Tom: You’re listening to
Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage all who desire to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for
salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him!
We’re going through Dave Hunt’s book
An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith,
which underscores the critical necessity of searching the Scriptures
for understanding the Christian faith. Dave, you begin chapter eight
with this scripture verse: “Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you, and lo, I am with you always even unto the end of the world. Amen” (
Matthew:28:19-20).
Dave: And it is Christ who is commanding the disciples . . .
Tom: Right. And that’s the Great Commission.
Dave: . . . and us today. His command to us today.
Tom: Yeah. Now, Dave, this chapter is about discipleship. How are the Great Commission and discipleship—how are they related?
Dave: Well, Jesus said, as you just read, “Teach
them,” or, that means, “Make them disciples.” I mean, if you’re teaching
someone, you’re teaching them to be a follower of the Word of God, and
then He goes on and He says, “ . . . teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you.”
So, Christ very clearly says that the disciples are to go out, and they are to win others to Christ through the gospel—
Mark:16:15
says, “Preach the gospel to every creature.” You know, go into all the
world; preach the gospel to every creature. So this is what He’s talking
about.
And those people that you win with the gospel, they become of the
followers of Jesus Christ, and they are to be commanded to observe
everything that Christ commanded the original disciples. That’s what He
says: “You teach them to observe all things that I commanded you.” So
it’s a call to discipleship, because Christ called the disciples:
“Follow Me.” And now, He’s spent several years training them, teaching
them. And now He says very clearly, you cannot escape it—and I think
it’s a very important scripture, Tom, for all of us to realize—He
doesn’t say a certain class of clergy, or of priests or bishops, or
seminary graduates. He says, “Every one that you win to Me to become My
follower through the gospel, you are to teach them to observe everything
that I commanded you.”
Now, I can’t escape that. That means that the successors of the
apostles are not a certain class of priests or bishops or whoever you
want to set them out to be. But they are everyone! Every Christian is to
be a successor of the apostles. I’m a disciple of the man who won me to
Christ, and he was the disciple of a disciple of a disciple, all the
way back to the original disciples, to whom Christ said, “Go out, and
you teach them to observe everything I have commanded you.”
Tom: Dave, this may sound a little farfetched, but
you know that we have in a religion like Hinduism, we have guruism.
What’s the difference? As you know, a guru has his disciples, and they
sit at the feet of a guru and it’s through his wisdom that they gain
knowledge.
Dave: Yeah. Of course the guru is the way to “god,”
and the disciple who makes disciples is not the way to God. But also,
it’s very clear—I mean, that’s the whole . . . you began, saying that we
must search the Scriptures daily. Why do we search the scriptures?
Because it’s the scriptures that even tell us this command. It’s the
scriptures that tell us about Christ, that tell us what Christ taught.
It would be the only way that we would know what Christ taught the
original disciples, which has been passed down.
So,
Acts:17:11,
which is the basis for the very name of The Berean Call and for this
program—the Bereans searched the scriptures to check Paul out. So on the
one hand, Paul was making disciples. He was teaching them to observe
what Christ had commanded him and the original apostles. On the other
hand, the authority was not Paul. He had not been given some special
office or position that then empowered him to have authority over others
so they had to obey what he said. No, his authority came from Christ.
I like the way the Centurion said it, remember? He sent his servant
to say to Christ, “Could you come and heal my servant?” And he said, “I
didn’t consider myself worthy to even come and ask you. That’s why I
sent my servant, because . . .” He didn’t say, “I’m a man of authority.”
He said “I’m a man
under authority, and I can say to this man,
‘go,’ and he goes, and to this one ‘come,’ and he comes.” So his
authority came from his general, or whoever was over him—colonel,
general, whatever they called them in those days—and, ultimately,
Caesar. And our authority comes from Christ. It comes through His Word.
And so His Word is our authority.
So, Paul would say to the Corinthians, for example, 1 Corinthians 14:
“Let the prophets speak, two or three by course [that is, one at a
time], and let the others judge, and if something is revealed to
another, let the first one hold his peace,” it says, “and let the other
speak.”
