The One Thing to Look For in Your Church

This morning, I wanna ask you or start this sermon by asking you a question. Why have you chosen to come to Open House Church this morning? Or maybe even more broadly, why have you chosen Open House Christian Reformed Church as your church to invest your time and your money and your, yeah, your presence on a continual basis? Why do you attend this church? Now this is probably, you'd imagine, a fairly complex question.

Some of us may say, well, look, I've been born into this church. There is no alternative for me. I have grown up in this church. I've always only known this church. Others have become believers in this church.

People have given their lives, their hearts to the Lord Jesus at this church. And so others might say, well, I've just sort of wandered in here. I live close by. It's the nearest church building to where I live, and so I come here because it's close. But what is it that ultimately keeps you at this church?

What do you look for in a church? Is it how friendly the people are when you walk in here? That they greet you really, really nicely? That you know, have great conversations with you afterwards? That they ask you how your week has been?

Is it that you resonate with the music that's played here? The style is something that suits you, sort of maybe noisy enough but not too noisy or or whatever? Is there something that resonates with you in the music department or is it the quality of cake that you get in your morning teas? What is the main thing that motivates you to choose a church? Well, this morning, we're going to look at a criteria that I dare say is probably the most important biblical criteria we have in choosing churches.

And this morning, I feel it's so important to openly talk about this because in one year's time or two or five, you may not be in this church anymore. We know people, they come and go. You may get a job interstate. Young people, you may find a boy or a girl to marry and you may decide to join their church or another church. This church may not be your church forever, but I'd like to tell you this morning, the one thing you must prioritise in church above all things is the preaching of that church.

So this morning, I shared this message actually quite humbly and waveringly because I realised the very words that I share with you are the very words that I will be judged by. But if it is God's truth that we're after, understood accurately from the Bible where we gain it, then it is true regardless of who reads it or who preaches it. These criteria are apart from me. So let's turn to God's word and we'll read about this criteria in Two Timothy chapter three. Two Timothy chapter three, verse 10 through to chapter four, verse five.

And as always, I encourage you to keep your Bibles open as we study together. Two Timothy 3:10. Paul writes to Timothy, you, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra. Which persecutions I endured. Yet from them all, the Lord rescued me.

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which were able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead and by His appearing and His kingdom. Preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And they will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, and fulfill your ministry. So far, our reading. What do we find in this passage? Well, we find Paul writing to his apprentice, his protégé, Timothy, who was serving in another part of the world about what Timothy should be busying himself with. This is what Paul commands or charges Timothy to do.

And his words are few. They're actually very punchy. The letter is very short, four chapters long. There's no unnecessary waffle. This is what Paul says.

Straight to the point. Preach the word. Preach the word in all seasons, in good times and in bad times, in suffering and in good, just like I have done. That's pretty much what Paul is saying here. But what is Timothy to preach?

What is he to say? We notice in reading the context, Paul gives Timothy this command in a context where Paul is fearing the influence of other teachers, of other preachers. Did you notice that? Paul says to Timothy that he must not do as so many others have done and will continue to do. Don't be like them, rather do this is what Paul is saying.

Instead, he must preach the word of God to those whom God has entrusted to his care. And this word of God about which Paul is speaking is what Paul describes in verses 16 and 17. That is the object of what Paul is teaching here. Verses 16 and 17. This is what preaching the word of God is.

This is what the word of God is. Timothy, you must do these very things in verses 16 and 17 so that God's word may do this in the hearts of your hearers. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. These four characteristics of God's word and how the biblical understanding of preaching the word will facilitate these things in the hearts of the congregation or the listeners. When you go to a different church, you must please do this.

Judge the preaching by these principles. When we attend chapel at school, judge the speaking at the chapel with these words, these characteristics. When we listen to podcasts of sermons, when we turn on the TV to the various Christian channels, judge the preaching by these four characteristics. Firstly, the preaching of God's word teaches. The apostle Paul says the preaching of the word is important first of all so that we might be taught.

To be taught the truth of God, as we sometimes say, is to learn to think God's thoughts after Him. To, in other words, understand our lives, to understand the way that the world works, not merely from human perspective, not merely from the latest bit of social movement and pop psychology from social media, but to understand our life and our world and our God with the wisdom, the truth, and the insight of God. And this idea of knowing God's will, knowing God's desire, knowing God's truth is so important throughout the whole of Scripture. It is everywhere if you look carefully enough. In Hosea 4:6, God says this, My people perish for lack of knowledge.

I'm sure you've heard that verse before. My people perish for lack of knowledge. What is the context there? It's during the exile. It's when people were literally dying, being killed by the enemies of Israel because Israel weren't listening.

