls him out, there is a genuine heart return to the Lord, and it's beautiful. So we looked at that as an example, and I want to take one other example tonight before we go on to the next area. And this one is women pastors. And I do this one because this is the most hotly debated topic, again, within the evangelical church. I don't know if you follow the news in the Southern Baptist Church, but there was quite a bit of controversy in the Southern Baptist Church over the last two or three years because of Beth Moore, I believe it was, and several others in the church that supported women preachers. and they actually had them resign from the Baptist Union because it's against God's Word. And I want to walk through the verses on this and just... give you the arguments, pro and con, and help you to see, on a subject like this, what God's Word says and why we can believe it. So, the verse that I would start off with is 1 Corinthians 14, 34-35. And this is the command from Paul. 1 Corinthians 12-14 is on the gifts. And obviously chapter 13's on love, but 12 is particularly talking about the gifts. And then 14, Paul is laying down the rules for using the gifts in the church. And you remember, he says that it can only be two or three people at most. There must be an interpreter. It's a sign for the unbelieving Jews. He's speaking about tongues, and then he comes to this one, and he says this in verse 34. Let your women keep silent in the church, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is a shame for women to speak in church. Now, you take that verse. Is there any question on what it actually says? There isn't, right? The words are not complicated. They're not difficult. It's just not desirable for the people today. They don't like it. And so the argument that comes up is this is cultural. This was back in a day and an age when women were uneducated and they were held as despised people. And so Paul is just going along with the cultural mandate of the day and saying, you know, keep the women out. And that you can almost not find anything further from the truth, all right? Because Christianity was the one that lifted the women up and said that truly in front of God, with the regard to salvation, we're equal. You know, there's only one faith, both for men and for women. And we both stand in front of God. All right, so how do we know which view is correct? Is this a view from God for all the churches of all the time, or is this only a view for a cultural minority right there in Corinth? And there is a legitimacy in that sense that Corinth had a lot of problems. And you can go back to chapter 10, and I believe that according to my study, some of the study with the head coverings and the shaving of the head, was that this was a women's lib movement, women's liberation movement, that had migrated into the church where women were dressing and acting and demanding the same rights as men, including the right to speak in church. So Paul gets to here and he lays down a rule. He says, let your women keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak. And how do we know if this is for all the churches for anyone else? Well, 1 Corinthians 11, 36 through 37, just read the next two verses. Gives us a hint. He said, did the word of God come originally from you? Or was it only you that it reached? Okay, now ask yourself, why did he write this question? Did the word of God come from you originally? Or were you the only ones that the word of God reached? Because they were doing something that was contrary to all the other churches. They were trying to bring in something new. And Paul says, can you do that? Are you the only one that has the word of God? And then in verse 37, he continues, if anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, Okay? A prophet is someone who understands what God's word says and declares it. Thus saith the Lord. It says, if any one of you thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord. Ooh. That's kind of pointed. You think Paul's trying to emphasize something there? Anybody who's with you that's spiritual, let them know this. These are the commandments of the Lord. That is a first thing. You go, well, you know, and again, I've listened to the arguments. They go, but that was only for Corinth. And I'm thinking, then why that verse in the middle where he talks about, did the gospel only come to you? Why that verse? Well, Okay, let's just go and see if there's any other verses in there. Oh, let's start at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 1, verses 1 through 3. Most of you know how these letters begin. Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes, our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints. Okay, that sounds very familiar, right? That's the way he starts most of his letter. But he adds another line to this particular letter. With all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Oops. Who did he just brought in this letter to include? Every Christian that has ever lived. with all in every place who call on the name of the Lord. So you start to look through these things and you start to see the sum of God's word. Not only does Paul give a commandment, but then he doubles down and says, this is a commandment from the Lord. And then actually at the beginning of his letter, he makes sure that this is inclusive of all the churches. He wants you to know this is where it stands. This is where it stops. Now, one of the other principles that we look for in scripture, when we look to identify something, is it truly God's will that this scripture binds us the way we're understanding it? Can you find another supporting passage? Can you find another area where this is supported, where it's clearly taught? Because almost every doctrine in Scripture, and I can't really think of any doctrine that you can name that I can only find a single verse for. Okay, so yes, the answer is yes on women not being in leadership. 