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 The Corrective Word By Richard WIlson

As we proceed through the fourth chapter of Ephesians, we're coming to a portion of scripture
that further explains the ministry of the Word of God.
And if I just read that to us before we go any further.
In verse 14, we are edified in the body until we come to the unity of the faith
and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man to the measure of the stature
of the fullness of Christ.
And the reason for this is our text today, that we should be no longer to be children
or infants are tossed to and fro and carried away or carried about with every wind of doctrine
by the trickery of men to the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.
So I just entitled our thoughts today to be that of that corrective word.
Now it's been very positive to build us up in every aspect into Christ, but also it corrects
us and we are not naive.
We are to be people that would be corrected so that we are aware of the false things that
would rob our soul of the blessings of Christ.
So there's one side and there's the other side, there is the error that we've got to
shun as well as the truth that we must take on.
So those are the things we've got to look there.
So our portions today are from Jeremiah chapter 23.
Now Jeremiah had an awful trouble with false prophets.
He was doing battle all the time, all his ministry and that's why he was called the
weeping prophet and it was because the devastating effects of false prophets among his people
were just killing the testimony of Christ among his people.
So 23 of Jeremiah and then if we are feeling that this is only Old Testament stuff, we
go straight to the New Testament after that and into Matthew chapter 7.
We're going to take from 23 verses 1 to 17, that's not the whole chapter, but we will
take the whole chapter 7.
As we open our Bibles to the portion that is selected for our attention today, we will
take that 14th verse as I read earlier to you in Ephesians chapter 4.
As I said that we are being edified in the body of Christ, we're dealing with the ministry
of the word specifically and how it is powerful to achieve the purposes of God within the
church and through the church to the world.
The whole body of Christ is being edified or built up until we come to the unity of
the faith as we saw last Lord's Day and the knowledge of the Son of God so that we personally
are becoming a perfect man.
Now that means that we are becoming mature in the things of God.
We are not those that easily moved.
Our convictions are stayed upon the word of God because our conscience is being exercised
by that very same word.
Men and women and children that have received the word of God are the most invincible people
on the face of the earth.
Political regimes, pressures within by spiritual forces that would seek to persecute us, people
who would like to see the end of anything righteous and good according to the Gospel
that we have come to know if we have this word richly dwelling within our hearts so
that we are secure in our convictions concerning the doctrines of Christ and the doctrines
of the Scriptures.
We are a change agent in the society to such an extent that we become a counterculture
to the prevailing culture of the world.
There is nothing more important than people who actually believe the word of God, who
hold to the word of God and will be obedient to God before they will be obedient to kings
and bosses and prevailing men in our society.
We will do what God will have us to do because we belong to the kingdom of God where the
Lord is Lord and that we are his people making his bidding.
So we are therefore becoming mature in the things of God.
We don't learn these things overnight.
They're not something that we somehow read the book and think we understand.
They must be woven into the very fabric of our soul.
They must become part of us and we cannot conceive our lives without the word of God
making its mark within all our life.
And so we become mature, perfect.
In other words, we become rounded and balanced in the things of God and where godliness is
the mark of our stature.
And this is according to the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ.
There is nothing partial about the Christian life.
There is nothing part time about the Christian life.
The Christian life is marked by the fullness of Christ within us, the hope of glory.
That we might be those that would truly know the power of God, his wisdom.
We would know his enabling and his protection.
And that we would be able to exhibit Christ in every way.
So that's the positive side of the ministry of the word of God.
We need to become better Christians.
We need to be good exemplars of our master.
And we need to establish a Christ-like lifestyle in everything we do, say or think.
And even our very conscience is feeling
and be moved by the characteristics of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Now this happens because we have somebody living within us,
the Holy Spirit that is teaching all these things.
And he's teaching us always in accordance with the word of God.
It's not two weird ideas or semi-attached ideas to the word of God.
It is the word of God that is establishing these truths, the truths of God.
That's why we call the Holy Spirit the spirit of truth.
Because the word and the spirit belong together.
They don't operate separately.
And that they are one in the triune God.
