Okay, session number two is the negative side, but that I don't mean bad or depressing or anything like that. But we live in a culture in which I can see, actually we do have to march right through that because that is the connotation, the negative ministry of the word. Here's one way to see it. Martin Lloyd-Jones, I believe it was in his commentary on Romans, said that the true preaching, or sorry, the true gospel If you're really preaching it, you will be accused of antinomianism, meaning against law, because it's such radical grace. And he probably said it at the tail end of Romans 5, beginning of Romans 6, because it's a very objection that Paul deals with. That's why Lloyd-Jones was bringing this up. In other words, you will be accused by legalists who don't understand the gospel to that depth. you will be accused of being an antinomian if you're actually preaching. And if you're not being accused of antinomianism, Lloyd-Jones said, you're probably not preaching the true gospel. He's not saying, therefore, antinomianism is okay. He's not saying that. He's saying if you really preach the doctrines of grace and get the gospel right, you will be accused, you will be misunderstood as of trumpeting the cause for antinomianism. Well, I would say the same thing about the true ministry of the Word. That if you are not being accused of a kind of theoretical, liberal, hands-off, laissez-faire magic by those same people oftentimes, you probably are not ministering in it. And the reason in both cases is very simple. Unbelief. Paul told us that there is always a group of people in the church who have the appearance of godliness but deny its power, 2 Timothy 3.5. Whether it is what the gospel does to save the soul or what the word does to bring to life, the practical naturalist in the church simply does not believe that God's means have the power that God says His means do. And this doesn't mean that genuine believers cannot fall into this. Think about this. God's people are still sinners, right? And as such, God's people are still functional unbelievers. Here's a category for you. genuine believers, functional unbelievers, right? We're still in our sin nature, attracted to darkness, can't get enough of error. We're sheep, and we're always looking for the nearest, biggest wolf's mouth to jump into. Where is a open mouth of a wolf that I can jump into? Right? We don't say it like that, but that's... Is there error? There's confusion? Where do I sign up? You know, that's what sheep do. Okay, so genuine believers, functional unbelievers. Here's a verse, Deuteronomy 132. God's speaking to His people, right? Just redeemed them. Yet in spite of this word, you did not believe the Lord your God. In spite of this word that I've given you, you did not believe the Lord your God. Now, here's a question. What does God do when he knows that his people do not believe the word? Now, if we're speaking about the division between the elect and the reprobate, he does several things. There's a sword, and that sword has two sides. We get that. But that's not what I'm asking right now. In his mercy, assuming mercy in that season on those souls, what does God do when he knows that his genuine people do not believe the word? Psalm 107.20 says that he sends the word and heals them. The negative ministry of the Word is good news. Because God is sending the Word to heal. And the Word ministers for people against things. The Word at this point is against us for us. It is against the old us, which doesn't mean chapter 1, old us, back there. It means the sin nature that we drag around until the day that we die. The Word is against that in us, for us. Al Mohler, in his book on preaching, said that the role of the preacher is to expose error and to reveal sin. The Word of God will do that as you preach the Word. The role of the preacher, therefore the role of the Word of God preached and taught is to expose error and to reveal sin. The mere hearing of the Word of God exposes error and reveals sin better than we can do. Let's see this in four parts. The Word of God corrects the church. Secondly, the Word of God disciplines the church. Thirdly, the Word of God divides all that is the church from all that is not the church. Fourthly, the Word of God destroys the works of the enemy. And the problem is we want to do all those things. The Word of God does them. Don't we do them? We do them with the Word. Now, there's various kinds of correction. As Paul tells Timothy, 2 Timothy 4.2, preach the word, be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Complete patience. Now why would you need complete patience in such practical things? that are supposed to work because they're practical. And by that I mean by yesterday morning. Because that's what makes them practical. That I practice them. Why would you need complete patience for that? Well, because everything you just said is complete foolishness. That's not what makes things practical and that you can get your hands around them. Maybe you need complete patience to reprove or rebuke and exhort and teach in these