1 Timothy 2, 11 through 15 talks about women in the church. It says, let your women learn in silence with all submission. Ooh, sounds very familiar, doesn't it? And I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man, but to be in silence. Now here he defines this silence. I don't believe God says that a woman can't pray. In fact, there's verses that 1 Corinthians 10 or 11, 1 Corinthians 11, 15. But if a woman has long hair, no, that's not it, let's see. Verse 13, judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? This is talking about head coverings. Her hair is given to her as a covering. Does not even nature itself teach that if a man has long hair, it's a dishonor to him, but if a woman has long hair, it's a glory to her, for her hair is given to her as a covering. So you see this, that there, there's a question that a woman can pray as long as her head is covered. Now, we have disagreements within the church on that. Where does that happen? Is that in a women's group? Is that in a main service? Where is it at in a prayer meeting? All of those are different questions that we can talk about. But you see the idea that silence that he commands is more geared toward the teaching ministry, the expository ministry, where a woman takes authority over a man. Again, let me read that verse from 2 Timothy. I do not permit a woman, this is chapter two, verse 12, to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. So again, we see this idea that the women are to come to learn. And then the defense that he gives, again, is a very good defense of his position. This is, again, Paul writing to Timothy, and he gives this defense. He says, for Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. Nevertheless, she shall be saved in childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with self-control." Now again, that idea of saved is not salvificly saved through giving birth to child, but she'll find her fulfillment in her family. But who did he call on for support? Who did he call on for support? creation, right? Paul says this is true because even in the creation order God created man and then he created Eve to be the helpmate for man. And then he says and there was also a sin involved, right? Eve fell and then led Adam aside and in doing that she led and there's a consequence for that. Now I have heard that talked about and I've literally heard, I believe it was Beth Moore, reply to that and said, God would never punish an entire people or would never call out an entire, you know, half of the people for the sin of one individual. Well, first of all, Adam and Eve's sin affected every single person on the entire face of this earth. So already he's, you know, that's already been accounted to us. But even beyond that, let me bring up two examples. Who was the priest in Israel? What line did they have to come out with from? Aaron's line. So if somebody from the tribe of Judah wanted to be a priest and said, I feel called of God to be a priest. I've studied the Holy Scriptures for 28 years. I am more than qualified. I have much more intelligence than this guy who's over there. Put me in the priesthood. Could he become a priest? Absolutely not. It was genetic, right? You had to be a direct descendant of Aaron. And later it was a Phineas. And there's in the millennium, it's even gonna be narrowed down to another family. Can't remember which one, but it's one of David's priests. One of them will lose the blessing and one of them will maintain the blessing because he stood with David. And I mean that God is sovereign. He chooses who he chooses. Okay, how about in the temple? Who serves in the temple taking care of the needs of the priests? Which tribe? Tribal Levi, right? Tribal Levi, there's 12 tribes, right? So Benjamin wants to come in and offer a service and bring the firewood in for the sacrifices. Can he bring the firewood into the temple? No. Can he come in and help clean? No. It was the job of the Levites. And why did God choose them? Remember, He came down from the mountain, and the children of Israel were worshiping the golden calf, and Moses breaks the the Ten Commandments, and he grinds them up, and he makes the people drink, and there's still people out there worshiping the golden calf, dancing around, and Moses says, who's on the Lord's side? And there was a tribe, right? There was a tribe that said, we are. This tribe had been cursed by Jacob. Because in their anger, they had gone into the city over their anger of the rape and abduction of their sister, and they had killed every man in that city. Levi and Simeon had done this as men. And Jacob had cursed that they would be divided among the tribes of Israel, never to again be united in their anger. And when Levi said, I'm here, I'm on the Lord's side, we'll go, and Jacob said, take your spear, take your sword, go and kill every one of these men. And they did, and they killed 3,000 people. They stood for the Lord. And God took the firstborn, which he had set aside from the time of Passover, and he said, I'm gonna let