So we are all under the authority of the Word of God. On the other
hand, it does say, Hebrews 13: “Obey them that have the rule over you,
who watch for your souls,” and so forth. So there are deacons, elders,
in the church who have authority because they are watching over the
flock. But they do not have authority in and of themselves by their
office.
Never is that taught in the Bible! Their authority is the Word of God.
Therefore, all of those who are being taught by them can at any
moment say, “Wait a minute! What you’re teaching is not according to the
Bible.” Or, at least respectfully say, “Wait a minute! How do you get
that idea from the scriptures? Could we discuss this?” So there is a
discipleship, but we don’t become gurus.
Tom: Right. You know, Jesus himself said, “If you
continue in my Word, you are my disciples indeed.” So there we have the
Lord himself pointing to His Word as that which has authority.
Dave: Right. It can’t be otherwise. If the Bible
(and we’ve probably said this 100 times on this program)—if the Bible is
not our authority, then what do we look to? We could look to some
theologians again, the so-called Jesus Seminar “biblical” scholars, who
sit around and vote—they’ve just been in the news again
recently—“Searching for the Historical Jesus.” I don’t know how you’re
going to do that. We have history. We have eyewitness accounts. And it
is inspired of the Holy Spirit. But they don’t like it. They don’t
believe it. So, they’re going to sit around and discuss? Well, then
that’s their opinion. If we don’t have something better than someone’s
opinion, why is your opinion better than my opinion? Why is any opinion
worth listening to? In fact, they’re not.
So, we must have an authority. The authority is the Bible. This tells
us about Christ. This tells us about Christianity. This tells us what
the church is supposed to be. It’s the Bible that describes the
Christian life, that tells how you become a Christian. It tells us about
Christ and what He taught.
Why, then, would I go to some other source? Furthermore, why would
then I turn to someone who is the authority to tell me what the Bible
means? If there must be an authority to tell me what the Bible means,
then I’m not in touch with God. I’m at the mercy of someone who
claims to be the authority.
Now someone could counter and say, “Well, then, what are you guys
doing on the radio trying to teach us from the Bible? Aren’t you setting
yourselves up as an authority? Or why is there a pastor or a Bible
teacher? What is their function?”
Well, because, Tom, as I study the Word of God, the Lord can show me
some things that He didn’t show you as you were studying, and when
you’re studying, He shows you some things that I didn’t see. And that
way we can help one another, but neither one of us is the authority,
that you must now obey me.
So the pastor, or the Bible teacher, whatever they want to call him,
Sunday morning Bible teacher, he has studied the Bible, he has learned
from it some things that he believes are clear in the Word of God, and
he is calling this to mind to the people who sit in his class. But they
are not supposed to just accept whatever he says. They have a
responsibility to study and know the Word of God themselves. So we help
one another that way.
Tom: A. W. Tozer, one of my favorite statements that
he made, he referred to himself that he wanted to be nothing more than a
signpost. And that’s a terrific analogy, because you don’t sit at the
foot of a signpost and expect to go somewhere.
Dave: Right.
Tom: In addition, a signpost points in a direction,
and if it’s a direction to a city, or something like that, you have a
map. You know, you don’t necessarily take the signpost’s word for it,
but you check it out according to your map. And I think that’s a great
analogy, because that’s what we’re to do with teachers in reference to
the Word of God.
Dave: Now, the problem, Tom, arises because like the children of
Israel
at the base of Mount Sinai, they heard God speak with an audible voice.
They didn’t like it! It terrified them. He gave them the Ten
Commandments. He literally
spoke the Ten Commandments audibly from the top of the mountain. But they said to Moses, “
You go up!
You
talk to God. Then you come back and tell us what He said.” And this is
the attitude of many if not most, probably most, people in most
evangelical churches. “Pastor, you be a holy a man of God.
You spend time in study of the Word and in prayer.
You get
a message from God, and then you sally forth from your prayer closet
Sunday morning and give us a three- or four-point sermon. Don’t make it
too long.” And then they think that they are absolved from any
responsibility before God; they can blame the pastor if he hasn’t taught
them fully enough. And they imagine in their minds that all they are
supposed to do, now, is follow what the pastor says.