practical ways because When you do it, most people are going to yawn in your face. So, you can look at this verse. You can see it coupled with the preaching of the word. But you can say, well, does it follow, though, that they happen by the word? I mean, it's listed with the word, but they're not in the word. And if these things do happen by the word, in what way do they happen by the word? Well, Titus 1.9 gives us a significant clue. That question was asked in our break about sound doctrine. Here's another verse that uses it. Titus 1.9, huge clue. In that place, Paul is given qualifications for elders, and he says about an elder, He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught so that he may be able to do two things, positive, negative, to give instruction in sound doctrine and negatively also to rebuke those who contradict it. Look at my hands. To give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Contradict what? We'll come back to that. Two clues. One, as we've already seen, Paul told Titus in chapter 2, verse 1, that all kinds of teaching, the practical things of life, have to be in accord with sound doctrine. And it is very unlikely that Paul had a different meaning of sound doctrine in mind just a few sentences before in chapter 1, verse 9. And then a second clue, when we notice that the rebuke coming from the minister is precisely a rebuke to those who contradict it. Contradict what? The very same sound doctrine. What does it mean when he says, and refute those who contradict it? The sound doctrine. In other words, if we follow Paul's logic and his use of words, we should conclude that any time there is any rebuke of anything that is worth rebuking, it will be a doctrinal correction to an error that is fundamentally a doctrinal error. And if we don't see the doctrine in it, we have no business rebuking it. Why are we, what are we rebuking? It annoys me. Well, I wouldn't put it like that. Well, you should, because that's what you mean. That's all you mean, unless you know what that thing says about God from his word. Again, Calvin says, God deprives man of the power of producing any new doctrine in order that he alone may be our master in spiritual teaching. Well, I agree with that. I agree with that. Well, not if you believe that we can invent things about practical things because they're practical things, not doctrinal things. In practice, God is also depriving us of the power of producing any new doctrine. I'm not coming up with a new doctrine of manhood, or about discipleship, or something like that. I'm just saying that it should be done this way. Ah, so it is true that that's what a man is, or it is true that that is what discipleship is. It sounds like you have a doctrine of discipleship and manhood. A way that it is. A truth about that thing is it from Scripture. No, no, I'm not talking doctrine right now. Aha. Now, the whole church bears a responsibility here. All believers are given the duty, like those Bereans in Acts 17, to examine the Scriptures daily to see if these things are so. You can see it in the Old and the New Testament. To the Old Testament people, he says, in Jeremiah 23, 16, do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. That's the whole people he's speaking to. Watch out for prophets who are like this. To the New Testament people, Matthew 7, 15, beware of false prophets. 1 John 4, 1, test the spirits. Galatians 1.8, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed. Now who is he speaking to in these passages? He's speaking to the whole body. All of God's people have this responsibility in general. So by the ministry of the Word, the whole people are insulated from the fires of heresy. But there's something about the ministry of the Word, or what I've called elsewhere the ministry of doctrine and division, which belongs to the pastors in a special way. And there's no part of the Bible that operates outside of this assumption. the assumption that God's word is always dividing his own people group. And remember that we define this word ministry as the objective meaning of the word. That's that big idea. What do we mean by the thing we're handling in the word ministry? We mean the objective meaning of the word. In other words, it's not the ink patterns of the word, but the doctrine that the letters represent, or as we simply call it, the truth. And so, when the truth of the Word divides in God's house, what else is dividing but the right doctrine from the wrong doctrine? And so, I've erased this board here, so I brought this over here. So the Word, what do we mean by the Word? Its objective meaning, or the doctrine of anything in the Word. Sword. That's my sword. And this circle is going to represent the whole body. And at this point, I'm just going to draw a crack here, which also will lead to roadways out of the body and so on. But you get the idea. A division is happening, and the word does that. But the principal wrong doctrine that gets closest to the ministry of the word in each generation is the false gospel of legalism. Errors about the nature of God, the