the firstborn go, I'm taking the tribe of Levi. And they will be my people, and they will inherit the work of the tabernacle. It'll be their job to clean and to carry and to be the servants of God. And so God brought them in. And yes, he spread them throughout the tribes of Israel, but instead of being a curse, they became a blessing because they were the ones who took care of the synagogues and became the teachers and the leaders in the different communities where they went so that the law would be known. God chose them. And nobody else could take the place of a Levite. So you see this all the way from the beginning, and there's more examples I could give, how God chooses a line. And He says, all right, from here on out, this is what we're going to do. And it's not to say that others aren't saved. They are. Salvation is open to all men. But God will occasionally choose a line, choose a position, choose a people, and He is sovereign in that right. He can choose to say, that a man should be the preacher. And of course, we go to 1 Timothy 3, and we see the conclusion of this from Timothy. And 1 Timothy 3, 14, well, let me read the whole thing. I don't want to just take that verse. 1 Timothy 3. It says this, this is a faithful saying, starting in verse one, if a man desires the position of a bishop, if who desires the position of a leader? If a man. And then it continues on to define that, he desires a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. It really sounds like Paul means this, that it's gotta be a man. And then jump over to verses 14 and 15, This is why we use these verses in our churches and why we look for qualifications of an elder that meet these qualifications. He says this in verse 14 and 15, these things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly, but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how to behave yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God. That's chapter three, verses 14 and 15. So again, who is this for? It's written directly to Timothy, but it's written to everybody, every church that wants to follow God's will. These were written so that we would have rules of behavior of how do we behave ourselves in the church of the living God. And so we use them. They're adopted and they're looked at. And there might be slight disagreements on can a woman pray in church or can she not pray in church in a prayer meeting? That's a disagreement. Can you have a woman pray in a Sunday morning meeting? That's a disagreement. But we have God's word here that's clear. We know that when it comes to preaching and taking authority over a man, she's forbidden when it comes to a leadership position. And it's not that they're of lesser value. It's simply God has called the men to lead and the women to follow. And he's the one who's sovereign in it, in choosing. Now I wanna continue on from there. And there's at least one other, I have two other areas that we should talk about. And this brings us to these areas really well. All right, the first is spheres of authority, spheres of authority. And you say, well, what is a sphere of authority? Well, let me tell you. Scripture has three parts to every section you read, all right? There's three parts to it. What does it say? No interpretation, what does it say? There are times we read it and we actually don't understand all of the words or all of the meaning. You know what I'm talking about, right? There's some things that are complicated, they're hard. So the first, part of understanding scriptures, what does it actually say? Can we dig down into it to find out what the words mean? Sometimes that just means getting an English dictionary and looking up a word. We had one today, Olmy and I were talking about, and she didn't recognize it. My wife's German, or was German. And so every now and then, if you get, especially the old King James English, this was on a track, and she goes, what in the world is this? And it's one of those words none of us would ever use. And it's the idea that God would come, like if you were in a castle and you were besieged. Succur, that was the word. And He would succur you. And what does that mean? I'm not even sure I'm pronouncing it right, but it means He would come and relieve you. He would come with an army to deliver you from the siege. And it's a beautiful word, incredibly descriptive, but it's not one that we use in our vocabulary. So sometimes just understanding what it says means we look up the words. Sometimes it means we look up the Greek word because we have a translation of the Greek word to English or the Hebrew word to English, and we gotta nail down what that Greek word actually says. So what does it say? That's the first thing. When we find what it says, We have the absolute highest authority of God's Word, right? God has spoken. It's clear. We know what it says. We got it. Underneath that is what does it mean? What does it mean? Now, we can understand the words, but we have to also understand how do we What does he mean? What is he communicating when he says that? And this example of women preachers, one of the reasons I use this is because, not that I like preaching on this, I genuinely don't, but it is such a good example because it is so, we already have people on both sides. We already have the discussion going on. You will run into this discussion in the world. You're gonna hear it. It's going to be there. In fact, if you take a census of how many pastors we have in the community, just based on