So as we press on, we see also that you will see people not just by what they profess,
but what they shun, what they reject.
I can tell people's attitudes better by what they reject than what they accept.
Because there's a clear formation of their conscience that is being formed
as they reject certain things.
Now you'll see a young person as they conduct their love life,
the kind of people they choose is the kind of people they want to be with.
And that was what I mean.
You find it very easily by what people choose.
And if they choose to do certain things that are clearly unbiblical,
you are seeing a greater character formation in them.
If they say, yes, I believe in justification.
Well, every Christian will say he believes in justification.
They'll also believe in predestination because that's what they profess.
And that's what they want you to think they do.
But do they actually live in the light of that by rejecting to go to sport on Sunday?
Or taking the crunch when your boss says you must work on Sunday and you say no,
because it is against the law of the holy God?
Then you start to see the character of that person.
Because to the great detriment of himself,
because he might lose his job when he says something like that,
he begins to understand that he values the very things that God has given him.
Very often, Christians will play around with people who are good looking, but not Christian.
And they form these relationships that the Word of God clearly says
that you should not be unequally yoked.
And yet they pursue these relationships saying,
oh, it's not a serious relationship anyway.
But you keep seeing and huggling and going on in the process.
And then you start to see the character of that person.
Yes, you are fooling with error when you do such things.
Because we actually positively display what we do by the things we reject.
You're rejecting the very principle that you must not be unequally yoked.
See the point you're getting to?
Many people say, well, this is my only opportunity.
Is it my only hope?
You're not looking to the law when you're saying that kind of thing.
You're looking to the circumstances.
And you're playing it smart, you think,
but you'll be found out about it in the fullness of time.
So coming to this, then the apostle goes on and he says,
the reason why we have got to be strengthened
as Christians to be in the fullness of Christ,
it is so that we should be no longer be as children tossed to and fro
and carried about by every wind of doctrine,
by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness and deceitful plotting.
As we look at this, we see that he refers to the thing that is going to
deal with our Christian infancy and move us to being mature men and women in Christ.
Stable in him, firmly rooted on the foundation of who Christ really is,
is that we are going to grow in the grace of the word of God
and all the graces of the word of God.
And we do this because we are not going to be any longer as children
Now, it's actually the word there is nipios, you know, the nipper,
you get the word nipper, comes from the Greek actually,
that sort of infant.
And we are to be those that are not those who are infants,
spiritual infants, now I know that she can be very grown up and still be very spiritually
infants, I had an aunt that never really grew up.
Aunt Joan, she died I think as a baby, really.
She was tossed to and fro on every wind of doctrine,
but she never really grew up.
Because she never knew the discipline of a father.
She never, she was never, nothing was ever said that she was not allowed to do this.
And she was always, she was always a bane in our side, is my aunt Joan,
because she never really grew up.
So don't look about how old you might be in terms of years,
look at how deep you are in terms of your understanding of Christ
and your interaction with your saviour.
And we find that this is something we need to be careful about.
To not to grow in the graces of Christ and we choose not to grow.
I see many Christians taking the easy road and the non-confrontal road.
They take an easy road and say well look I don't really need my quiet times in the morning,
I don't really need to be at prayer, so they miss all these things out.
Because it's easier for them to go straight to the breakfast table
and feed their little gullet and get into the car and go straight to work.
And not to really consider anything that is important in their lives for that day
before the throne of grace, because really they think they can do it on their own.
See that's what little children think, they think they are bulletproof.
They think that they are not very vulnerable,
they have got their whole life in front of them and they can just do what they want.
Now we've got to be careful about that.
Many people choose not to take the harder road, the more difficult road,
that you know is the right road because you don't like the discomfort
that might be associated with that, taking these sort of decisions.
You're afraid of making a decision, whether it's a biblical decision,
it's a biblical principle, you've got to draw the line in the sand
and you're not going to let yourself go beyond that line.
Now we've got to draw lines in the sand everywhere.
If you're going to be a principled person,
a person who's guided by the dictates of the word of God,
there's times we've got to say,
this is where the line is drawn and I'm not going to pass over it.
