In this video, the speaker shares a story about a young man who repeatedly leaves the sermon after hearing the first truth and its application. The pastor eventually confronts the young man and learns that he feels it is unnecessary to stay in the sermon once he hears something he already knows but is not obeying. The speaker emphasizes the importance of studying systematic theology with joy and excitement, as it leads to a deeper understanding of God. He also highlights the responsibility of applying the truths learned from sermons to one's life. The video concludes with practical steps for studying and summarizing relevant verses from the Bible.

Father, I come before you. I thank you for this great privilege that is ours. I thank you for all that you have done and are doing and will do. I pray, dear God, that the truth that we learn here today will have some eternal effect not only on us, but those that are in our circle of life, especially our families. Lord, direct this meeting for your glory and your honor. Change us, transform us, and begin whatever revival is in us. In Jesus' name, amen. Alright, I want us to go to Grudem, and we're going to look at some things this morning before we go on to Scripture. Grudem does, in this last part of the introduction, say some magnificent things. Some things that may seem quite simple, when in actuality they are things that are very important. Beginning on page 26, we talk about initial assumption of this book. We begin with two assumptions. That the Bible is true, and that it is, in fact, our only absolute standard of truth. Now, the only way that you can come to that conclusion in a real fashion is through being born again. We know, and I said a little bit of this the other day, we know the Bible is true because God has regenerated our hearts and told us that it is true. Be very, very careful. Apologetics is a very good thing. It can be a very powerful thing. A great deal of apologetics are done wrongly. And if you were to step into a real philosophy class doing that sort of apologetics, they'd destroy you. Apologetics can be very, very good, but realize this. Men believe the Bible is true not because simply they can give ten reasons towards the historicity of the Bible. They believe it is true because God told them it was. Through supernatural regenerating of the Holy Spirit. And again, I forget which page this is on, but John Calvin deals with this in probably the most marvelous, probably the best way. I know. I know. Why? Well, the Bible talks about it because He has come and He has given us understanding. He's opened up our hearts. He's regenerated us. He bears witness. And that is why most of the people right now that are going to die today for Christ, most of the people right now who are suffering in prisons, in the 1040 window, could not give you ten historical reasons why they believe the Bible is the Word of God. But they're going to die today and seal their faith. Demonstrate the validity of their faith with their own blood. And they're going to do it because God regenerated their heart. And that's something that's very, very important. Also, that the God who is spoken of in the Bible exists and that He is who the Bible says He is. Now you say, well, why does He even bring that up? Would you be amazed if I said most theologians don't believe that? I mean, if you were to take everyone who calls himself a Christian theologian... Be careful of being sectarian. You live in the Bible belt. Someone told me yesterday the buckle of the Bible belt. And that's true and there's nothing wrong with that. But just realize that most people doing theology out there, not only do they not believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God, they've got serious problems even if there's a God. I don't even know why they do theology. Those who study religion and such, you're going to realize that if something were to break out, persecution in this land, it would be the great many theologians who would join in as the persecutors. And they wouldn't label you as a Christian. They'd label you as a fundamentalist. Isn't it amazing that when the Muslims attack and do something vile, they're not usually called Muslims. They're called fundamentalists. Isn't it amazing that anyone who truly believes the Bible, even if you're not a fundamentalist, you're called a fundamentalist by the media. It would be an amazing thing if they were just trying to group everybody in the same pot. Anyone who did vile deeds in the name of religion would be a fundamentalist. Isn't it amazing that true Christians are painted as violent? Two homosexuals several years ago were violently killed out west by two guys who weren't even Christians. And immediately Katie Couric gets on TV and blasically blames Focus on the Family for their deaths. Christianity is a violent religion because two homosexuals are killed by rednecks who don't even claim to be Christians. Muslims kill 8,000 people in New York in their peaceful religion. So beware. If there were persecution here tomorrow, many of the seeker-friendly churches, many of what we call the conservative, want-to-believe-in-Jesus churches would be on the side of our persecutors. And so when you're doing theology, sometimes you think, yeah, a theologian might believe nothing. And if he calls himself, identifies himself with religion and does not believe true religion, he's not regenerated, you can count on the fact he's going to be one of the most wicked persons that's ever walked on the face of the earth. Paul Tillich, have any of you heard of him? As a matter of fact, one of the professors when I was at Southwestern was president of the Paul Tillich Society. Paul Tillich was a theologian. We had to read him. He was so immoral it was unbelievable. His wife was a lesbian, and I think he committed adultery on his wedding night. But he's worthy to be studied. No, he's not worthy to be studied. So you see, you have to be very careful when you're doing theology. And that's why Grudem says these two points. For example, when a theologian gets up and says, okay, a true theologian, a true Christian theologian, he'll get up and say, okay, today we're going to... well, we're actually going to spend the next week showing that God is a person. And you say, well, we're wasting our time doing that. I mean, everybody knows He's a person. No. Most don't believe He's a person, but an impersonal force. So when you study the Bible or study your theology or get ready to preach, you've got to understand, hey, not everybody's from the buckle. Now, he says, why should Christians study theology? And there's some very good things that he says here. I want you to look at the basic reason, the second line. Some people would believe or have the impression that systematic theology somehow can improve on the Bible by doing a better job of organizing its teaching or explaining them more clearly than the Bible itself has done. We should throw that out immediately. The Bible was not written like a book of theology. The Bible is the Bible. Everything else is just a book written by man. But there's two extremes. One is guys who hardly read the Bible because, well, you know, I'm concerned about truth and it's presented systematically, so my thing is systematic theology. And they're not really in the Word reading like we've been reading. They'd rather carry around a theology book than they would the Bible. Then there's other guys that Grudem addresses who says you can't even do systematic theology and the only thing we should do is read the Bible. Both of those are wrong. And Grudem makes a really good point here that the reason we do systematic theology is simply because we're to teach everything Jesus commanded. And if you're going to do that, you're going to need to systematize some things. Because when you say teach what Jesus commanded, what you've got to realize and Grudem points out so well here is that Jesus not only taught in the Gospels, but Jesus continued to work in the book of Acts and continued to teach all through the epistles. So those are things that Jesus taught. And then you can't even understand the