the churches, we have a significant percentage that are women preachers, normally, in a community. normally. I know we have. Many of the Lutheran churches have had, and the UCC church, at least one of the Lutheran churches and the UCC church has gone through multiple women pastors. They currently have a man pastor, but it's the first one I actually remember since my childhood. Everyone else has been a woman pastor. Now, so we take a section like this and we say, what does it mean? Well, the words weren't hard. They were pretty simple, pretty straightforward, correct? So then we got to ask, what does it mean? What does it mean? And that is coming to me and saying, okay, now I've got this thing God has said, what do I have to do? And so we have two approaches. One person says, it means only that for Corinth. And so we can have women preachers today. And another one says, no, that means this is God's command to all men everywhere to the church of the living God. This is how we're to behave ourselves in the church. So I stand between the two of those. And this one side, I've got lots of scripture support on, right? I've got the sum of God's word. And I can say, I stand here. And on the other side, they have no scripture to stand on. They're making excuses, literally. And then the third one becomes, how do we apply it? And the application is simple. We'll say, you know, women are not to preach or to take authority in this church. In our church, we don't call on them to lead the congregation in prayer, but we do allow them to pray in a prayer meeting. We encourage it. As a prayer meeting, we're a body. We're praying for individual needs. You can pray. And that's how we apply it. That's how we see it. Now I want you to think about the authority here. The first level authority is what God says is true. Absolutely, indivisibly true. What it means is how I'm understanding it. and I can apply authority to it as I bring more scripture in and show you a body of scripture that supports it, you say, yes, that's true. But if I can't, then that authority is diminished, isn't it? And you'll see this. There are people that say you have to be baptized to be saved. And they will look at he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. They skip the next line, he that believeth not is damned. Mark 16. But you look at that, they have a part of Scripture, it's very clear in what it says, but then how they apply it, they start to go in error. And then the application of it, they want everyone to come in and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins to get salvation. or in this church, or in the women's preaching idea, how do you apply it? You either have a woman preacher or you don't have a woman preacher, and you take that same pattern throughout prayer, throughout the life of the church. So this is a slight difference, and I point it out because we've actually had people that have been hurt by how a pastor will apply scripture, and particularly how he will apply it to them. Okay, Jesus would talk about this very issue when he talked about the Pharisees, and he said, they bind burdens on other men that they are not willing to lift with their pinky, with their finger. They would find ways to get out of things, like the command that you're to, you remember he talked about the command, you're to honor your father and the mother? And they said, no, this is Corbin, this is a gift. I've dedicated it to God, so I can't use it for my father and my mother. So, you could look at your house and you say, I'm gonna give my house to God. I'm only gonna use it to glorify God. And then, oh, you guys need a place to live? I'm sorry. My house has been given to God. It's not mine. You'll have to go to somebody else. You'll have to look somewhere else. And this is what they did. They made excuses. But when it came to you, now they were ready to apply the law in all of its fullness and we're gonna just bind it on you. And I've had people that have said that it's sin to have a TV in your house. Is there sin on TV? Yes. But can I bind your consciences and say that it's a sin to have a TV in your house? I don't believe I can. I believe that would be wrong. I've had people tell me that it's a sin to take the COVID vaccine and that I should be preaching against it. that it comes from the one world government and it's here to take control of people and on and on and on and on. Does the Bible give me the authority to bind that opinion? It doesn't. It's not clearly taught. It's not talked about. I have my opinions, but I'm not even a medical doctor, and my job here is not to give you medical advice. It's to give you spiritual advice from the word of God. So this application, we can't go beyond what God has given us. Now there are areas where God has been so clear, and I'm gonna read some lists here, and I just want you to recognize how they all fit together, okay? 