nature of Christ, And even to a certain extent, the final destiny of things, about the main and plain things, those can be seen from a million miles away. And so that's where they wind up going, a million miles away, maybe five miles down the block, but they're clearly marked by LDS Church or Kingdom Hall or something like that. But the error that gets the closest to the pulpit, The error that gets a seat at the table at Rivendale, Gandalf, Saruman, hide the hobbits, they can't handle the conversation. The error that gets there in every generation is the false gospel of legalism. Galatians and the pastoral letters are clear displays of this. If we listen to how Paul opens, not only in his book to Titus, dealing with the same group that he dealt with in Galatia, the circumcision party is what he calls them there. But he says to Timothy to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. And then the whole book gets into all these practical things that Timothy's supposed to remind them of, charge them of. Do not let people get away with that if they're teaching. But he calls it at the head of the book, any different doctrine. In verse six, he says that certain persons, by swerving from these, from the good doctrine, have wandered away into vain discussion. Now whatever form that vain discussion took to all the churches in Ephesus that Timothy was over, it is clearly the law that functions as their doctrinal anchor. And we know this, we can see it in the passage, that these teachers are using the law wrongly, and we can see that in two ways. In verse 7 we can see that they do not understand what they're talking about, so bad doctrine. And secondly, the contrast from verses 8 through 11 makes their use of the law unlawful, Paul calls it, by implication. So an unlawful use of the law follows from an uninformed doctrine of the law. Paul says they have an unlawful use of the law, and earlier he said they have no idea what they're talking about. They do not understand the things that they are speaking so confidently about. So an uninformed doctrine of law issues forth into an unlawful use of the law. Now why would that be the chief error in the church, not down the block, in the church? Because remember what we said about commands. In the imperative, in the wrong hands and on the wrong lips, the word of God can bind the conscience and keep us in the prison cell of the devil, which doesn't mean we will lose our salvation or that we're not really saved, but what it will do is it will make the church absolutely ineffectual in their generation. We see the same in the first chapter of Titus, as I mentioned. But no matter what the error is, there are always people, as Jude says in his letter, who creep in unnoticed. Error in the church. When there's error in the church, the word of God is there to correct the church. Oh, I believe that already. Just the other day, somebody came to the church and they had their prophecy charts out, or they had their shofar and their banners and all those crazy things, and yeah, we should correct that person. Well, that's very, very easy to correct them. Because they look really silly, and there's only one or two of them. But what about if we have to correct pastors and theologians and whole seminaries and groups? Ooh, ooh, don't, don't. What? What happened? What happened? Have you not read the New Testament? That's the main ministry of correction. It's easy to swat one fly, but it's a lot harder when you're talking about the movers and shakers that the New Testament is talking about. You know, when Paul calls people out, he doesn't do it because some weirdo showed up with prophecy charts. You know, Hymenaeus and Alexander and all those different people, they were teaching. They were teachers. That's why it was justified to talk about those people for all the world to see in the New Testament letters. Because some insignificant thing, but because of some very significant thing. Now, this part of the ministry of the word is very distasteful to American culture. This part of the ministry of the word is more delicate than dissecting a bomb strapped to the sheep. And that's actually a good analogy for it. Correction has never been popular. We're sinners. But there's something about the modern world, especially, that has elevated the offense of the self-deceived to being the highest virtue. In the modern world, correction was impolite. In the postmodern world, it is becoming downright morbid. Correction is proof that you have an evil spirit. The false humility of our day creates a zone of neutral questioning that the pastor is not allowed to speak into. The pastoral letters would set us straight if we just read them. In the pastoral letters, 1st, 2nd Timothy, Titus, Paul is always exhorting his proteges, Timothy and Titus, about the widest range of practical matters in everyday life. And about these practical matters, he says things like this. Let's start in 1 Timothy 1.3. Charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. 1.18. Wage the good warfare. 4.6. Put these things before the brothers. 