One day, you’ll stand before God. He says, “Why did you do that?”
“Well, I listened to those two guys, Hunt and McMahon, on
Search the Scriptures Daily,
and I saw a picture of them, and they both had beards, kinda looked
like Elijah, you know, and they sounded authoritative, and I just
believed what they said.”
God says, “Wait a minute. I’ve given you My Word. I’ve given you My
Spirit. I’ve given you some common sense! And you are accountable to
know it for yourself.”
Tom: Dave, going back to the Bereans,
Acts:17:11,
you had to know Paul was very excited—first of all that they listened
to what he had to say, but he was more excited that they didn’t put that
responsibility on him. They searched the scriptures to see if what he
was saying was true. Now, I would think every pastor out there—this is
another aspect of what you’re talking about—a pastor ought to delight
(and I’m sure most do) when his flock, his sheep, as it were, don’t just
buy into everything that he says, but they search the scriptures daily.
I think that would be an encouragement to each pastor, and a pastor
ought to encourage them to do so.
Dave: Right. The earlier part of that verse that I
guess we neglect to quote as often as we should, it says, “They received
the Word with all readiness of mind,
and searched the Scriptures. . . .” So they’re open to the Word of God. They are
eager
to receive what God has to say. On the other hand, they’re checking
this man, Paul, out, to make certain that he’s not deviating from what
the scripture teaches—that he’s not introducing some esoteric . . . some
. . . . That’s another temptation that we have: “Oh, I’d like to belong
to an exclusive club. I’d like to have some understanding from the
Bible that nobody else has seen!” That’s how all the cults begin. Joseph
Smith gets revelations. In fact, he even wrote his own version of the
Bible. That’s a temptation: “Oh, I’d like to have some
new truth that nobody has seen in 1,900 years of Christianity! Wouldn’t that be great?”
Well, you’d better be a little bit cautious if for 1,900 years, men
and women of God, studying the Bible on their knees, never got that idea
out of there, and suddenly somebody comes up with a new one, and now
you’re going to follow him. It’s probably not true. But that’s a
temptation, because we want to be exclusive. We want to be ahead of
somebody else. We want to have some esoteric understanding that other
people don’t have.
No, the Bible is very plain. It’s very simple. It’s very
straightforward. There are “some things that are hard to be understood,”
Peter says, but in general the Bible was written in very clear
language. I don’t remember the exact statistics, but compared with other
books, the Bible uses a very small number of words, for example. It’s
like a fifth-grade vocabulary or something. It’s not coming up with
words that are seldom used. It uses common phrases, and so forth.
Tom: Now, Dave, Paul, writing to those in Galatia
or in Thessalonica—was he writing to the seminarians there? Was he
writing to the Hebrew and . . . well, then it would have been the Greek
scholars? No! He was just writing to common people.
Dave: Exactly. So common people should be able to understand the Bible.
Tom: Right. Now, Dave, we have the Great
Commission. We quoted that right up front. But we also have
discipleship. Some people worry that if they lead somebody to Christ, or
God uses them to help bring somebody into the kingdom, now they have a
responsibility to nurture and then disciple. Sometimes you can do that,
but sometimes you can’t.
Dave: Well, if I have the option—here’s a person
that I meet on an airplane, for example: “Well, but I’ll probably never
see them again, so I’d better not give them the gospel, because I won’t
be able to follow up!”
Tom: Some people think that way!
Dave: I possibly could follow up in letters, and so forth. No. Primarily, I’m to go into all the world and preach the gospel,
Mark:16:15.
I am to make disciples, and I am to teach them to observe everything
that Christ has commanded me—but only to the extent that I am able to do
it. Paul said, “I have planted, Apollos watered, God gave the
increase.” So, the Lord is going to pick that person up wherever they go
in the world, and bring someone else into their life to nurture them
and teach them. Also they have, if they’ve been born of the Spirit of
God, they’re indwelt with the Holy Spirit, He’s their teacher! He’s
their Counselor and Guide. They have the Word of God, but if we have the
opportunity, then we should seek to disciple them
Tom: Dave, one of the statements you make in your
book, you say, “One of today’s greatest needs is for solid Bible
teaching that produces disciples who are able to ‘earnestly contend for
the faith, once delivered to all the saints.’”