And some of the prophets that they had, as we'll see later in Jeremiah, they were teaching all sorts of false things that the people were listening to. What is the cause for their destruction? They perish for lack of knowledge. There are things we learn in God's word that are absolutely wonderful. Oh, boy.

Are they not the most magnificent things, the most centering things that you can hear and understand. So inspirational sometimes to read. And we are encouraged and we are strengthened by it. And we learn good things and we are affirmed in the good choices that we make. Some of us are naturally, I think, good parents.

And when we read God's word encouraging looking after our children well, we think we say, amen. And we feel encouraged that God feels that is important as well. But then we must also realise there can be teaching which is hard. Teaching which is hard for us to take. There are aspects of God's word that penetrate us like a sharp sword.

Hebrews 4 says there are portions of God's word that offend us. And Paul is saying to Timothy, if you are going to preach the word right, be prepared for people to be offended. But don't you dare, Timothy, don't you dare hide God's word from them. Because it is God's means of communicating the truth and His teaching and His heart's desire for them. That is why preaching must be expository.

It means to have expository preaching in your church, means to expose the scriptures. Means to keep pointing back to the scriptures. Means to dig into the scriptures so much that it starts making sense. To expose God's truth, to lift out the significant truth of it, to bring it to light and to bear on the hearts of those who are listening. The preacher is therefore not there to communicate his own personal thoughts.

He's not there to communicate his own experiences of God, even though they may be very, very awesome. He's not there to communicate his own world view. And be careful if you hear that happening a lot in a sermon. Get out. The biblical understanding of preaching is to teach God's people what God has said in His word.

And the preacher dare not deviate from that responsibility or he starves the people of God and he destroys them for a lack of knowledge. How or why can I say this? Because I know how confused our minds are by the terrible curse of sin. The Bible says our minds have been darkened by nature. We are blind men leading the blind.

And yet over and over again, God's word is referred to as a light. Isn't it? An illuminating power. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And our only hope, our only hope, is to understand who God is, who Jesus Christ the saviour is, who we are in light of God, and how we may find and know God.

That is, those four things are what we need. Who God is, what Christ has done, who we are, and how we get Christ. And that only comes from God's word. As our Lord Jesus Himself said in His great prayer in John 17, this is eternal life, to know You, the eternal God, and to know Jesus Christ whom You have sent. That is eternal life.

To know. Now preaching at any church, if the Lord was to take you away from this church to anywhere else, this is the first criteria you must find in the preaching of that church. And I say that almost assuming that you're finding it here. This is what you have to hold your pastor to account for as well. This is what the elders have to do on a regular basis.

The first criteria is that preaching must be grounded in teaching the word of God. The second thing we see in Paul's charge to Timothy about biblical preaching is that it reproves. The word of God is not only given for teaching. The word of God is given, Paul says, secondly, in verses 16, but also in chapter 4, verse 2, to reprove. Now we might better translate or more easily understand reprove to mean to convict, to challenge.

The preaching of God's word must convict us. Whereas the teaching of God's word addresses the mind, that preaching is meant to go through the mind to the conscience. It needs to reprove or challenge me. Of course, this preaching is where the word of God becomes personal to us because teaching can be a head knowledge thing, but in the reproving, in the challenging, it's where it really starts touching us personally. And this explains why under the ministry of God's word, as it is patiently unfolded as Paul says, it doesn't matter what kind of personality the preacher has.

Paul doesn't say anything to Timothy about how vibrant he has to be or how much he has to pound a pulpit. Patiently pointing people back to God's word will challenge people, challenge their consciences. One of the things that will happen is that God will find me out. The preacher can be a pulpit-thumping high-energy person that jumps up and down on the stage or they can be a quiet, soft-spoken, and fairly unemotional speaker. But if God's word is truthfully preached, God will penetrate our hearts with conviction.

The wonderful thing about the preaching of God's word is that you and I find ourselves under the authority of God's very words. We are listening literally to God speak. And those words, we will find time and again, is sharper than that double-edged sword that Hebrews 4 talks about. It truly breaks through my defences. It penetrates.

It can penetrate my heart exposing the shadows of my life. The secrets and the subtle intentions of my heart. It exposes my insecurities. It exposes my hypocrisy. It lays me bare in the sight of God so that I may take up and then drink of the salvation of the gospel that will quench my thirst.

Paul is saying to Timothy, Timothy, however painful it may be for you and however uncomfortable it may be for your people, this needs to happen. The word must expose. It must convict the conscience of your listeners so that the grace of God can come to heal. There's a remarkable passage in Jeremiah 8, and I'm sure you've also heard this, in which the prophet Jeremiah complains of all the false prophets in his time who were saying to the people, peace, peace. And God says, but there is no peace to be found.