4.11. Command and teach these things. 412, let no one despise you for your youth. I put that one in there because Timothy was apparently young. And these older elders in Ephesus were apparently, by the way, Ephesus, rewind Acts 20, and you'll see that Paul had trained the elders of Ephesus for three years in the school of Tyrannus. And he said to them, I know that fierce wolves will arise from among you. Some of you who I'm speaking with will be wolves, and my own spiritual son Timothy will be, now he doesn't say this part, he'll be younger than them. And one of the easiest things for them to do is say, you're just a youth. I don't know what you're talking about. So he says, let no one despise you for your youth. 4.16, keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. A good pastor will keep a close watch on the teaching. Chapter 5, verse 7, command these things as well. Chapter 6, verse 2, teach and urge these things. 2 Timothy now, chapter 1, verse 14, guard the good deposit, guard it, pass it on in other words. Chapter 2, verse 14, remind them of these things. Chapter 2, verse 25, correcting your opponents with gentleness. Titus 1.11, they must be silenced. Those insubordinate, empty talkers, those leaders, must be silenced. Two verses later, rebuke them sharply. Wait, he just said to Timothy, rebuke them with gentleness. Now he says rebuke them sharply. Both, both in God's Word, figured it out. Chapter 2, verse 15, declare these things, exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. This is just getting tiresome, though. It's getting hard. I feel so divisive. Let no one disregard you. Chapter 3, verse 1, remind them. Chapter 3, verse 10, and as for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him. By the way, the word for divisive man or factious man is hereticos. It's where we get the English word heretic. Heresies is very close to a Greek word that means parties or faction or part. Cutting pieces, dividing the body of Christ by first dividing his word. There has to be correction because there has to be resistance throughout church history, even when it comes in the canons of a question mark. In his sermons on gospel fear, the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs made a distinction between ordinary querying of the word versus raising cavils. That's a word that they used all the time, Calvin, on down to the Puritans, those who cavil against sound teaching and so on. But Burroughs was making the point that the latter, a cavil, is being swelled up or puffed up against the word. It's kind of like a rebellious teenager testing the waters of authority with his father. And you see that in ministry over and over and over again when the Word becomes boring, when it's just not working anymore. There's a teenage moment, there's a puffing up against the authority of the Word of God, ultimately. There's an assumption to correction. If you're going to engage in the ministry of correction, The assumption is, good assumption, that the errors of the culture around us are really what's behind the objections swelling up in us. When I see a Christian deviating from the Word, I know that he hasn't just got the Word wrong, he got that idea from something outside the Word. Now you say, well, that's not very exciting, it's just the flip side of the same coin. Yes, I know, but the moment you say that to somebody who's actually in a state of deception, it's not pleasant for them to hear. You actually got that from a Gnostic worldview. You actually got that from a Pelagian worldview. Now you could say, now you start to say, you got that on TV, or you got that from your own. Now it starts to sound condescending, because it looks like we're reading into motives. But actually, if we do it right, all we're doing is looking at assumptions. There's a difference. I'm not impugning you with motives. I'm tracing back to assumptions. That assumes This assumption, and that doesn't come from scripture, that's the assumption. Now, in our postmodern context for preaching and teaching, a lot of people have gotten the idea that the preacher's ethos, and maybe that's not a word you're familiar with, that just comes from Aristotle's rhetoric. There's the three different elements of truth, logos, which is the truth itself, pathos, which is the word felt, and ethos, which is the word incarnate. Yes, even a pagan can get something right blindly. I'm sure Aristotle didn't have the Trinity on his mind, but that's his problem. Ethos is a word we sometimes use. A lot of people don't know where it comes from, but it's most famously from Aristotle's rhetoric. And he was basically talking about the speaker's, the necessity of identifying with the people. of identifying with one's audience. And so we chirp and parrot these things, not knowing what we're saying. And you listen to the church gurus today, and the idea is that the ethos is purely and simply our ability to figure out where my audience is at, as if that's a good thing. I have another Bible presupposition. My assumption is that where the sinner is at is the bottom of a sea