Thus says the Lord: "Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.
But they said, 'We will not walk in it.'" --Jeremiah 6:16

 

1 September, 2006   comments: (0) Sound Doctrine   The Relevancy of Doctrine - Part 2 Unlike the current evangelical trend, the late Martyn Lloyd-Jones understood how nothing could be more relevant than truth and doctrine: "Take the New Testament, take the history of the Christian Church, or take individual Christian experience, and you will see that true doctrine is always urgently relevant. It is of supreme importance for the whole life of the Church." This is Part 2 of 3 in a series of posts from Martyn Lloyd Jones' writings on heresy excerpted from The HighWay website Nothing is more urgently relevant, whether we think of ourselves in particular or the Church in general, than that we should be aware of heresy. The Holy Spirit is the power in the Church, and the Holy Spirit will never honor anything except His own Word. It is the Holy Spirit who has given this Word. He is its Author. It is not of men! Nor is the Bible the product of 'flesh and blood'. The Apostle Paul was not simply giving expression to contemporary teaching or his own thoughts. He says, 'I received it by revelation'. It was given to him, given to him by the Lord, the risen Lord, through the Holy Spirit. So I am arguing that the Holy Spirit will honor nothing but His own Word. Therefore if we do not believe and accept His Word, or if in any way we deviate from it, we have no right to expect the blessing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will honor truth, and will honor nothing else. Whatever else we may do, if we do not honor this truth He will not honor us. This is surely one of the major problems in the Church at the present moment. Everyone is aware of the fact that the Church is lacking in power. The leaders are trying to seek the cause of this in order that they may discover how to remedy it; and apparently, they are all jumping to one conclusion, namely, that the cause of our lack of power is found in our divisions. So we must all come together. That is the argument. The divided Church is the cause of the trouble, and so the argument follows that if only we all come together we shall be blessed, we shall obtain the missing power, and tremendous things will happen. But how are we to come together? One believes this, another believes that. The main trouble, we are told, is that some put far too much emphasis on what one believes. Surely, they say, we ought to recognize that the one thing that matters is that there are great common enemies against us, for example, Communism, so we must all come together, all who call themselves Christian in any shape or form. We are all one; why divide about these things? We must all come and stand together as Christians, and then we shall have power. We read about these things constantly in the newspapers. Some are rejoicing because Protestantism and Roman Catholicism are drawing nearer together. 'What does the past matter?' they say, 'Let us have the right spirit, let us come together, all of us, and not be concerned about these particularities.' I have but one comment to make about this matter, and I regret to have to make it. To me, all such talk is just a denial of the plain teaching of the New Testament, a denial of the Creeds and the Confessions and the Protestant Reformation! It is carnal thinking, in addition to being a denial of the truth. According to the teaching of the Bible, one thing only matters, and that is the truth. The Holy Spirit will honor nothing but the truth, His own truth. But that, He will honor. To me the most marvelous thing of all is that, the moment you come to such a conclusion, you realize that in a sense nothing else matters. ... Nothing matters in the spiritual realm except truth, the truth given by the Holy Spirit, the truth that can be honored by the Holy Spirit. Is there anything more glorious in the whole of the Old Testament than the way in which this great principle stands out? God often used individual men, or but two or three, against hordes and masses. Is there anything more exhilarating than the doctrine of the remnant? While the majority had gone wrong, the ones and the twos saw the truth. Take a man like Jeremiah. All the false prophets were against him. There is a man who had to stand alone. Poor Jeremiah - how he hated it and disliked it! He did not like being unpopular, he did not like standing on his own, and being ridiculed and laughed at, and spat upon, as it were; but he had the truth of God, and so he endured it all. He decided at times to say nothing, but the word was like fire in his bones, and he had to go on speaking it. Obloquy and abuse were heaped upon him, but it did not matter; he was God's spokesman and God's representative. Similarly Moses had to stand alone when he came down from the Mount where he had met God. To stand in isolation from one's fellows, but with God, is the great doctrine of the Old Testament in many ways. And it is emphasized in the New Testament also. Is it not amazing that people should forget the Scriptures and past history? Look at the Early Christian Church. From the standpoint of the modern argument the position was ridiculous. The Son of God goes back to heaven and leaves His cause in the hands of twelve men! Who are they? No one had ever heard of them. We are told about the authorities of Jerusalem that they noticed that they were 'ignorant and unlettered men'. Incidentally, they added that they had been 'with Jesus'. They did not see the significance of that fellowship. What they saw was ignorant and unlettered men, and only a handful of them at that! A mere handful of men in a great pagan world with all the Jews against them, and all the authorities! Everything on earth was against them. Related Information and Resources: Read Part 1 of The Relevancy of Doctrine Ryle: Gospel-Truth More Important Than Unity & Peace Horatius Bonar: Truth is Never Antiquated Bob DeWaay: True and False Unity Flavel: A Puritan Compass That Leads To Doctrinal Truth Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.319   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  RSS Feed  |  Contact