Apostolic Teaching

What is the heart of the Christian faith? Jesus summarized it in the following words:

... this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17.3).

The heart of the Christian faith is "knowing God". John Calvin, the great Reformer of the 16th century, began his famous Institutes of the Christian Religion with these words:

... true and sound wisdom consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

The knowledge of God, according to the Bible, is personal knowledge. It is not only knowing about God; it is also knowing God as your God. That other great Reformer, Martin Luther, once said that "Religion is a matter of personal pronouns". True religion is when, like doubting Thomas, you say, "My Lord and my God," and God then says to you "my son, or my daughter."

But you can only know God in that second, personal way, when you know something about him. And to gain that factual knowledge about God you need both teaching and learning. You need to use your mind. It is vital, therefore, that the teaching you receive is true and not false. As we shall be seeing, in the church in New Testament times, as in the church today there was false teaching as well as true teaching. And false teaching destroys churches and destroys human lives. That is one reason why those early Christians (you read about in Acts chapter 2), "devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching" (Acts 2.42) and not any old teaching. So our subject for tonight is Apostolic Teaching. And I want us to think about verse 42 of Acts 2. But I want us to do that in the light of the passage we had for our New Testament reading tonight - 2 Timothy 3.10-4.8.

I simply want to ask three questions tonight, first, WHY TEACHING? secondly, WHY THE APOSTLES' TEACHING? and, thirdly, WHY BE DEVOTED TO THE APOSTLES' TEACHING?

First, WHY TEACHING?

Let me begin at the beginning. From the start of Creation God is introduced in the Bible as a "speaking God". He is a God who communicates. He spoke to the first man and woman and said (Genesis 1 verse 28):

Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.

Then in chapter 2 verses 16 and 17 God told the man ...

... You are free to eat from any tree ... but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.

But in chapter 3 you read how the man and his wife decided they knew better than God; disaster followed; and communication with God was broken. And that is what it has been like ever since. Nor did God's indirect communication through nature, which still remains for everybody, make much difference. The psalmist says (Psalm 19.1):

The heavens declare the glory of God.

Paul teaches the same thing in Romans chapter 1, namely that there is a deep down awareness of the reality of God. Everyone has this as they view the created world. And in Romans chapter 2 he also teaches that in the depths of our being there is also, still, some notion of the demands of God's moral law - of "right and wrong". The theologians call all that "General Revelation". But since the fall, when Adam and Eve thought they knew better than God, human beings deny that reality and ignore those demands. Or if they don't do that completely, they distort the truth about God. Then you have false religions, false philosophies and a range of false superstitions. So the world itself still doesn't know God. Instead it ignores him and disobeys his moral law. That is why you have the mess that the world is in. As Amos said: "there is a famine through the land ... a famine of hearing the words of the Lord."

While I was preparing this sermon, I tried to install a little wireless card in my computer. So much went wrong. What was the cause? Answer: I had not read the "Quick Installation Guide". When I did, my problems were solved. God's basic instructions are a bit like that "Quick Installation Guide". They are simple enough. But if you ignore them sooner or later you will be in trouble.

Over the last 40 years, the US and Britain have been deconstructing God's moral law - with abortion, pornography, sex outside marriage and greed all treated as human rights, when they are clearly human wrongs. Then, as people defy God's moral law, you get a culture of decadence. That is fed by legislation, education, the media and some in the church. Included in that culture of decadence is what we are now witnessing in Iraq - US and, according to the news today, British soldiers sexually degrading Iraqi prisoners. That behaviour is terrible; and any good the West could have done for the people of Iraq seems to be evaporating with every news bulletin. If you ignore God's instructions, sooner of later you will be in trouble. People should not be surprised. However, there is good news - this is the gospel. God in his love has taken pity on this fallen, messed up world. He has done something extra and special. He has communicated uniquely a message and plan of hope, and a way our of the mess. And that special communication or Special Revelation (as the theologians call it - as distinct from his General Revelation in nature) involves four stages. Let me explain.

The first stage was God's initiative in history when he called Abraham and chose a people, the Jews. He then taught them key lessons about himself and so prepared the way for his coming Messiah. He taught those lessons through historical events like the Exodus from Egypt and the Exile in Babylon. Those lessons required God's overruling of history and politics. But they also required prophets and other teachers to interpret what he was doing in history and politics. Then came God's supreme working in history. This was the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, when the time was right - a coming that fulfilled all the prophets had predicted and all the Jewish rituals had pointed to.

Hebrews 1.1-2 says:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.

So Jesus lived, taught, healed, died, rose again that first Easter, ascended and is now reigning. Jesus also commissioned twelve apostles to teach and witness to the things he had taught and done and was now doing by his Holy Spirit and would one day do when he returns. He said to the apostles (John 15.27):

you ... must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.

So that was the first and essential stage of God's special communication to mankind. And it culminated in the coming of Christ.

The second stage was God's work of inspiring writers to record what God had done in history and in Christ and through the prophets and through Christ's apostles. Once the prophets in Old Testament times and the apostles in New Testament times were dead, it was essential to have written records of what they had witnessed and taught. So first God the Holy Spirit caused the Old Testament to be written over a period of time. It was of ultimate authority as Jesus himself taught. And listen to Paul's words to Timothy - 2 Tim 3.16-17:

from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures [the Old Testament Scriptures], which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Then, secondly, we had the New Testament. God the Holy Spirit caused the teaching of the apostles also to be recorded in writing and collected. That is what you have in the New Testament - apostolic teaching. And this was put on the same level as the Old Testament. Peter in his second letter equates "the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets" with "the command given by our Lord and Savour through your apostles" (2 Pet 3.2). And in verse 16 of that chapter Peter classes Paul's letters as part of "the Scriptures". Together, of course, the Old and New Testaments make up the Bible with Jesus as the focus of both Testaments and so of the whole. Well, that was the second stage of God's communication.