of deception. That's what the Bible teaches me to assume. The Bible works off of a more antagonistic assumption. We Christians are children of light exposing darkness, Ephesians 5. And all the more is that true if we have the task of the word ministry. The ethos of the speaker of the word in a biblical doctrine of ethos is not simply about identifying with one's audience as if to affirm it. but it is an unveiling of one's culture to crucify it. The ministry of the word must always correct the idols of culture that we are assuming when we say all the nonsense we say against the word. The word of God corrects the church. Secondly, the word of God disciplines the church. You could say that corrective discipline is that part of sanctification that happens when sanctification isn't going so well. But the question is, how should we mean this? Once again, it is the word that does this work of discipline. Now oftentimes people will agree that the word should be used in discipline. Yeah, of course the word disciplines. But there are some times when words just don't work. It's not working. I'm using Bible words. He's not changing. She's not moving. But that again is nothing but disbelief in God's word. Of course the word works. What we're often calling not working is nothing but our own frustrations at what we would like to see happen differently than God has ordained it. And we read that in to what works. Calvin compared the Anabaptists of his day with the Donatists of the early church in their definition of the church. The Donatists of old, the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, all defined the church as those who had already arrived at some level of perfection. Now, what does that do to your understanding of church discipline? This definition issues forth into a particular notion of church discipline, which, according to Calvin, was motivated by, quote, insane pride and inconsiderate zeal. According to Calvin, when we discipline apart from the word, when we simply try to move people because words don't work, we are motivated by insane pride and inconsiderate zeal. The Reformer refutes these heretical groups with the kingdom parables of Matthew 13, which if you take them together, teach us that the church is a mixed body in this age. Now we're gonna come back to right and wrong ways to carry out discipline later on, but for now, let's just notice how the word plays its primal role even here in discipline. In Matthew 13, which teaches us about what the kingdom and what the church is like, Jesus is saying that the rooting up of the weeds, or the separating of the fish in the other parable, in this lifetime, if we did that, which is what Christ and the angels are given to do, but if we tried to do that in this age, it has the effect of uprooting the true sheep. Jesus says to those in the parables, the workers, no, don't weed them up, lest in rooting them up, you root up some of the real wheat. False ministry undermines true ministry. False views of church discipline undermine the real ministry of the Word. It's not like it's just a bad appendage, and we just get on with that because that's a bad idea, but we'll live with that because we're all sinners and we all make mistakes. Well, that's true. But to the degree that we do that, we are rooting up what Christ has planted. Calvin would ask the question, and I would summarize Calvin's whole section on discipline, where's the power? Whether he was talking to Rome or the Anabaptists, he would say, where is the power in these keys of the kingdom and the power of the church? Where's the power? Is even the power in the ministry of discipline an intrinsic power or an extrinsic power? So the question's the same as authority in the minister. Where's the power in discipline? Is it intrinsic to the discipliner or is it extrinsic in the word? Calvin said, let them reflect that in the ministry of the word and participation of the sacraments, the power to collect the church is too great. In other words, what we're doing by the word is too great, too important, too powerful to be deprived of all its efficacy by the fault of some ungodly men. You're fixating on little pieces of paper garbage and you're just mowing the whole place down for the sake of a little scrap of paper. God's doing something infinitely greater than that, Calvin's saying. So where's the power of church discipline? Well, there's a faulty assumption that forgets that all sanctification is discipline. Now, most of that's what we call formative discipline. When we lose our minds, we need corrective discipline. But all Christians are being formally disciplined by the Word of God, or being shaped into a different shape than our nature would have it by the Word of God. Now think about that for a second. What follows from the fact that all Christians are always being formally disciplined by the Word all the time? What follows is that what most basically works on a soul that's moving in the right direction is going to be the same operative principle working on a soul that's moving in the wrong direction. So say we're