And you take the consequences and let the consequences fall where they might.
But as far as you're concerned, my faith is stayed upon this principle of God's word
because Christ has said this kind of thing.
And you might find that you are denied many friends,
you have to look to the Lord for your relationships,
you might be fined that you can't get a job in this particular field you want to go into
because you've got to hold to a certain biblical standard to do this and so it goes on.
So we need to be careful that if there is a biblical principle that we are holding to
and we call that the doctrine that we must hold to,
because a doctrine is a way of life, remember, it's not just a way of thinking,
and we've got to hold to it because we've got to obey it
because any thinking, a philosophy becomes a doctrine as soon as you're ready to obey it.
And when we're obeying it, then we are living it out.
And so we've got to learn to live it out.
And this doctrine then becomes part of our experience, part of the history
that builds stability and builds your experience with Christ in a real and valid way.
And that's the way that we move from spiritual infancy into spiritual maturity.
As we obey, not hearers of the Word of God, but doers of the Word of God.
And we know that there's many negative things and we've got to say,
this is where I've got to go.
My conscience is stayed upon God's Word on this matter.
And therefore, come what may, I have got to follow the Lord Jesus in this matter.
You know, when it happens, the Lord Jesus comes straight into that position.
He takes up ranks with you and it's amazing.
All the skin and hair is flying and all the swords and battle shields are clashing.
But you are holding your ground with the Lord Himself.
It's amazing how the Lord just opens up the path in the battlefield
and you walk through as a victorious member of the Kingdom of God.
Learn to draw the line in the sand and don't let anybody pass by that line.
And as we do so, we find that the Word of God is appointed means for us to grow in grace.
Many of us might find ourselves
unassured of our faith because we have never really tested the Lord's grace
in the midst of our day to day life, because we have failed to really obey the Word.
But we have just had it in our thinking as something like something part of our taught
libraries of knowledge that seems to be in the back of our mind.
It's good that we have that.
But if we don't use it, we lose it, as the old saying goes.
Society which I might call Vanity Fair, our own society,
and it's interesting when Christian and Faithful were in Vanity Fair,
that's where they got persecuted the most in the story of Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.
And I think it's a fair commentary on just how it all fares out.
And in fact poor old Faithful, he was burnt at the stake in Vanity Fair.
That's where the conflict comes between the Christian lifestyle and it's in clear contrast
with the good life of Vanity Fair or the easy life of Vanity Fair.
And very often the church is tempted to somehow meld into the world when there seems to be every
good reason to follow the way of the world because it offers a soft easy way to live their life.
Now if we do this, we will be those that will become spiritually retarded.
And I know as a parent I used to have to often comfort my wife,
or not often, but she was very grateful that she had children that were not retards.
And if they were not growing up, children, if I always saw my children that size
and they turned 20 and are still that size, I would say,
oh dear, they have not ever grown up.
But now they become that size and they tower over me and I suggest not only physically
but also spiritually they are growing in the Lord's world.
And I hope that's what's happening.
Now to have a child that is spiritually mongoloid is a very great burden to carry.
Not that we reject our children and not that the Lord rejects such children,
but nonetheless it's a very great burden to carry, not only within the family but within the church.
Now I'm talking about spiritually mongoloid, never really grown up.
And they're often very delightful and pleasant,
but they just haven't got the stamina and the ability to be able to live full-orbed lives.
But they're dependent upon the support of everyone around them and so on.
So a person that is in such a condition, we find within 1 Corinthians chapter 3,
this kind of condition, because the church at Corinth was an infantile church.
It was a spiritually stunted church.
And he says, concerning this church,
and I brethren could not speak to you as spiritual people but as carnal.
He says, as babes in Christ, in other words as infants in Christ,
I fed you with milk and not with solid food.
For until now you were unable to receive it.
And even now you are still unable.
You are still carnal.
And so he goes on in this way.
See this church had become puffed up with knowledge,
but they had not been built up in the graces of Christ,
because they had not chosen to follow Christ in the knowledge that they had received.
