On one of Durell’s frequent trips to China, he was studying once with a man in the city of Liuzhou. They had just completed discussing the importance of following scripture, rather than the customs of men. When the Chinese man asked a question regarding a particular teaching, Durell answered by simply reading a passage from the Bible; he offered no other comment, but it was sufficient to make the point. The man responded, “I know what the Bible says, but that’s not what we do in China.” Just moments before, the man had agreed that we should follow the word of God as our guide in all things. But now, he experienced a conflict between scripture and custom. In his mind, it was difficult to see the contradiction.
This is not a problem unique to China. I once heard an American Christian lady say in response to the question of women covering their heads, “Oh, we don’t do that around here.” As if the teaching of scripture is to be refuted on the basis of geography and popularity. And I was stunned once to hear an elder react to preaching he …

Few people conduct business these days on the basis of verbal contracts, alone. While it’s true that a man’s word should be his bond, untrustworthy men and unreliable words have made most modern folks cynical. We want contracts in writing, with explicit details carefully enumerated. After all, business means money. How strange, then, that we can be so careless when it comes to spiritual truth.
Our world is full of men and women claiming to communicate divine revelations from God. Television airwaves are hot with self-styled prophets continually spewing forth “new” information about a great “revival” God’s planning to send, or updates concerning the end of the world. Some have been so bold as to equate their writings with scripture, such as Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon, which is now blasphemously deemed, “another testament of Jesus Christ.”
Two facts are eminently clear: modern “prophecy” and “prophets” have proven themselves profoundly unreliable, and fewer people respect the power and authority of God’s written word – the Bible. Society’s dissatisfaction with the word of God is predictable. Not everyone cares for truth. Not everyone appreciates the high moral tone of God’s righteousness. And not …

At the very core of faith lies the issue of trust, “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Faith trusts in a God it cannot see with eyes of flesh. Faith accepts God’s revealed word as Truth, even when certain principles defy understanding. And let’s face it, our understanding is limited.
Yet even while paying lip-service to our finite intellects, we sometimes fall all over ourselves seeking to explain the inexplicable. God has given to us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3), but that’s not to say He has specifically answered each question we might raise. He has kept some truth to Himself, perhaps because it deals with things we could not begin to comprehend. “For the secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29).
It’s often hard to tell if our insistence in explaining what has not been revealed is rooted in a genuine hunger for truth or rank human pride that refuses to admit ignorance. Either way, men have forever found themselves making ridiculous and unbiblical arguments in an attempt to delve into God’s secret things. And much of …

That the Holy Spirit dwells in the child of God is a clear statement of scripture (Rom. 8:9-11). Men differ widely on the manner of that indwelling, but we dare not deny the language of divine revelation (1 Cor. 2:12-13). Very often men have combined the principle of the Spirit’s indwelling with the principle of being “led by the Spirit” and reached the untenable position that the indwelling Spirit miraculously controls or directs our daily lives. In truth, these two principles are independent of each other. While scripture demonstrates that the Holy Spirit is given to those who believe (Jn. 7:37-39; Acts 2:38), it also demonstrates that our submission to the teaching of the Spirit is entirely voluntary.
Paul’s charge to “walk by the Spirit” in Galatians 5:16 is an elaboration of verse 13, not to misuse freedom in Christ as “an opportunity for the flesh.” Sharply contrasted here are the Spirit (the Holy Spirit) and the flesh (the personification of unbridled desire). The apostle is eloquently depicting the struggle in every human breast: we must either acknowledge and follow the revealed will of God, or, as brute beasts, blindly follow …

Last Sunday evening I preached about “The Temple of God,” that temple being all the saved of Jesus Christ. Both as individuals (1 Cor. 6:19-20) and as a body of Christians (1 Cor. 3:16-17), we are described by Paul as being a temple of God, a dwelling place of His Spirit.
Such noble language speaks not only to our special relationship with the Father, but also to our special responsibilities to Him and each other. We considered last week the three-fold mission of God’s temple: 1) To glorify and honor God; 2) To encourage and edify each other; 3) To teach ourselves to serve. Although it wasn’t the focus of the lesson, under point number three we discussed teaching the gospel as one aspect of serving. Let’s talk about it more.
Throughout religious history, temples have been recognized as centers of learning and devotion to the various gods they serve. It makes perfect sense that anyone wanting to learn more of Buddhism would visit a Buddhist temple, for example. But it is not so with the faith of Jesus Christ, and never has been. American culture has been completely saturated with a …