always being formally disciplined all the time. Let's draw a big circle for audio land, and let's call that circle discipline. How are we disciplined? Well, we've seen we're disciplined by the word. Well, yeah, that's true about formative discipline. Well, corrective discipline is a species of discipline. It's not like when they're on the cliff, you need something stronger. When they're on the window ledge, you need something stronger. Or do you need words to get them back? But what if that doesn't work? What, use a bulldozer? What are you saying? Listen to yourself. We are always using words to persuade. It's the only thing that will work, but they might jump out. Let God be God and use his word. A soul is a soul no matter which way it faces. If the word is what works on a soul because the soul is an intellect, well then a soul going that way and a soul going that way are gonna be in the same basic nature. And so the scriptures speak of its own power in this way. Hebrews 4, verse 12. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And so when Peter preached at Pentecost, it says in Acts 2.37 that his hearers were cut to the heart. You like that? Hebrews 4, piercing. Acts 2.37, cut to the heart. So let's all agree, let's assume that we all want church discipline to function well. We want it to work. Now let anybody else take their own willpower. You can have character examples, you can have 12 steps, you can have all the greatest threatenings in the world, and I will take that piercing and cutting action of the Word of God to persuade the soul. Third, the Word of God marks out the church from the non-church. God divides the church from the world by his word. And by his word, God makes divisions within the visible church. God divides the visible church from the world. None of us would say that people out here are in the church, but all of us would say that people in here are in the church. However, by his word, he starts to separate even households, every generation. And those who come to the center of this ripple at the center of the circle, we would call that the invisible church. The Lord knows those who are His. He draws them by His Word. They are not seeking to kick anybody out. They are not making this division, but the Word is making this division. This is like every page of the Bible, and it is the most un-American doctrine, this doctrine that I call doctrine and division. It's a doctrine. It is the most un-American thing that needs to be taught in America right now. 1 Corinthians 11, 19. There must be factions among you that those who are genuine may be revealed. 1 John 2.19 says the exact flip side of that same coin. They went out from us for they were not of us. For if they would remain to us, they would have proven, when it gets to the point where it says the reason, so that it would be made plain that they are not all of us. So 1 John, I'm doing this with the opposite colors. The green was supposed to be the way out. 1 John 2.19. These are they that go out from us to show. God is showing something. We might not be interested in what He's showing, but God is telling you, this is the reason I divide like this. When they fall away, it is to show. It is to show something. Well, 1 Corinthians 11, 19 is just the positive side of that division. There must be divisions among you so that it might be shown. There it is again. God is interested by His Word in showing the invisible versus the merely visible, in showing the sheep from the goats, in showing the invisible church from the merely visible church. We might not be interested in it. God is. The principle way that God does this is found in the nature of the Word itself and in the teacher's ability to rightly divide. it, not the body. The true teacher does not divide the body, he divides the word. When he divides the word, that divides the body. You see the difference? By the way, speaking of that verse, it's why the old King James way of saying rightly dividing is actually better. I don't usually prefer the King James to the ESV, but I do here. Rightly dividing the word of truth. Why? Well, when the ESV says rightly handling the word of truth, the Greek ortho tomeo, Ortho, you know that orthodontist, what does he do? Straighten some things out. Yeah. Orthography, orthography. Straight writing. Rightly dividing, it literally in the Greek means right cutting or straight cutting. So the ESV, rightly handling, not strong enough. That is softer and more subjective for an idea that is actually quite specific. The King James gets this right. Rightly cutting or dividing. Now from that same Greek prefix ortho, we derive straight teaching or orthodoxy. And so when Paul is training Timothy and pastors everywhere to excel in this rightly dividing, he is telling us to read and to preach the Scriptures in an orthodox manner, in a way that cuts the right doctrinal lines through all of the Scriptures. Are we getting un-American here? I think we're already there. Now, it is just in this ministry of rightly dividing up the Word, or discerning the DNA, it's another way to say