things that Jesus taught unless you look at what was taught under the old covenant through the Spirit of God, through the Son of God. And so you've got to realize that we have to teach the entire Bible. But to do that properly, we've got to be men who can compare spiritual to spiritual. We've got to be able to look at the context, the grammatical, historical context. And we've got to be able to compare truth with truth and come up with a united answer or a systematic answer that takes into consideration full counsel of God's Word. That's why I have you reading the Bible the way I have you reading it. Because most people who claim to really love the truth, if I sat down with them and said, how many times have you read through the Bible? They would be too embarrassed to answer. You see? And that's very, very important. Is there any question? I want us to look at page 27. The middle of the page, it says, the task of fulfilling the Great Commission includes therefore not only evangelism, but also teaching. I can't tell you how... I don't want to sound very proud and very facetious, but I wish that so many people who go overseas would just stay home. Just stay home and not go overseas. So much has been done by superficial evangelism that has ruined works in other countries. Much of what's been exported in America isn't worth it. They should have stayed at home. They've done much better if they had just left the foreign country they're so burdened for, if they just left it alone. Because they'll do a real superficial evangelism teaching not realizing the importance. You know, you hear about somebody going to Africa or someone going to Russia and they preach and 10,000 people get saved. No, that's not true. It's not true. They may get 10,000 people to raise their hand after a Jesus film. But I mean, who wouldn't raise their hand after a Jesus film? You know, they used to hear stories of Gover and hand out Bibles and people would just be so happy and they would be fighting one another to get the Bible and things like that. And in many ways, they'd have been doing the same thing if you were handing out Tolstoy's War and Peace. You hear so much stuff. So much stuff. And what we've got to be is, guys, I don't really know how to say this, but you're going to be so busy wanting to do something really big that you're not going to do anything. It's taking individuals one-on-one. It's teaching. It's teaching. It's every person that comes into your life, pouring your life into them and seeing everything as an opportunity. I have found that there are very few things that are big, but there's a lot of little things that add up to something big at the end of your life. And so it's not about just evangelizing 10,000 people. It's about teaching them the full counsel of God. Very important. Now, one of the things about systematic theology, and he says this is kind of neat there towards the bottom, he says, there simply is not time in our lifetimes to read through the entire Bible looking for an answer for ourselves every time a doctrinal question arises. Therefore, for us to learn what the Bible says, it is helpful to have the benefit of the work of others who have searched through the Scripture and found answers to these various topics. Now, I agree with that statement, but I need to temper it in this way. We need to have a life practice of trying to go through the Bible and figure out everything that it says. We ourselves do, especially those of you who feel called into the ministry. We need to work on that. But let me say something. If John MacArthur, and I haven't talked to him about this or anything, but I bet you, I think he's been mightily used of God as much as anyone in the last several decades. But I'll bet you if he could go back and rewrite the first commentaries that he did when he was very young, because he's done so many. He started when he was younger. If he could go back and rewrite them, he would, and he would make a few corrections. Now why do I say that? Theology and the study of the Bible is a never-ending task. It's never-ending. You go through the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and spend an entire year, praise God, you're going to learn a whole lot. But then, you go back ten years from then, or fifteen years from then, and look over your notes, and you're going to say, boy, that was immature. Or you're going to say, well, I wrote it down, but I didn't understand what I was writing down when I wrote it down. Now, don't be sad about that. You don't want a book that you can conquer, do you? I mean, if this book you could conquer, if you could just go down and systematize it and have every answer, it probably wouldn't be much of a divine book, would it? It's an inexhaustible truth. Now, one of the things that I want to tell you that has most hurt me, that I want you to avoid, and it is this. The Bible is so big, and there's so much to know, and you look at somebody like your R.C. Sprouls and your John Pipers and your John MacArthurs, and they know so much about so many things, and you seem to know so little about so many things. It is a lifetime endeavor. And I can assure you that if you will just do what they've done, those men, you might not be as great a proclaimer or have as an exalted position, but I can guarantee you you'll pretty much know as much as they know when you get to where they are. We'll get discouraged and start reading the Bible and go, man, I just read ten pages and I forgot already what I read. And things like that. Well, they have that problem. But if you'll just realize I'm in this for life. If you'll also realize I'm in this study in order to change, not to become famous. I love the illustration. It's kind of cliché, but it's a really neat illustration. You know, you read stuff and you forget it. You read the Bible and you forget it. And one day this little boy comes up to his grandfather out there on the farm and he says, Grandpa, I'm not reading the Bible anymore. His grandfather said, why? He said, because I read it and I forget what I read right after I read it. I mean, what good is that? And so the wise old man, he gave him a coal bucket. Dirty, dirty coal bucket all lined with soot and everything. He said, son, go down to the creek and get us some water. The boy went down to the creek, filled up the bucket, came back up. By the time he got up to the house, the bucket had holes in it everywhere and there was no water in it. He said, now go back down again to the creek and get us some water out of that bucket. So he went down there, got water out of the creek, ran back up the hill. By the time he got there, there was nothing in the bucket. He sent him down again and said, go get us some water. He went and got water. He came back up. By the time he got up the hill, there was no water. And he said, Grandpa, this is futile. By the time I get up the hill, there's no water. He said, yeah, I know, but look at the bucket. It was clean on the inside. If you want to master this book so that you can be able to regurgitate it, so that you can be able to speak it and so that you can be prominent among the brethren, I'll bet you the Holy Spirit will actually limit what you can learn. But if you're just in it to be pleasing to God and be changed, then I'll guarantee you that the Holy Spirit will bring to mind verses that you think you've forgotten when you're standing up there preaching. Guys, be very, very careful. I don't know if it's Don Whitney or one of them. I was talking to him in St. Louis. And he said, I think it was him. And he said, you guys, you've got freshmen getting their master's. Well, I mean, they're getting their master's. First year student in theology. And they'll hand in a paper to a professor. And this is a 22-year-old guy, his first year in seminary. He hands the paper in and says to the professor, now, look over it for me. Not only when you grade it, but look over it, please, because I hope to publish it. And the professor looks at him like, are you an idiot? What color is your sky? You're a first year seminary student and you're concerned about publishing a paper? You should be concerned about