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetousness, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God." Okay, there's a list. Pretty clear. Okay, that list is given to us again. It's not exhaustive. It's just a general summation of sin. That list is given to us again in Galatians 5.19. Now, the works of the flesh are evident, which are idolatry, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousy, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambition, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like, of which I tell you beforehand, just as I told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Then you can go to Revelations 21, eight, where we're talking about those that are in hell, and it says this, but the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immorals, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their place in the lake of fire, which burns forever and ever. And so you can take something like this. The meaning of the words is clear. Right? You've got multiple references that are also clear, summations of unrighteousness, that you will not, if you practice these things, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. You're showing the evidence that you do not have the Holy Spirit of God within your heart. And you've got that evidence. And so the application is very simple. If you're a member of the church and you're continuing in these sins, I discipline you. I have to come and I have to warn you as a leader of the flock that you are not showing the evidence of God in your life. You're not showing it. And that unless you repent, you will have to be put out of the church, the fellowship of the body. You're no longer, you're showing by your actions that you're not a Christian. You can't be a member of the body if you're not a Christian. And that's the application that you can draw from here. And because it's so clear, the application should be pretty easy. Now, there's differences in how we discipline. There's some churches that say, we only keep you from the communion table. And that's, they have a closed communion. And then there's some churches that say, we discipline you completely. We keep you outside. Paul in that very list in 1 Corinthians 5 verses 9 would say this, 9 through 11, I write to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexual immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean the immoral people of this world or with the covetousness or extortioners or idolaters. Since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother. who is sexually immoral or covetousness or idolatry. So now we've got some application principles there that Paul's giving to us. And I just bring this out because we can often be burdened by a pastor putting an obligation on us. You must read your Bible in the morning. And someone says, but I'm a night person. I would rather have you read your Bible at night and read it with joy in your heart, then get up in the morning and read it in the morning and be frustrated with the Lord. I don't want to put a burden on you. God says to be in the Word. Meditate on it day and night, whenever you have a chance. I want you to be faithful in it. I don't want to put a burden that you have to do it first thing in the morning. How about you have to read so many chapters a day? How about you have to do this, you have to do that? There's a whole list of applications. What we have to understand is when we, and this comes from my heart first of all, what does God say? What does He mean? And then how does He want us to apply it? And that's important. Because I do not want to bind you. I want you to have the freedom Christ has given you in your family, You know, we chose when I was a kid not to have a TV in the house. But my grandma and grandpa had one. He was a pastor, by the way. He was actually our pastor at the time. And we would go to his house on Saturday nights and we would watch Walt Disney. And we had, and sound of music, we had some of the best family time. And we would walk home sometimes from his cottage where the TV was and talk in the evenings as a family together. And that was not sin. But somebody could bind that on your conscience and you would say, you know, I don't know. Am I in sin? Can I tell others? Was this something I did? But my parents and my grandparents let us. We weren't allowed unlimited access. We had very few shows we could watch. And with a set limit of time, only from this period of time to that period of time. And usually there was someone with us watching. Very rarely were we there alone. Anyways, I hope you think about this. There's still one more level, we're gonna get to it next week, and that's first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier issues. There are first-tier issues that are salvific. If you fail on them, you fail on salvation. There's second-tier issues that we can disagree on, and it's so disagreeable, I might consider you a brother in the Lord, but we're not going to go to church continually together. We're not gonna be members at the same church. Child baptism is a good example of that. And third tier issues are ones that we can disagree on even in the same church. We can have disagreements on end times, we can have disagreements on dress or on style or even on taste in music. And we can still worship in the same church, in the same body and love each other and recognize that you're a Christian, I'm a Christian, we're going to the same heaven. All right, let's close in a word of prayer. Sorry I went late. Our Father, we thank you for your word, and we ask you, Lord, that you would give us guidance in how to understand it and how to apply it in our lives. Lord, that this word would become the living word that it is, that it would pierce deeply in our lives, but that it would not do more than what you have sent it to do. Lord, that we would experience the freedom of loving you and of living for you in Christ and of each one with their gifts being able to serve you in the way that you have called them. Father, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.