rightly dividing, discerning the DNA in the Word, it is just in that ministry that different parts of the body of Christ are properly distinguished from each other. Like head from hand, how do I know the head from the hand? The scriptures tell us what the head is, it's Christ. The scriptures tell us how to tell the difference between head and hand in the body of Christ. And also, It distinguishes the body parts of the body of Christ from things that are not properly the body of Christ. So it divides in the body, it divides from the body. What does that? The Word does that. The rightly divided Word does that. Or in the words of our bigger idea, the objective meaning of the Word does this dividing. So the true ministry of the Word rightly divides the objective meaning of the Word from what? from all competing claims about the meaning of the word. So here's one wrong extreme. By the word, I divide people immediately. No. But then somebody's going to say, well, if you divide things that people believe, you are dividing people. That's the other extreme. That's the devil talking. You don't do either. You don't divide people immediately, nor in fear of that, do you shrink back from rightly dividing the word, which divides people. We divide the objective meaning of the word from all competing claims about the meaning of the word, anything in the word. And once that is accomplished, false limbs begin to fall away. False cells begin to bleed out. False hair and false teeth begin to be exposed. Stretching the metaphor a little bit there. But the point is that we don't need to rip out somebody's hairpiece, or leech them to death, or amputate the limb. The Word of God, rightly divided, does that. Jerome, in the turn of the 5th century, compared the Aryans to mangy flesh that needed to be removed lest it become gangrene to the whole body. Well, that was true of Aryanism. And so sometimes it might look that we do something more violent or more sudden. And again, we'll return to the subject of corrective discipline later on, but for now, let's just say that even in those more violent or sudden removals of individuals or groups from the body, it is the clear Word which brings the poison to the surface. The Word does that. The true ministry is not fixated on, the true ministry is not engaging in the amputation of limbs, for the leeching of the body of Christ in order to rightly divide it." No, the Word does that in the orthodox way. And all that is false simply fades away in God's good time. This is where a mature understanding of the essential doctrines versus non-essentials comes in. Where do we draw the line is the question so often posed. whether doctrinally or practice, as if the practice, that the very asking of the question betrays that we are still divorcing theory from practice. Calvin explained it in this way. I didn't make this up in Doctrine and Division. Calvin said it in the Institutes. So you decide what's essential and non-essential. Well, let's, Calvin says it this way. For all heads of doctrine are not in the same position. Some are so necessary to be known that all must hold them to be fixed and undoubted as the proper essentials of religion. For instance, that God is one, that Christ is God and the Son of God, that our salvation depends upon the mercy of God and the like. Others, again, which are the subject of controversy among the churches, do not destroy the unity of the faith. You hear Calvin's standard. If it upholds the unity of the faith, if it is the unity of the faith, Ephesians 4 says there's one body, there's one faith. You see that? The faith, the word, is what makes the body. What Calvin is saying is that there are some doctrines that make the faith what it is. Those are non-negotiable. Then there are other doctrines, Calvin's saying, that though we might fight over them, they do not compromise the unity of the faith. Is that an arbitrary distinction? I think not. Now, the ancient church might have used a different expression than the unity of the faith. They would have called it the rule of faith, or centuries later, orthodoxy, or centuries later, simply Christianity. And then finally, in the modern church, we would use phrases like the Christian faith or the Christian worldview. But it means the same thing as Calvin meant. Not only does the word ministry rightly divide truth from error, And therefore, it rightly divides the barnacles attached to the ship from the heavenly vessel. But by an experiential preaching, by preaching on, Lloyd-Jones called preaching logic on fire. In other words, the truth of God's word for the whole of life, right where you're sitting. And by an experiential preaching, that's a phrase that Joel Beeky likes using, experiential preaching. When you preach on fire, for real life, there's a total discrimination going on. There's another word we don't like, discrimination. The word so preached, Beaky says, clearly defines the difference between a Christian and a non-Christian, opening the kingdom of heaven to one and shutting it against the other. This is really the central meaning of