learning the ABCs. Not in doing something great. Every once in a while, a Spurgeon comes along that's 19 years old and goes to a pulpit and preaches like he's 119. But there aren't many of those around. And I wouldn't worry so much about... Guys, do not seek great things for yourself. Do not seek to be known. Do not seek to be... Just seek to know God. I mean, you're going to be amazed when the roll is called up yonder and everyone stands before Christ, the famous people who have very, very little prominence before the throne of God and unknown people, absolutely unknown, they shine like lights. Someone asked, I think it was J.I. Packer, they asked him, they said, who's the greatest preacher in the world today? J.I. Packer said, you don't know him. The point he was making is probably some guy out in the bush preaching to six people. Conrad Merle used to say, some of the greatest sermons that have ever been preached have been preached to six people. Not to 6,000. And so, seek to be hidden and let God exalt you. Now, number 28, page 28, theology and its benefit for our lives. First of all, he says, studying theology helps us overcome our wrong ideas. Who has wrong ideas? We all do. We have wrong ideas. And a really good tape or DVD series, audio series that you can get from R.C. Sproul is The Consequence of Ideas. I've listened to it several times. When you listen to it, you won't remember all the stuff he talks about. He goes and does a historical study of philosophy, but mostly secular philosophy. It's absolutely wonderful. John, have you listened to that? I think we had it in the house, but I haven't listened to it once. But it tells you the consequence of ideas, how controlled we are. We are controlled by ideas and some of them are wrong. The people who come to your church are controlled by ideas. That's why Spurgeon said you need to learn to read people. What are the wrong ideas? Because they're controlled by. That's what counseling is. That's what true biblical counseling is. Let me give you an example. A girl walks into my office. Her parents are really worried about her. She walks into the office. Why? Because she's ugly and no one loves her. So she mopes around. Her whole world is a depressing, dark gloom. So what do I do? Well, a Christian psychologist will probably spend two years talking about her mother. When she comes into my office, I'm going to lovingly say, okay, you've made two statements, two belief statements. One, you're ugly. Two, nobody loves you. And those two ideas, our statements, our beliefs, control your life. You've admitted it. They're the reason for your depression. They're the reason for your solitude. They're the reason for all these things. So you have two ideas that control your life. Now, what we're going to do is we're going to compare those two ideas to the Word of God. And if they contradict the Word of God, young lady, I'm going to call upon you to repent of believing lies and I'm going to command you to believe the truth. So we take the first statement that she makes, I'm ugly. We go into Scripture and realize that she's railing accusations against God. And the fact is, she's probably not deformed as a monster. The problem is her pride. She's not ugly. It's just that she's not the most beautiful girl in the class and she wants to be the center of attention. God did not make her exactly like she wanted to be made. And so there's a sin problem, a pride problem, a rebellion problem, all kinds of things. And then she says no one loves me. Well, she's made a railing accusation against God. And then I ask her, well, do your parents beat you? Do they not feed you? Do they keep you locked up in a cage wrapped in barbed wire? Are they abusive? Well, no. They're just basic, normal parents. So you've made another railing accusation against your parents and against everyone else on the face of the earth. That there's no one who cares for your soul. And so we begin to go down and do what? We take her wrong ideas and show her how wrong they are. And counseling is basically showing people their wrong ideas, presenting the truth to them, and then calling on them to stop believing a lie and start believing the truth. And that's what you do when you preach. You call on people to stop believing a lie and start believing the truth. And not only believing it, but living it out, which is almost redundant. If you believe it, you must live it out. If you do not live it out, it is a sign you do not believe. Okay? So theology is to get rid of wrong ideas. Secondly, to help make better decisions about everything. I had a guy walk into my office years and years ago. I was probably 27 years old or something. And he walks into my office and he goes, man, Christian life is just full of all kinds of tough decisions. I said, no, it's not. He said, yes, it is. I said, no, it's not. He said, yes, it is. I said, no, it's not. I'm the pastor. I win. And he said, why do you say it's not full of a bunch of tough decisions? I said, because God's already made all the decisions for you. For you, it's just really one decision. Am I going to obey? You see, there's not a whole lot of decisions to make. There's a whole lot of answers to find. God's made the decision. You just need to find the answer. Systematic theology helps us do that because we go into all sorts of realms. Systematic theology. What kind of decisions has God made for me concerning my wife? Look at it that way for a moment. What has He already decided with regard to my behavior in the workplace? So when you see that it's God who's made all the decisions and your job is to not make decisions, but look for answers, it changes everything. Grudem points that out. Thirdly, systematic theology will help us grow as Christians. Remember what I said. You ever hear a preacher tell you that you need to love God more? Go up to him afterwards and ask him how. I'll never forget this guy. He was preaching right after Leonard Ravenhill was preaching and then I was sitting there, praise God, and then this guy gets up and man, he preaches for about an hour and even though I was a young Christian, I could tell this guy is totally and completely out of God's will. You could just tell Ravenhill was right in the center of God's will, filled with the Holy Spirit, just preaching exactly what everybody needed to hear. And this guy who just apparently got so fired up because Ravenhill had just preached and it was his turn, you know, man, he got up there and railed on everybody for like an hour. You need to walk in the Spirit. You need to walk in the Spirit. You're not walking in the Spirit. I mean, he just went on and on. So afterwards, and I was like 22 or something, I walked up to him. I said, sir, I agree with everything you say, but I have a question. Because I'm kind of a new Christian and I agree with what you're telling me. I just don't know how to do it. What does it mean to walk in the Spirit? He couldn't tell me. I mean, he literally could not tell me what he was commanding me to do. Alright? Now, be very careful, God. You say, you need to love God. Duh! You need to love Him more. You don't love Him as you should. Yeah? It's like one time a prophet got up in a church where I was at and said, God's given me a revelation. There's sin in this church. And I'm like, no! You've got to be kidding me. Really? We didn't know that. But when someone tells you or you tell someone they ought to do something, it better be followed with how they're supposed to do that. And it's like loving God. How can you make yourself love God? You can't. Unless God is this absolute, completely perfect and all lovely Being. Therefore, you can love Him more if your heart's been regenerated the more you know Him. I love my wife now more after almost 14 years of marriage than when I first met her. Why? I know her more. And she's flawed, so not only do I know her better parts, I also know her worse parts. But I do love her more because her better exceeds her worse. But God's not that way. The more you know about Him, the more you're going to love Him. That is why the song leader ought to be the greatest proper theologian in the