Peace, peace. All is okay. The these armies that are standing at our gates, don't worry about them. They're saying to the people, don't worry about this. It is not as bad as you think.

And Jeremiah mourns this because God's redemptive work is hindered. It is obfuscated when the convicting word work of God's word doesn't happen. They listen to the nice preachers, not the harsh preachers. Now this is what Paul alludes to in chapter 4, verses 3 to 4. Right?

When he's talking about a time that will come where people won't endure sound teaching, he says, verse 3, but will accumulate, accumulate, that idea is like, just gather and keep promoting teachers to suit their own passions. They won't listen to the truth, but will listen to the words that their itching ears want to hear. This is a massive warning to us, friends.

This is huge. And I want you to think about it this morning as well and this week. What preachers are we listening to? What authors are we reading? When last have you heard many of those famous television preachers on TV preach a hard word that laid bare the sin of their viewers?

Would they really have such massive followings if they called their viewers sinners bound to hell? Would they really have those followings if those people, and I have to be careful I don't name anyone, if they were to say, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Jesus. The Jesus who didn't have a pillow to rest His head on. Health and prosperity is simply today's version of saying peace, peace, when for many there won't be peace.

CS Lewis had a wonderful essay entitled Undeceptions. And it applies to the preaching ministry of God's word where he says that we need to be undeceived about ourselves, undeceived about myself, my self-sufficiency, my pride, my arrogance, my greedy desire for health and prosperity, and all the things that go into the secret places of my heart. All the things that go on in these places of my heart. We need to be undeceived by God's word. That brings us to the third point, that God's word corrects.

This brings us to, yeah, what Paul is talking about here. After speaking of teaching and reproving, he moves on to the correcting power of the Bible as it is preached. You and I may hear the word reprove or challenge and correct, and we may think it's the same idea. It's proving that we're bad. We're not good or there's something broken.

But that's not Paul's tone here when it comes to this word actually. The language he employs was used in the medical world. When talking in the first century to describe the healing and the realignment of a broken bone. To correct a broken limb is to put a splint on it, to realign it so that it will grow back to its former strength. Paul in essence is saying and telling Timothy that the glorious thing about the ministry of God's word is that it not only lays bare our consciences through reproving us, but after that, He comes and He graciously heals.

He restores. He redeems. He fixes. I've mentioned Jeremiah 8. After this situation, in the same chapter, after Jeremiah mourns about the false prophets, Jeremiah cries out powerfully with these words in verse 22.

Oh, that there will be a balm in Gilead to heal souls that are conscious of their sin. I think you'll probably remember that was Bishop Curry's sermon, talked about the balm of Gilead. The healing essence, Gilead was famous for this particular balm, I think, that they used for all sorts of skin irritations and so on. But Jeremiah cries for something far greater than that. A balm in Gilead that can actually heal souls.

That is what his people needed. Not peace, peace. A word that will fix people's hearts. So in a sense, the pulpit is a place of deconstruction. Sometimes God's word needs to break us down, pull us apart, but then it is also the hospital for those who come to the great physician and ask Him, heal me.

Lord Jesus, by Your word of grace, heal me. My brother is a doctor, Doctor Dirk. And he will tell you that there are certain people, usually stubborn men, who will do everything to resist going to the doctor. Because they believe that if they go to the doctor, the doctor will find something that is wrong with them. The public preaching of God's word that happens on a Sunday or during the week can be exactly the same.

And people can fear it for exactly the same reason. Paul is saying that if you don't want to hear something is wrong with you, well then you'll probably never hear how you can be healed by Jesus Christ. Because He chisels away at our sin with the view of reproducing in our lives His characteristics, His good life, His power in us. The aim of the Christian, the end goal is to be more and more like Jesus. That is where we're working towards.

So we therefore need correcting, splinting in order to live peaceful, joyful, contented life we were designed to live. So the word of God is given to Timothy to teach, to reprove, to correct, and then finally, to equip. The last phrase that Paul uses here in verse 16 going on to verse 17 is that Scripture is useful for training in righteousness, which he then connects with verse 17. And really he's saying that the entire purpose of the teaching, of the reproving, of the correcting is summed up in this final point to train, to equip, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So what happens here on a Sunday?

What happens here on a Sunday is that something is received that needs to be echoed into the rest of the week. We understand that in a sense. Right? What you teach as a Sunday school teacher, our teachers here, when you teach God's word to our kids in catechism class, what I do is to equip for life. The ultimate purpose hearing the preaching of God's word therefore is that it must change us.