And that's what we are facing today, very often within the church.
Such people have very little in the way of spiritual convictions,
and they hold to these spiritual convictions very lightly.
They, every new fad that sweeps them off their feet,
they are easily moved.
And not only that, but their attention span is woefully short.
When I'm dealing with children at school,
I'm told that I should not speak any longer than about 10 minutes
before we go into something practical,
because their attention span is so short.
And I don't know whether that's absolutely true,
but it means that they must be fairly mature kids
that can't take any instruction for more than 10 minutes.
This is very often the case within the church of God.
We can't pray for any longer than a couple of minutes at any one time.
We find ourselves can't read from the scriptures
any longer than a few verses,
without having to have some simulation to keep our attention in place.
We can't read good books, because it's all too difficult for us,
and the language is too difficult for us to press on with.
And so it goes on, and our attention span becomes very short.
Now, we've got to train ourselves, as we grow in the maturity of the things of God,
that these appetites for a solid preaching, for in-depth teaching,
for reading books that go beyond the relationship books to the doctrine books.
And to enter into these things with careful consideration
of the deeper things of scripture.
We need an attention span that goes beyond the television,
and enters into a considered, careful and sober kind of approach,
so that we know the truth of God in its fullest sense.
We know also that people that are spiritually infantile
are people also, when you see a child with one toy,
and he loses interest, he leaves all the toys in a pile here,
then goes to another room and starts playing with something else.
That's the kind of receiving these fads, these Christian fads.
Very often Christian people are affected most by the last book they read,
and they are sprouting off the last book they read,
rather than looking at the whole truth that has been building up
through the work of God, through your life,
and there's a really deep stability to your Christian life.
Now the ease of such a person who is spiritually infantile
to be swept off their feet and to be deceived is very easy,
by every wind of doctrine.
In a day when formal doctrine, or biblical doctrine,
is fiercely discouraged, the church is awash with every wind of doctrine.
Now let me illustrate this, or let me explain it and tease it out a bit more.
How many people really have thought through the doctrine of creation
as we find it in the Bible from a scientific point of view?
Now most of us here have done that,
and we're a lot deeper than most Christians,
but I find among university professors who expect more,
most of them hold to the doctrine of evolution,
and disparage the biblical doctrine of creation.
And this wind of doctrine has gone awash right through the church,
and it's to the point it's very hard to find in the Church of Jesus Christ these days,
people that hold to the doctrine of creation as found in the scriptures,
because they can't get above the superficial approach of man-centered scientificism.
So also we found that the church has been completely overrun
by the political movement of feminism.
And now it's considered to have women in office within the church
as something that is basically routine.
To this day, many Christians are even debating these days
the social phenomenon of homosexuals in the church.
This is a wind of doctrine, and you need to have more than just proof texts
to often counter these things, to try and counter and guard the church from it,
and even your own soul from these things.
I had an elder within my previous church in Tuggerong
who opposed my ministry deeply.
And it's been now, after 10 years, he's now become a declared homosexual.
Now, there was a guy who'd actually been to a theological college
and become an elder within the church, of which was regarded as a fairly evangelical church,
who was so infantile in his spiritual being that he's become a homosexual
and still claims to be a Christian.
And the church allows him to think he's a Christian,
because this wind of doctrine has carried him away.
And now the same church will not declare themselves against such practices.
So I just am a flabbergasted.
And that same church disparaged the teaching of the Westminster Shorter Catechism
that does teach biblical doctrine from the scriptures.
They said it was archaic.
They said that these things don't apply anymore.
And it was impossible to pass such a church under those conditions.
And that's in the Presbyterian Church.
You wouldn't believe it, would you?
You wouldn't believe it.
And that's exactly what's happened.
And you might say, well, Richard, stop emphasizing biblical doctrine all the time,
because these are deep and foreboding and difficult things to get to grips with.
I tell you, if we don't, there is a wash of every wind of doctrine going around everywhere,
because people do choose to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
The church we're going to in the evening has been now split
over the multi-level marketing gurus that are pushing our self-help gospels.