church. Really. Because check this out. Go do a study of theology proper. Theology proper is the doctrine of the person of God. Go do that. You know what you're going to find out? 75% of your texts are going to come from the book of Psalms. The hymn book. In the Bible, 75% probably of your texts with regard to the attributes of God are going to come from the book of Psalms. Because what is it doing? Extolling what? The attributes of God. The works of God. So that's extremely important. Now, theology will help us grow. It really does begin here in a sense. The idea of divorcing the mind from Christianity is a very dangerous thing. Now let me show you. You remember the other day I was talking about guys who say, I don't want none of that doctrine stuff. Or I don't want none of that theology. I just want Jesus. Where does that come from? Well, let me share with you where it comes from. There was a time when many of the seminaries, Princeton, even Harvard, things like that, were really biblical, on fire, incubators for preachers, theologians. Well, then they became almost scholastic, academic, and that's all. Liberal eventually. The guys would get up in pulpits and couldn't preach their way out of a wet paper sack. Literally bore people with diatribes on things no one even wanted to know about. Had no power. No one's converted. So what do you have in America? You have a reaction against that to the point where it's almost a bragging thing. Some of you are probably too young to know this, but I remember as a little boy, preachers practically getting up and bragging about how dumb they are. I ain't never been trained. I ain't never been to seminary. I'm just a dumb old plow boy. What is that? That's a reaction against what? See, most of what we do, guys, is a reaction against something else that's wrong, but instead of doing what the Bible says, we go to the other extreme. Okay? The fact of the matter is, you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's why I tell people a lot of times when I teach on praise, that you should almost be physically exhausted. When worship time, you sit down, you should be almost physically exhausted because of just the intensity of what you're doing. You say, well, I don't feel that way. You know, that's one thing I don't think people understand. I know I'm kind of running a rabbit here, but that's important. If I don't feel it, I'm a hypocrite. No, you're a hypocrite if you're a hypocrite. Just because you don't feel it. Jesus said if you treat people nice who treat you nice, you don't do anything more than the Gentiles. Well, let me just show you this. When you walk with God because you can actually feel His presence physically and it just seems like He's all over you and you walk with God, what have you done? It's when God seems to totally have abandoned you and you're walking in darkness and every demon on the face of the earth is riding on your back that you get down on your knees and worship God. Now you've done something. Alright? I walk into a place and I don't feel like praising God. What does that mean? I have just got one of the greatest opportunities before me to glorify God. Because it's not about my feelings, it's about how worthy He is. So I'm going to offer a sacrifice of praise. You see? But what I want you to see here is that it's not about feelings even though feelings are a wonderful thing. Emotions are a wonderful thing. But at the same time, it starts here in my mind. It starts here in my mind. Let me tell you something about emotions. If you don't have any emotions, I really doubt the sincerity of your Christian confession. I think John Piper, I heard him say this. Sometimes you hear something that's really small, but you say, man, that's going to stay with me for the rest of my life. He said, how can you determine how biblical or unbiblical your emotions are? And he said, well, this is a good way. He said, when you're reading through the Bible, and you're reading through, let's say the crucifixion as it's portrayed in the book of Luke, and that doesn't stir you, something is terribly wrong with you. Something's wrong with your emotions. You see, if you just got a letter about your son being tortured in Iraq, you wouldn't read it coldly. So our emotions should be in accordance with God's Word and what God is doing at that time in our lives. Yes, emotions can be carried away. Yes, people can get emotional. But to totally deny that from the Christian faith is to suck out a big part of the Christian faith. I'm not going to disrupt services or things like that most of the time, but sometimes I'm going to let out a hallelujah and I really don't care who hears me. I'm going to scream out glory to God in the middle of the service and I'm just going to do it until someone stops me and then I have to submit or something. I don't think that's going to happen here. There should be a sense of our emotions, but the mind is a very, very important thing and not a thing to waste, as they say. Now, I want you to look down at 29 about a major doctrine and a minor doctrine. A major doctrine is the one that has a significant impact on our thinking about other doctrines and that has a significant impact on how we live the Christian life. A minor doctrine is one that has very little impact on how we think about other doctrines and very little impact on how we live the Christian life. There are concentric circles of doctrine, in my opinion, and I think it's very important to understand that. I am not going to have fellowship with a guy who calls himself a Christian and denies justification by faith. I'm not. I witnessed him or something. I love him, but I'm not going to extend and call him brother and bless what he's doing. I'm not going to do it. And if someone says, what do you think about his teaching? I'm going to say it's heretical. There's a big difference between that and someone who differs with me on regard to some aspect of a gift. Do you see what I'm saying? There are some things that are controlling major doctrines that you must stand on. I was preaching in Detroit a few years ago. It's a thing they call the Whitefield Fraternal after George Whitefield. And I was preaching there and before I got up to preach, several scholars there and they were talking about this new view of justification that some Reform guys are running to. And it's frightening because it's almost like a Catholic idea of infused righteousness. We'll talk about this later, but there's two ways of looking at righteousness. One is an infused righteousness. The other is an imputed righteousness. An imputed righteousness means that God legally and forensically declares you to be righteous before His throne. It's not that you actually are perfectly righteous, because if you were perfectly righteous, you'd never sin again. But God sees you as righteous because of Christ's sacrifice which satisfies His demands of justice. So God legally or forensically declares you righteous before the throne based upon the sacrifice of Christ. That is historical, evangelical Christianity. Infused righteousness, which is more of a Catholicism, says this, that God infuses you with righteousness, enabling you to do righteous deeds and you're judged for those righteous deeds and you're saved. Do you see a problem with that? I hope so. So these guys at the Whitefield thing were going, you know, well, we need to understand our brothers who are embracing this and we need to be patient and we need to try to see the outcome of this and all this stuff. And I stood up and I said, I don't agree with anything you guys are saying. I mean, you embrace somebody who has a different view maybe of the Lord's Supper or someone who has some different view of gifts or eschatology or something, but when it comes to the matter of justification, you don't reach out and extend an olive leaf to someone who is denying the very core of the reformed doctrine of justification. You don't do that. And you see, here's the thing also in our own convention. And it's this. The things that I hear some people say, I don't care if they call themselves conservative. The things they say betrays