The third stage was, and is, for God to bring this message - and now in a public and permanent form in the Bible - to men and women. This is how they can know God in a saving way through Jesus Christ. And God the Holy Spirit did that (and still does it) through equipping and empowering believers to be witnesses to Christ in the world, and calling some of us to be teachers and preachers in the church. Timothy was just such a teacher and preacher. So this is how the message is to get out into the world.

Then the final and fourth stage of God's communication is when the Holy Spirit brings conviction and opens spiritually blind eyes so that people can see the truth of the message. They then can commit themselves to Christ as their Saviour, Lord and King and know him in a personal way. That is why prayer as well as preaching is so vital. But until that happens there is no saving knowledge of God.

Is there anyone here tonight who needs that "fourth stage"? You know the facts, but you have never yet surrendered to Christ as Saviour and Lord. Well, you need to admit the mess you are in; ask for his forgiveness and his Holy Spirit for new life and power; and then go public. Tell your friends. If you've never been baptized, be baptized.

So - to recap - there are four stages to God's communication. First, God acting and speaking through prophets and supremely in Christ and through the Apostles. Secondly, God the Holy Spirit inspiring authors to write up the record of God's deeds and words in the Bible. Thirdly, God the Holy Spirit empowering Christians down the centuries to tell others what God has done and said (and still says) in Christ - and - this can now be checked out against the Bible. And, fourthly, God the Holy Spirit getting that message from people's heads to their hearts. All four stages are vital. The first two are non repeatable - they ended in the first century. The last two continue and will continue until Christ returns. So that is "why teaching?"

Secondly, WHY THE APOSTLES' TEACHING?

I hope you can now begin to see "why?" In the early church as today, there was "teaching" and "teaching". Look at 2 Timothy 4 verse 3:

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

In Old Testament times there had been false teachers or false prophets; and so there were in New Testament times. Jesus warned of false prophets who are really wolves but they look like docile sheep. And the church has had false prophets and teachers ever since. But when you get conflicting teaching over fundamental matters, who or which teaching should you follow? Who is the false teacher or false prophet? How do you decide?

There are really only three options. Either you follow the teaching that follows church tradition - the pronouncements of Popes or Synods (including Protestant Popes). Or you follow human reason. Or you follow the plain teaching of the Bible. Let me give you two examples.

At the Reformation in the 16th century, the presenting problem was indulgences that were being sold by the Roman Catholic Church. That was a way of paying money to buy time off, in purgatory, after you were dead. Over that - you either followed the teaching of the church - the teaching of the Pope. Or you followed the teaching of the Reformers who said that the Bible contradicted the church teaching and so you should have none of it. The Bible teaches that God's forgiveness is free. Christ has paid the debt for all your sin and mine, not for just some of it, once for all on the Cross. Peter said in his first letter, chapter 3 verse 18:

Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

You just have to admit your guilt and then by faith accept God's free pardon. That is the good news, because no one is too bad to be forgiven.

Or take another subject - this contemporary debate about sexual morality where the presenting problem is homosexual sex. The issue here is, do you follow (alleged) human reason or do you follow the clear teaching of the Bible? (At the moment the majority in the church, world-wide - not necessarily in all Western Churches, but world-wide - also follow the Bible; so church tradition is biblical on this.) Of course, you use your mind and consider Church tradition in these sorts of issues. But if there is a conflict, if you are going to follow Christ on these fundamental matters, you must follow the teaching of his Apostles, which means following the Bible. You then, with hindsight if not sooner, find that the Bible's view is the most reasonable view and also the teaching of the true Church down the ages - that is the Church that is trying to keep to the genuine apostolic tradition which is what the Bible gives you, and not to some corrupt church tradition. Look at 2 Timothy 4.2:

Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction.

And what was that "Word"? Turn back a page to 2 Timothy chapter 1. Paul told Timothy in 2 Tim 1:13. It was ...

... what you heard from me" (verse 13a) - that is Paul's apostolic teaching.

And Timothy is to keep that teaching (verse 13b) ...

... as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus."

Paul then tells Timothy to

Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you--guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us" (verse 14).

This "good deposit" is the apostolic teaching which you have in the Bible. And you must guard it. Our Reformers did that in the 16th century. We must do it today in the 21st century. So ... (our third question)

Thirdly, WHY BE DEVOTED TO THE APOSTLES' TEACHING?

Let me give you Paul's answer. He tells Timothy there are three reasons why Timothy needs to spend time and energy being "devoted to" this Apostolic teaching. First, it is because Christ is going to come again - 2 Timothy 4.1-2:

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction.

People's eternal destiny is at stake. These things are matters of heaven and hell.

Secondly, Timothy must be devoted to this teaching and help get it out because of the false teaching that rejects this teaching. Let me remind you again of verses 3-4 - they are so important:

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

And, thirdly, because Paul is not going on forever. In fact he is in prison and fears that his end is near - verses 6-8:

For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day - and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

So Timothy needs to carry on Paul's work and tell others the Good News. Paul won't go on for ever. The next generation in the church is always important. Many of you are young. Like Timothy you need to continue to "fight the good fight". Temperamentally, Timothy was not a fighter. But he did follow Paul's lead. He did preach apostolic truth - Biblical truth. So did others. And the result? The exponential growth of the church.

My prayer is that each one of you seeks to be "devoted to that Apostolic teaching" and then shares it with others. There's Parish Visiting. There are two invitation services this term. And there is always talking to your friends and colleagues, normally and sensibly, but fearlessly.

That is the way to Godly Living, Church Growth and Changing Britain (and indeed the world).

Amen.