Dave: You know, Tom, one of the things that really—I
don’t know the answer to it, and I don’t understand it—perhaps part of
it is the day in which we live, the
apostasy
in which we live, but when you read 1 and 2 Thessalonians, those were
the first two epistles Paul wrote. I love them for that reason, but for
many other reasons. He was there no more than three weeks—three Sabbath
days. Well, you could say then he was there, then almost four weeks,
okay? Read those epistles and see—he taught them almost
everything! They knew about
Antichrist. They knew about the coming Day of the Lord. They knew about the Rapture. They knew about
apostasy.
It’s staggering, what he taught them in less than a month! And then,
you see people who claim to have been Christians for years, and they
don’t understand what, apparently, the Thessalonians—who, by the
way—were pagan idol worshipers. Paul said, “You turned to God from idols
to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for His Son from
heaven.” I think there are a lot of Christians today who aren’t waiting
for His Son from heaven! They’re too busy with this life.
So it should be an encouragement to us that with the Word of God and
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, people can be nurtured very quickly. Of
course, Paul then wrote to them. But in his epistle, for example, 2
Thessalonians, he writes, “You remember that when I was with you, I
taught you these things.” So, I think we should be encouraged that where
there is a readiness of mind, if they receive the Word of God with
readiness of mind, and they’re willing to search the Scriptures, there
will be a rapid understanding, insight, and growth.
Now, why don’t we see that today? Well, maybe people are not
searching the Scriptures daily. I guess if you took a poll, and you
calculated how much time the average Christian spends watching
television in comparison with time on their knees in prayer or studying
the Word of God, that would probably explain a lot.
So it all depends upon what we think is important. I think we find time for what we think is important.
Tom: Dave, I remember the . . . when we were
following the beginnings, the development, of Promise Keepers. There was
an interesting aspect that McCartney wrote about it. He was sharing the
history, and he said it began with, really, another gentleman who was
encouraging Bill McCartney to put this together, and they both talked
about their visions for it. McCartney’s was unity. And this other man’s
vision was discipleship.
And you’d say, “That’s great! We want discipleship.” But as you
follow the development of the organization, discipleship went by the
boards because of unity. Because the unity was not unity in the truth.
So, as you know, when they started to develop their rules, their
promises, and so onyou find that they excluded discipleship because of
their concern for unity. If somebody believed in baptismal regeneration,
for example, you weren’t to talk about that. And they began to knock
off certain things that they felt were “separating the brethren,” as it
were. But how can you have discipleship when you can’t address the
teachings of the church?
Dave: Well, it’s very simple again. Jesus said it,
and I think you quoted it earlier, “If you continue in my word, then are
you my disciples indeed, and you will know the truth, and the truth
will set you free.” Well, then, if I’m going to fulfill that, I’m going
to have to continue in His Word. Now, His Word has some definite things
to say. His Word has teaching in all of these areas. Am I going to say,
“Well, it really doesn’t matter. There are certain things, now, let’s
not become too particular about that.” But the Bible says I must
earnestly contend for
the faith, once for all delivered to the
saints. But for the sake of unity, “Well, let’s let that go, and we’ll
let that go . . .” And one of the seven promises is that we will not
observe denominational barriers. On the one hand, I can understand what
they want. “Let’s not be divided because you’re a Baptist and I’m a
Presbyterian or whatever, if we believe the same gospel, welove the same
Lord.”
On the other hand, many denominational barriers have been erected over
doctrines.
There’s a division over doctrine. I can’t just ignore doctrinal
differences if they pertain to the gospel and to obedience to the
commandments of Jesus Christ.
“Well, yeah, but you’re going to cause division!”
Well, everywhere Jesus went—read it in John’s gospel—at least four
times there was a division among the Jews because of Him. There was
division because they had to choose between the truth of God and the lie
of Satan, or the ideas of men. And we still have to stand for that!