either a willing false doctrine or blatant ignorance of a man who's never been regenerated. It's like I was on a panel for the Founders thing one time in St. Louis and they were dealing with open theism where God really doesn't know the outcome and God's really not sovereign and God's just doing the best He can with what He knows and all this kind of stuff. And you know, David Miller. You know David Miller? He was also on the panel. He was sitting right beside me. They had all these scholars and everything. I don't know why he and I were there. And they started going down with all these big technical answers about this and this. And they were refuting it based on some magnificent arguments. And they said, okay, Mr. Washer, what are your views on this subject? And I said, and before they asked me, all these guys are talking up there on the platform and this big debate's going on. And I leaned over and looked at Brother Miller and I said, Brother Miller, I said, I just think some of these guys need to get saved. Brother Miller flopped that old head over and he goes, my sentiments exactly. But the whole issue is that they're just simply lost. They're just simply lost. And we have to be very careful. And we don't extend the olive leaf to some things, guys. They have to be also very careful with that. Let me give you an example. One day I get a call in Peru and it's Pentecostal. And pretty wild Pentecostal lady. And she says, my pastor's coming over and I want you to consider supporting him because I think God wants you to support my pastor. And I'm like, I've got so much to do today and this guy's coming over and he's Pentecostal and there's no way our mission is going to work with him. It's just not going to happen. That was my attitude. And the arrogance of the lady who's basically saying I think God loves you and I have a wonderful plan for your life. And so I put the phone down. But when that doorbell rang, it was like the Holy Spirit just... And I knew, be careful. Because when I walk through that door, Paul, I'm not going to always be dressed in the clothes you're looking for. I'm fixing to walk through that door. And it was a Pentecostal preacher and he sat down. And we began to talk. And it was so obvious that although he was pretty far away from where I was, a very teachable spirit, a very humble man had God on his life and God wanted me to help him. And we did. Worked with him for years to help him. So guys, when truth is a big issue, you better stand your ground on major doctrines and not budge or extend the olive leaf at the same time. You better be very, very careful. Because you despise even the least of one of these and you're in a whole lot of trouble. It would be better than a millstone to be tied around your neck. It's like this. I know it. Take a Nazarene who believes she can lose her salvation, but don't be making fun of them around me. I had a Nazarene lady risk her life for me in the jungle one time for the cause of Christ because I was a disciple. So you have to maintain a very, very important balance. Now, we're kind of getting off here, so I want to look at some things. This is very important. Very important on 30. Conclusions are too neat to be true. This is one of the objections that are railed against systematic theology. Man, you don't believe how popular this is even among people who really do believe the Bible. Guys who are into biblical theology. And I've heard young guys, a lot younger than me, kind of get up and nail me and nail other people. By doing systematic theology, you're not staying in the context and all this different stuff and your answers are too neat to be true and all these different things. Well, it's just a fad. It will pass. I want you to look at something that Grudem does here and I just love it. He says in the second paragraph under the conclusions are too neat to be true, to this objection two responses can be made. We must first ask the people making the objection to tell us at what specific point Scripture has been misinterpreted. What do I mean by that? If I talk about the importance of systematic theology and someone comes up to me and says, well, you just did a systematic thing, a presentation on the Holy Spirit, and your answers are just too neat to be true. You've systematized things and forced it. In order to systematize things, you've got to force the truth and you've got to deform some things here to make it fit into your system. The question I'm going to ask them is, okay, here's my outline. Show me where I did that. People will get a statement in their head, especially young students, and they'll think, man, this is a thing to die on. This gives me prominence. We shouldn't do systematic theology because in order to make a systematic presentation on the Holy Spirit, you've got to nip and tuck and deform different things in order to make it all fit. Well, that's not true. I mean, people do do that. But that's not true. So when someone says to you, your presentation was so systematic and neat, you messed up something somewhere, just go, I might have done that. Thank you. Would you show me exactly at what point? And usually they can't. Now, let me tell you something about... If you just remember this little illustration, it will help you for the rest of your life. Doing systematic theology is like sticking too many clothes in a suitcase that's too small. It will always be the case. And if you try and you succeed in making all your theology fit in that suitcase, you have deformed something. What do I mean by that? Let's say you've got a suitcase and you have too much clothing. And you get it all tucked in on one side and you get the zipper around. But what happens? You get the zipper around here, the clothing's sticking out. So you unzip it, you tuck that all in, you get this side really, really well, but then this side's sticking out. That's the way a lot of theology is going to be for you. And if you try to get rid of that stuff sticking out and make everything fit perfectly, you can pretty much guarantee that you've warped something somewhere. It's just too big to fit in your brain or in your book. There's always going to be some mystery and there's danger when you have a perfect system. And folks, guys have tried to build perfect systems all over the place. There should be a sense in which your theology and your thoughts are systematic. There should be another sense in which there's kind of a little bit of a mess. There's some loose ends that you can't tie together. Grudem admits that from the very start. It's very important. Now, I want to look at... Let me sit here for a moment. One of the reasons why you can do systematic theology is God is not illogical. He is not without reason. Even in Scripture you see system. You see order in creation. So if we have a God who is a God of order, it should not be too much of an inference to say that the truth He gives us can be put in some sort of an order. The thing that we want to be careful to do is always guard the context and not change verses based on presuppositions or on what we need to make something fit. A great example is premillennialism and amillennialism and postmillennialism. It's an amazing thing. I want to tell you folks, you can take premillennialism and shoot holes through part of it. You can take amillennialism and shoot holes through part of it. You can take postmillennialism and shoot holes through part of it. You can. No one's got... You take the premillennialist and he's got problems in that he does not give enough emphasis to 70 A.D. It's his big problem. You take the amillennialist and there's some things in those texts that seem to go beyond 70 A.D. You take some things and it seems like that God's never going to go back and work with Israel again. It's over. There are other texts that seem to indicate He most definitely is. It's very, very difficult. And if you try to overlook a few things to make your system work, be very, very careful. Very careful. Now, are there any questions? Comments before we go on? I want us to look at another objection. It says, the choice of topics dictates our conclusions. Let me just say