Now, there's a strong church and it's been tested in this way.
Now, what's the pastor going to do if he doesn't preach the proper biblical doctrine
to guard against this kind of stuff coming into the church
that separates the unity of the church?
I mean, I live among young teenagers day by day.
And even in Christian schools, who openly advocate sex before marriage
and living in de facto relationships.
And their parents who go to church on a weekly basis,
who send their children to a Christian school, somehow give acquiescence to it.
Hope that may not go on, but they won't really give instruction
to their children for an alternative lifestyle and assist on it.
See, it's a wind of doctrine and they're choosing a de facto relationship
before they'll choose covenantal biblical marriage.
It's not that people can't get to grips with biblical doctrine,
it's simply that they are not mature enough to embody it.
And because they will not live by faith and take up their cross daily
and deny themselves and follow the Lord.
That's the reason why they're not growing in the Lord.
And that's why their lives in the end will become directly miserable
because they have followed every wind of doctrine rather than biblical standards.
It's also true within the church, every Christian within the church
wants to tell the pastor how to run the church,
presuming they know more than the pastor does.
Now that might be true in some cases, but it should not be the truth.
It should not be the way.
And so they presume to be preaching and teaching the people in an immature,
unanointed manner, self-appointed manner,
so that they somehow get some sort of grand experience
and pose in the church because they say,
oh, the church must all administer to each other.
Now that's true, but not to the extent that they are making it out to be.
And so the whole church growth movement tends to emphasize this
and all our ignorance and basically we do what is right in our own eyes.
And there is no correction of the word of God in such circumstances.
There needs to be taught rigorously and personally in everyone's life
the necessity of not only knowing the doctrines of the word of God,
but also insisting that people do it.
And let the consequences fall in the lap of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
He will always honor his truth.
And it's the only thing that will guard us against it.
I've gone far too far.
My third point is deceive men and the wiles of the devil.
And I'll probably pick this up next Lord's Day instead
because the very things that are inspiring,
this kind of attack upon the Church of Jesus Christ is the false prophet.
And believe you me, the false prophet believes with his whole heart that he is right.
He is completely deceived.
He is sincere to that extent that he believes in the error that he's teaching.
And therefore there is a false humility about the false prophet.
And we find that this, it really is playing tricky things in the church.
As by the trickery of men, the false prophet is referred to here,
but also lying behind is a very brutal, sinister personality behind the false prophet.
And he is merely a puppet on the string of the devil himself.
And the wiles of the devil are brutal and Christ hating kind of intentions.
And we find that we've got to often look behind the personality,
the person to the very personality that is guiding him.
And so he goes, the deceitful plotting and scheming behind these things.
Often you find the false prophet and the false teacher,
the person that is perpetrating these things
is really perpetrating the mind of the devil himself.
And so we come to feminism within the church.
We come to evolution within the church.
And we come to the idea of personal freedoms
when the law of God doesn't really matter any longer.
And you find churches actually advocating this,
that the law of God has no more place in the Christian's life.
I don't know how they live righteously, but that's what they will say.
Now that's a wind of doctrine that is overcoming the church.
And they emphasize a personal freedom above righteousness.
And so we find these things so clearly demonstrated within the church.
So remember, the word of God is corrective.
And that it is one that leads us away from spiritual infancy
and that we are made stable against all the winds of doctrine
that would toss us in every wind of doctrine about.
I think of a boat on a storm swept sea.
That's what a, without a rudder.
And is unable to keep a true bearing in the course of the ship
because it is an infantile ship that has not really been built
for the kind of storms that it is navigating in.
And we will be led to those sign of storms
and we will be easily overcome by it if we are not, first of all, fortified
both positively and negatively by the word of God.
And remember, the false teacher and the wiles of the devil
is the thing that's giving inspiration to this.
We are involved in a titanic battle and we will not be able to resist the devil
unless we have the truth of God's word and the graces of Christ
firmly etched upon our very souls.
And may God give us the strength to say,
from now on, I'm going to take attention to the doctrines of God's word.