the keys of the kingdom when you look at those disciplined passages. by the word of God. Here's one example in the scripture. The preaching of Noah gave clear directions into the ark and what would happen outside of the ark. But then the scripture says in chapter seven, verse 16 of Genesis, that the Lord shut him in. Noah clearly pointed inside the ark, clearly pointed outside the ark, salvation in here, judgment there, God shut the door. Noah preached the word and the word divided the people groups. God barred access. This is the order of doctrine and division. The minister speaks, the Lord divides. God divides through the word spoken by the minister. But the minister does not seek division for its own sake. Finally, the Word of God destroys the works of the enemy. Last point. The same Holy Spirit who speaks the Gospel to the heart, through the Word preached, for conversion, also speaks the Law to the heart, through the Word preached, for a conflict with the demons. Every time I preach, every time I teach, I know, I believe, I'm in a conflict with demons. We're demons? No, you're not demons, you're humans. But there's demons who have doctrines, Paul says. He's always on the prowl. Sometimes we preachers have an aim to correct things that we know are going on, but very many times, I would say most of the times, we're simply preaching the text and applying it, and somebody gets what I call a Holy Spirit step on the toe. You cannot read a book on preaching without that preacher at some point. telling you all the stories of when he preaches sermons. Oh, you were preaching right to me. That was so great. How'd you know that was going on in my life? I didn't. And somebody else comes up to you and said, what are you trying to say? And they're hearing the same thing. Well, to quote Al Mohler again, in his article, The Primacy of Preaching, he said, it seems that the more faithful one is in preaching, the more trouble one encounters. Indeed, I will go so far as to assert that if you are at peace with the world, you have abandoned your calling. You have become a court preacher to some earthly power, no matter how innocuous it may appear. To put it straight, you have been bought. And here, listen to this, because the American culture would say, oh, is there trouble? Is there division? Is there confusion? You must be doing something wrong. Moeller says, if there is no controversy in your ministry, there is probably very little content to your preaching. If demons are not stirring up people like a spur in your saddle, It's because there's no demons interested in the people listening to you. They've already been bought and paid for a century ago. If there are no demons stirring up people to mess with your head 24-7, it's because you're not preaching the gospel and you are no threat to those demons. Now what's the theology behind this? Well, 1 John 3 says, the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. Now we're going to start John's gospel in a couple of weeks. And what does John come out right out of the chute calling Jesus? The word, the word of God came to blow up the works of the devil. The devil knows that if he wants to siege the city of God in a particular time and place, the best strategy is to choke out the Word, for the very same reason that a military force would block food supplies into a city that it wants to surrender. And so the silence of the word of God is compared by the prophet Amos in Amos 8.11 to a famine, not a famine of bread and water, but a famine of hearing the word of God. If the devil wants to starve out your city, choke out your supply lines, he will choke out the word of God. The devil can imprison, and oftentimes he gets to do it. But when Paul reminded Timothy of his chains, he quickly shot back in chapter two of his second letter to him, but the word of God is not bound. No earthly power can stop the advance of the word, should the Lord so desire to move forward. Jeremiah 23, 29, is not my word like fire, declares the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces. Oh, I believe that word. I believe that scripture down the street. Do you believe it works that way right here? The whole church needs to pray for the word to shoot out of the preacher's mouth, which is up against many militarized muzzles. Paul says in Ephesians 6, 19 and 20, tail end of a spiritual warfare, all the weapons, and then he concludes, and pray also for me that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak. The word is always working. Make no mistake about it. When you see something that looks like not success, the word is working. Isaiah 55, 10 through 11, I'll close with this verse. For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose. and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it." I believe that, and I hope you do too. And when I say the word context for ministry, I have that in mind. That is my context, that the word of God is always working for everything that God has said it will work for. So that's where we start. So let me open it up to questions, comments, or anything else.