something that's simply not true. If you go into the Bible and say, okay, I am going to prove that premillennialism or amillennialism is the true interpretation. Yeah, but your whole premise has started off wrong. Yes, it's right that then your topic and the way you categorize things are going to determine the outcome. That's true. If you've got an agenda to go out there and prove something, but if you get out there in the Bible and you say I want to know what the Bible teaches with regard to the Holy Spirit and I don't have an agenda, or at least I think I don't, I hope I don't, I'm praying I don't, I'm holding myself accountable to other people so that I might not, but I just want to get everything the Bible says about it and try to reach some conclusion wherever that may lead. That's one of the things I respect about John MacArthur. I don't always agree with John MacArthur, but he will take a verse and really try to go where it's leading, even if sometimes it kind of makes him color outside the box. I was reading his interpretation on the sons of God and the daughters of men. And he actually does believe that was fallen angels, the sons of God, and that they inhabited or possessed men on earth and in that way cohabitated with women. Now that is far outside of the traditional evangelical interpretation. But what he's doing is, I don't agree with him, but I can appreciate it. He's following that as far as he thinks it goes without any hidden agenda, and he's kind of putting himself out there on a limb when he does it. But he's not afraid to do that. And so that's something that I want you to see. Now, let's get to a part that's very, very good. I put some flags here. First of all in 32, we should do systematic theology with prayer. It says, just as the psalmist says in Psalms 119.18, Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of the law, so we should pray and seek God's help in understanding His Word. Do you read on your knees? Toes are red through all the works of Shakespeare on his knees. He did. Everything he ever read is that God would show him something. Theology is a thing to be done on your knees. I want to tell you something, guys. Someone will know whether your knees have all the hair rubbed off of them or not whenever you get up and open your mouth. There are some things you just can't fake. You just can't fake. Some of the old birds that I've walked around with and hung around with and known, man alive, it was frightening to be with them. James Weaver, Leonard Ravenhill, guys like that. I want to tell you something. Because they look at you and you knew they could see right through you. I mean, just in a second. They knew whether you were praying or not. Because you get as old as them, been around men as long as they have that are godly men, they can tell when you've got a whole bunch of stuff in your head, but you don't tarry with God. And this is why Grudem, even though I don't agree with Grudem on everything, he's so special in that he is charismatic. Now, let me just redefine that term. That's not to be defined as a TBN. Charismatic. If you're not charismatic, you're lost. You understand that? You are. If you're not charismatic, you're lost. Charismatic just means gifted. But the point that I'm trying to make is that he really does believe this is a spiritual exercise. It comes out in his book. He really believes that Christianity is spiritual and supernatural. I mean, I knew guys at seminary, man, had photographic memories that were absolutely brilliant and everything, but when they opened up their mouth, even when they said something that's true, it was just death coming out of it. And so it's a spiritual exercise and it ought to be done on your knees. Now, I know that everybody can't just pray. Everyone can't read a book for four hours on their knees, but it is an attitude of prayer. Also, guys, getting through the day. Even when you do all the administrative work that sometimes I have to do for the mission, you ought to be popping in and out of that chair quite often. Sliding out of that chair, hitting your knees. Maybe something's on that computer screen that's frustrating you. Hit your knees and then pop back up again in that chair. I mean, you ought to basically be living that. The book of Acts, man, every time there was an obstacle or conflict, people hit their knees. And they hit their knees and they prayed for the filling of the Holy Spirit. You see somebody in church walking towards you and you can discern when they're coming towards you, yeah, they're going to ask me a question. They have that torpedo look in their eyes. They're coming straight for you. You need to write that, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit. You see someone coming towards you and you know that they've kind of got a conflict with you or maybe they're going to rebuke you and there's a possibility your pride is going to raise its evil head when they're walking towards you, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit. You've got to teach, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit. You've got to eat your fruit loops, Lord, fill me with the Holy Spirit. And there's a constantly drawing on that. It's an attitude. Now, in 33, and I'm going to read this because it's so good, the first full paragraph on 33, no matter how intelligent, if the student does not continue to pray for God to give him or her an understanding mind and a believing and humble heart, and the student does not maintain a personal walk with the Lord, then the teachings of Scripture will be misunderstood and disbelieved, doctrinal error will result, and the mind and heart of the student will not be changed for the better, but for the worse. He's so right. He's so right. And I'm talking about even students that are saved. We're not talking about reprobate people studying liberal theology. We're talking about people who are honestly saved. I saw that in seminary in my own life. Because I was just surrounded by liberalism and stuff almost all the time. And it's just unbelievable. I mean, this is a spiritual discipline. And just because... I mean, you can take... On my computer, I can take my computer and I can diagram Greek sentences all day long. I was always good at diagramming Greek sentences. You can diagram that Greek sentence all day long, fixing every phrase with its proper preposition, doing everything, knowing all the different ways in which a genitive can be interpreted. You can just go on and on and totally misinterpret the text. Even though scientifically, you do absolutely everything almost perfect. Because it is not. Although there is a sense in which interpreting the Bible is a scientific endeavor in the sense that it is knowledge. And knowledge is logical and follows a proper course. It is a spiritual thing. And just because you are born again, just because you're born again, doesn't mean that there's this guard on you so that you don't go the wrong way. Now, you won't apostatize and you will eventually come out of whatever mess you've got yourself into because God will do it. But at the same time, you go to Scripture as an intellectual endeavor or looking for a sermon. And I want to tell you something, when everyone opens up your mouth, they're going to know exactly what you've done. Exactly what you've done. Okay? Now, it says we should study systematic theology with humility. Peter tells us, "...clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another. For God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Those who study systematic theology will learn many things about the teaching of Scripture that are perhaps not known or not known well by other Christians in their churches or by relatives who are older in the Lord than they are. They may also find that they understand things about Scripture that some of their church officers do not understand and that even their pastor has perhaps forgotten or never learned well. In all of these situations, it would be very easy to adopt an attitude of pride or superiority toward others who have not made such a study. But how ugly it would be if anyone were to use this knowledge