It must prepare us. It must train and equip us. Now that doesn't sound revolutionary when we hear it. We say absolutely, yeah, and of course, that is how it should be. But I ask this morning, how many of us come and sit here, listen to a sermon, and then the only bit of reflection that goes on is that sermon could have been a little bit shorter.

Or, you know, I wish there was a little bit more happening on the PowerPoint screen or whatever. Or KJ's purple shirt is really nice this morning. If that is our level of equipping that we get from this time together, if we leave with that as the end result, we might reconsider what our goals for coming to church might be. If it's not the equipping for our lives, if we can't identify something to apply to our lives from every sermon, then we are kind of missing the whole point of preaching. That's not to say that how long or short a sermon is or how distracting a preacher's bad habits are aren't important.

You should talk about those things. You should tell the elders or the pastor about that. But we have to keep remembering what the purpose of preaching is. It is to equip. It is to train us for righteousness, for good works, every good work.

So a good question to ask yourself, to ask your family as you drive home from a Sunday, that's a great opportunity to do it. And you can do it in five minutes, is to ask, what have I learned or what have you learned today in church? And then, what am I challenged to change? What have I learned and what am I challenged to change? And it can go in very different ways.

For example, you may listen to a sermon that's all about God's grace, all about His work at the cross, His forgiveness. And you can say, I have learned today that I am loved and accepted and forgiven by the grace of God through Jesus' death. And then you can say, I am challenged to change my thinking about the way I view myself. I am not a worthless sinner. I am a person supremely loved and accepted.

I can change the way I think about myself. Can you see how that begins equipping your life? As you head home into your working week, you take that with you. That's the ultimate goal of preaching, to be equipped. And so in wrapping up, as we sit together under the preaching of God's word, whether that is a Sunday morning, whether that is a podcast during the week, what is happening to us?

Well, at the same time, all at once, we find this happening. We are in a classroom in which we are being taught how to be disciples. We are in an x-ray room in which our broken bones and swollen tumours are being uncovered. We are in a surgery room where our sinful tumours are being cut by the scalpel of the Holy Spirit, where our broken bones are being realigned to full strength. And then as we are being healed, God's process of physiotherapy puts us in the training ground where we start to learn how to walk again.

We all come to God's word slightly crippled, a little bit broken, sometimes massively wounded by our sin and by the world. But through the preaching of God's word, the true preaching of God's word, we are able to walk out the door into the world alive again. Ultimately, to the praise and the glory of our God. And so dear friends, never ever, never ever place your lives under any preaching that will not do you good for life and for eternity. And so I charge you as Paul does to Timothy, church, I charge you elders and deacons and Sunday school teachers and then mums and dads as you teach your kids, be prepared in season and out of season to preach the word to your kids.

To uphold the sanctity of that word, don't compromise it for anything less. It is our only hope. Without it, we fall, but I just think that the preaching of God's word can do something eternal in them, can do something eternal in us. The preaching of God's word even this morning. Maybe changing someone from eternal darkness into eternal life.

Even now, that is the power of this word. And we say, hallelujah and amen. May God give us a longing for His word. May He send His Holy Spirit into our midst. And may He breathe life into those words as it reaches our hearts and minds.

Let's pray. Our Father, we need these words. We need to know this. We need to realign our priorities again. And Father, we know how uncomfortable it is and we know how often we get it wrong.

And we know the bad side of arguments and debates over what Your word means. We understand all of that, God. But that doesn't diminish its truth. That does not diminish its significance for our lives. And so we must keep coming back and we must keep discussing and we must keep pursuing and we must keep listening and allowing Your word to change us.

Father, thank You that we are in a church with leaders that prioritise this. Thank You, Lord, that we are in a church with church members that find this very, very important. Thank You that our young ones are being taught the Bible. Thank You, Lord, that we work very hard at understanding it. But, Father, help us in our misunderstandings.

Help us to be corrected as we should, as Your word will do. Help us to be reproved. Our consciences be laid bare of sinful motivations. But Father then, at the end of the day, we pray for this church to be glorious in how we live, to do every good work, to be trained like in the physiotherapy lounge of our God to walk upright. And so Father, we pray, will You continue to do that work in us?

Will You continue to do that in our church and through our church? Father, may there be many more in our region added to this church where Your word is preached, where the gospel is heard. Send them to us, Lord. Help us to be the church You desire us to be in order to do that. And Father, we pray for those who we haven't even met yet who will be here to do that.

Thank You for this time together. May we be challenged and equipped for this week in Jesus' name. Amen.