of God's Word simply to win arguments or to put down a fellow Christian in conversation or to make another believer feel insignificant in the Lord's work." That's amazing. I'll take an Arminian to task when he takes me to task. But be very careful. Just railing against Arminians. Because some were named Leonard Ravenhill. And John and Charles Wesley. You know, I love what Whitfield... They asked Whitfield one day who was a Calvinist. They said, do you think you'll see John Wesley in heaven? He said, oh no, I won't see John there. He'll be so close to the throne, I'll never come in contact with him. You know, the key is to be... This is what someone has pounded into my head, guys. The key is not to be a Calvinist. The key is to be a man of God. A man of God. Now, I am a Calvinist. I am. It comes out in my preaching. It comes out in my ability to weather storms. It comes out in everything. But the key is to be a man of God. Leonard Ravenhill, he was a much greater preacher when he was younger. When he got older, he was just basically shoot-out one-liners. Maybe that was his calling. But all you had to do was sit with him for a moment. Even be in his presence. A guy who mentors me, I've never met him, but he talks about a guy up in Iowa who runs a gravel pit. A big gravel pit. His name is Valard Zuki. And from what all the men who have been so prominent in my life, what they tell me is that if you ever come to the presence of Valard Zuki, you'll never forget it. Valard Zuki is a Wesleyan holiness. And if I bring him here to speak, which I would like to in our HeartCry conference, you'll see a man of God. Now, I'm not saying, let's just pass the olive leaf to Arminianism. Not at all. It's a doctrine that's done damage. But not everybody. I have dear friends that in some things they don't believe like me. But I jump in a foxhole with them long before I jump in a foxhole with a lot of Calvinists I know. And what do you have that you have not received? And if you have received it, why do you boast? If all truth is revealed truth, and you're just as radically depraved as everyone else prior to your conversion, then if you do understand something about the Bible, it is the grace of God. It is the grace of God. If the man is just totally like a lot of these Southern Baptist guys who rail against Calvinism, I am convinced, I am convinced. Some of them do not know what they're doing. Others of them do not know what they're doing because they're flat out lost. If they're a brother and they don't know what they're doing, I need to love them and pray for them and weep over them. And if they're lost, they're going to hell. Okay? So, humility. Guys, just recently this young guy wanted to meet with me and another pastor. And the other pastor is more prominent than I. And the moment the kid walked in the room, the man's flags went up. Just like that. Why? He was too familiar with the pastor. He had no right to be that familiar with a pastor so much older than he. There's a sense of humility. Don't walk up to Brother Jeff in my presence and say, Hey Jeff. Don't joke around. What I'm trying to say is young men, when I'm around a lot of the guys who have been very special to me and helped me, you know, I don't treat them like I do guys my own age. There's a sense, guys, in which there's a sense of humility. There's a sense of recognizing something about a man of God. And when you come into another truth that it seems this older man of God doesn't really even understand, still be careful. Be careful what you're doing. Because you don't know where this guy's been. You don't know the battles he's fought. He might have looked down the mouth of the dragon and gone in with one sword and fought the thing all by himself. Something you'd never be able to do. I mean, you know Calvinism and this guy in the jungle doesn't, but when a guy, when a witch doctor flies out of his chair and goes completely across the room without touching the ground, and that little preacher who doesn't know as much as you stands his ground and in the name of Jesus casts out that demon, you see basically the roof of the hut being ripped off, be careful. Maybe this guy has more spiritual authority than what you think. You see, again, it goes back to being a man of God. And young guys, we live in a culture that shows no respect to anything. Show respect to older men. Treat them as fathers, whether they're a pastor or not. Okay? Men who've been in the ministry, even if you don't respect some of the things they do or even some of their beliefs, respect their position. Let God deal with them. Okay? But humility is very, very, very important. Now, he's got a good thing in 36 about the process of doing systematic theology. We'll just go through it really quickly. And it's first of all, find all the relevant verses. Remember I said basically the same thing. Reading through the Bible, Concordance, and one of the books that I love is Elwell's Topical Analysis of the Bible. It is such a helpful book. Have you ever heard of NAVES? Topical Analysis? Well, it's like NAVES on steroids. It's a lot more thorough and a lot more simple in its structure. Also, the second step is to read and make notes and try to summarize the points made in the relevant verses. Now, when you've got a whole bunch of verses that you're looking at, remember this. Even though you need to look at all those verses together, let's say we're studying the Holy Spirit and you've got, let's say, a hundred different texts on the Holy Spirit. You start reading through them. But when you read through them, I really heartily recommend this. Do not take those texts out of the Bible, put them on a separate sheet of paper, and then just study those texts all together. Because what you're going to do is you're going to get out context. You can put all those verses on the same sheet, have a big pile of papers with all the verses on the Holy Spirit, but go to that first verse and then go back to your Bible and say, okay, what does it mean right here in its immediate context? And then go back. And then every verse, study it in its immediate context and then bring it all together. Okay? And like I said, the way I do it is I'll get all those verses together, I'll read through them, read through them, read through them in the Bible, look at their context, and eventually I start seeing how the texts start grouping together. Like on the holiness of God, these verses speak about the preeminence of His holiness. Wow, these here speak about the transcendent nature of His holiness. These speak about what exactly holiness is. And it's a very exciting thing to do. Then it says in 3, finally the teachings of the various verses should be summarized into one or more points that the Bible affirms about the subject. And you ought to try that. You just ought to try it. Because it's really an exciting thing to do. Now, he says in verse 37, we should study systematic theology with rejoicing and praise. Man, you ought to get excited about some of this stuff. I mean, you literally ought to be very excited about some of it. I learned some things about God at times and I just can't even stand it. I just feel like I'm going to explode. You also need to realize if you've learned something, you're required for it to be applied to your life. This missionary tells a story about being in Africa in the early years. And he's preaching under this kind of tent thing. And there was a young man like in the front row. And the meeting starts. You know, it's like a big meeting. He preaches his first point and then makes the application of that first truth. And the young man gets up and basically kind of almost runs out of the meeting. Just leaves. I thought, well, I wonder what that guy's problem is. So the next night, the kid's sitting on the front row again. The preacher gets up, starts his next message, and gets to his first truth that he's gone over and how it should be applied and obeyed. And the young guy gets up, takes off again. This happens about three different times. And finally, the pastor goes, wait for this guy. When he gets here, before the service starts, talk to him. Ask him what on earth he's doing. And the young man's reply was this, well, I didn't think it was necessary to stay in the sermon any longer the moment you told me something that I already knew I wasn't obeying. I figured I ought to just get up and go obey it. And there's a principle to that. You know, in American churches today, it's like the preacher who's standing there, and he can look out into the foyer from the pulpit, and while he's preaching halfway through the sermon, he says, there's someone stealing all the jackets back there. Someone stop them. And everyone just goes... He goes, no, really, there's a thief back there and he's stealing everybody's jacket. So he just thought, okay, fine, lose your jacket. After the thing, everybody goes back and their jackets are all gone. They're like, what happened? He said, well, I told you. They said, well, we know, but we thought you were just preaching. And the whole idea is like warn people what you're doing. Many times when I go to a place to preach, the first thing I'll say when I get up in the pulpit is I'll say this, what is about to occur here is a very dangerous thing. And it may be better for some of you to leave. It's a dangerous thing for the preacher to preach. And it's a dangerous thing for the hearers to listen to preaching. It's dangerous for the preacher to preach because teachers will undergo greater condemnation. And if I say something that is not true, it's going to be bad for me. How is it dangerous for the hearer? If I get up and I speak forth something that's not true, it is not dangerous for the hearer because the hearer is under no obligation to carry out what I've said. But if I get up and I preach the truth, genuinely expounding the truth, it is a dangerous thing for the hearers because they will be held accountable for the truth they hear. Do you see that? Let people know. I was preaching my sister-in-law's wedding. And I did it simply because... not John's wedding, but another sister-in-law. John's married to my other sister-in-law. But it was Charo's little sister. And she's not a believer, nor is her husband a believer. She was with child out of wedlock. And it's like they asked me to marry her. Well, I heard the statement. She said, because she knows my life and she knows what I stand for and everything. And I heard her make the comment that she wasn't going to ask me because she knew I wouldn't marry her. And so she called one day. And I said, I hear you're getting married. She said, yeah. And I said, I just shared with her that I would do anything I could for her. And she said, you wouldn't preach my sermon. I'd preach my wedding. And I said, yeah, I will. But I got up and here's all these people. He was a big football player going to go play in the Canadian League and all these athletes and all these guys who the only thing they could think about was get him married and let's get drunk. And so all these people and some wealthy people and some poor people and all sorts of people there. And I stood up in the wedding and I said, now before we do this, I need to share with you something. I'm not a little boy who gets hired to come and do a little wedding. I'm a man of God. And what's going to go on here, you need to understand this, to use the name of God for no reason except you want to have a wedding is the most dangerous thing you could ever do. Now I am going to do a wedding in the name of my God because He is my God and not because I'm hired to perform some little thing for all of you so that you can later go on and do what you want. So it's a very serious thing. And I explained that to him in a loving way, but I explained it to him. And you need to realize, guys, preaching is dangerous. And see, that's where I have the biggest problem with the Southern Baptist Convention and church growth and all that other stuff. It's not prophetic. Preaching must be biblical. It must be didactic. That means teaching. Because you say, well, why didn't you just say biblical? That covers it. No, teaching can be biblical, but if no one understands what you're saying, it's not didactic. It's got to be biblical. You've got to understand it. And it's got to be prophetic. That is, do not take the blade off. Don't put a false one on with a bad attitude and pride and being smart-alecky and mad, but don't take the blade off the truth. It's got to be prophetic. Or there's no reason to even say it. Now, we've gone quite a long way in this. Let me ask you if there are any questions before we go on to Scripture. Any questions about what we've gone over in this introduction? As a hearer of the Scripture, we are taught so much truth every week. There's some things I'm still praying, and God worked this through my life from two weeks ago. And there's more truth and more truth, and I'm thankful for that. But how do you reconcile that idea? We are responsible for it. It just feels like my head and my heart are about to explode with all the things that I'm being taught. Well, brother, it all comes down to an attitude. God knows. There's a difference between a person who hears a sermon, and maybe in that sermon, God's going to do six trillion different things and teach six trillion different things to a whole bunch of different people. You look at that sermon, and you try to be, before the Lord, a good steward of the truth you've heard. You call upon the Lord for help, and you simply seek to be a good steward of truth. You've probably never heard that type of language before. But a steward of truth. If someone preaches truth to you, it's a gift. You're not going to be able to grasp it all. You're not going to be able to apply it all. But if you're struggling to do that, then before the Lord, that's your glory. A lot of guys that I know, if you ask them, how are you doing? They'll go, pressing in, pressing in. And what do they mean by that? Pressing in violently into the kingdom. Striving, pressing in. In one instance, in a sense, you're resting in Christ. It's finished work. In another instance, you're pressing in. The kingdom advances violently, and the violent take it by force. Press into it to enter it. And so when you hear a sermon, yeah, the struggle is on. I'm going to press in. I'm going to violently seek to grasp a hold of this. Why? Why? Because my life depends on it. You get about 20 drowning people and throw out one inner tube in the middle of them. Watch what happens. You're going to see some serious violence go on. I was surfing one time, or attempting to surf, and this guy was in a... It was a red flag day. It was horrible. I don't know what in the world I was doing out there. And I got way out there, and so the friend of mine named Serge, and I heard someone just moaning and gurgling, and I looked over, and there was a guy on a boogie board with eyes about this big. I mean, he was nuts. He thought literally that he was going to die. And Serge, my friend, went towards him. I said, Serge, back off, man. Do not touch this guy. He'll kill you. I mean, he was nuts. He was terrified. And I said, don't. I said, don't. I said, look. And I'm with no way a surfer, all right? So I said, Serge, there were some real surfers. I mean, guys that are really good in Peru. I mean, it's one of the biggest things in the world. I mean, the international competitions are there. I said, Serge, go over there and get those guys. I'm just going to stay here by the guy. You go get them. They'll be able to handle this situation, not me and you. So the guy was starting to go under and stuff, and I thought, what do I do? And I thought, well, I'm going to grab the rope on his boogie board. And if I can get him close to me, I'm just going to hit him. Because I knew. I thought, if that guy grabs ahold of me, we're going to drown. I mean, he was that crazy. And the reason I tell you this is, in a sense, we should be like that guy on the boogie board. That when truth comes along, I mean, we should just violently grab ahold of it. I mean, violently. Because apart from the truth, we're on less than a boogie board, and what we're in the middle of is a lot worse than a sea on a red flag day. I mean, you should appreciate this truth.