Hold Fast or the Gainsayers Will Get Ya!

As the Apostle Paul came to the end of his list of qualifications for the ministry, he closed by insisting that pastors should always be

“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Titus 1:9).

Here we know that Paul is talking about the faithful Word of God that Pastor Titus had been taught of him, for he told Pastor Timothy to “hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me” (II Tim. 1:13).  If you’re a pastor, and you’re not holding fast to the form of sound words found in Paul’s epistles, you’ll never be able “to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (1:9).

Of course, if you’re not a pastor, you’re probably wondering, “What’s a gainsayer?”  A gainsayer is someone who contradicts what you say.  A gainsayer in the Bible is someone who contradicts what God says in His Word.  And each time the word gainsay is used, it is used of men who opposed God’s Word dispensationally.

For instance, Jude talked about “the gainsaying of Core” (Jude 1:11).  If you don’t remember who Core was,

“… Korah… and Dathan and Abiram… gathered themselves together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them… all the congregation are holy, every one of them… wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the congregation…?” (Num. 16:1-3).

In the Law, God had made it clear that He had sanctified Moses and Aaron, setting them apart from all others in Israel as holy unto Himself.  But Core chose to gainsay His Word by insisting that all the people were holy.  This was a dispensational error.  All the congregation of Israel will be holy in the coming kingdom of heaven on earth.  God has promised that they will be “an holy nation” and “a kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6).  But they weren’t in Moses’ day!

Over in the New Testament, the Lord promised His followers, “I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist” (Lu. 21:15).  He made good on that promise at Pentecost, when “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:4).  Stephen was one of those who were filled with the Spirit (Acts 6:5), “and they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake” (v. 10).

But the people of Stephen’s nation stubbornly clung to the old dispensation of the Law, and refused Peter’s offer of the new dispensation of the kingdom (Acts 3:19) when they stoned him.  That’s how they became “a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Rom. 10:21), people who contradicted God’s Word dispensationally.  Only men like Peter seemed willing to change. When the Lord told him to go minister to a Gentile, something that was “unlawful” under the Law of Moses (Acts 10:28), Peter obeyed this new dispensational command “without gainsaying” (Acts 10:29).

The gainsayers in Crete, where Titus was stationed (Tit. 1:5), were the “unruly and vain talkers… of the circumcision” he mentions in the next verse (Tit. 1:10).  They were “unruly” because they refused to recognize Paul’s new dispensational “rule” (Gal. 6:16) that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision” (v. 15).  They were making the dispensational error of thinking that circumcision was still part of God’s program, and contradicting the faithful word that Titus had received from Paul.

Beloved, the only answer to dispensational error today is “holding fast the faithful word” that we have heard from Paul.  Pauline truth alone can save us from any and all other dispensational errors.  Let’s hold it fast!

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.


Two Minutes with the Bible lets you start your day with short but powerful Bible study articles from the Berean Bible Society. Sign up now to receive Two Minutes With the Bible every day in your email inbox. We will never share your personal information and you can unsubscribe at any time.

What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Witness? – Acts 24:14-15

 

Summary:

A “witness” is someone who saw or heard something and is willing to testify that it is true, like Paul (Acts 24:15).  But that means, technically speaking, we can’t be witnesses.  But we can still testify for Him with something “more sure” than “eyewitness” testimony—the Scriptures (II Peter 1:16-20). If you’ve ever seen a magician, you know you can’t trust your eyes, and witnesses often lie.  But God can’t (Tit. 1:2), and He wrote the Scriptures!  But can you see how, when we testify using the Bible, our witness is different from that of the apostles who saw and heard the Lord?

Our witness is also different from the witness of God’s people in the Old Testament, for they didn’t do any witnessing.  God witnessed for Himself (Acts 14:17), so He didn’t need the witness of men.

Another reason He didn’t need the witness of men is because of the way He witnessed for them (Heb. 11:4) by devouring their sacrifices with fire (Lev. 9:24; I Chron. 21:26; II Chron. 7:1; I Kings 18:24).  Hey, if you offered an animal sacrifice on your front lawn and God devoured it with fire from heaven, would you need to tell your neighbor that your God was the only true God?

God also witnessed for Himself by witnessing to His people through the miracles He did for them.  Parting the Red Sea testified to a Gentile named Rahab that He was God, causing her to believe on Him (Joshua 2).  A Gentile named Naaman believed when God healed his leprosy (II Ki. 5:15), an incurable disease.  Nebuchadnezzar believed when God delivered the three Hebrews (Dan. 3:29), and Darius believed when He delivered Daniel (Dan. 6:26,27).

But now that God is not testifying to Himself by working miracles like that any more, can you see how important it is for you to witness for Him?

God’s ability to tell the future also testified that He was God.  He taunted the false gods that they couldn’t tell the future (Isa. 41:23).  But we live in the dispensation of the mystery.  God is not making and fulfilling prophecies today, nor fulfilling Old Testament prophecies, to prove He is God.  So if you don’t witness for Him, He won’t witness for Himself.

 All the time God was witnessing for Himself with miracles, He had one problem He couldn’t overcome—the sinfulness of His people.  So in the New Testament He introduced a new plan to witness that the Jews were His people, and in so doing witness to Himself.  He filled them with His Spirit and caused them to obey Him, just as He predicted He would (Ezek. 36:37), so much so they couldn’t sin (I Jo. 3:19; 5:18).

A misunderstanding of all that has impacted the witness of Christianity in a negative way.  When a Christian sins a lot, men say he that he can’t be saved, because the Lord said you could know believers by their fruit (Mt. 7:20,21).  Now that was true at Pentecost, and will be again in the Tribulation when God again fills His people with His Spirit, but it is not true today.  Just ask the Corinthians.  They were carnal, but Paul called them saints (I Cor. 1:2).

But a failure to rightly divide the Word in this instance has led to a heresy called Lordship Salvation, which says if Christ is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all!  This causes Lordship Salvationists to witness to sinners by telling them to “make Jesus the Lord of your life” to be saved.  But if you promise to make Him your Lord, you’re promising to obey Him (Lu. 6:46).  And if you promise to make Him your Lord to get saved, what happens if you do get saved and disobey Him by sinning?  You’re going to be tempted to think you’re not saved at all!  Can you see the important difference that rightly dividing the word of truth makes to our witness?

Finally, our witness is also different than the Lord’s, who testified to the world of their sinfulness (John 7:7), as did John (Mt. 14:3,4).  But they were trying to establish the kingdom in which no one will sin!  Paul says the only sinners that we should tell are sinners are believers (I Cor. 5:9-12).  Telling unsaved sinners they are sinners just alienates them, and causes them to turn a deaf ear to the gospel.

Video of this message is available on YouTube: What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Witness? – Acts 24:14-15

How Fast Are We Talking Here?

As the Apostle Paul came to the end of his list of qualifications for the ministry, he closed by insisting that pastors should always be

“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Titus 1:9).

Here we know that Paul is talking about the faithful Word of God that Pastor Titus had been taught of him, for he told Pastor Timothy to “hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me” (II Tim. 1:13).

How “fast” should pastors hold the “sound doctrine” that Paul taught Titus, and the rest of us, in his epistles?  Well, after God allowed Satan to take away Job’s health, his wealth, and his family, God used that same phrase to say of Job, “still he holdeth fast his integrity” (Job 2:3).  Pastor, will you hold the truth of Paul’s gospel that fast?  Will you say with Job’s degree of conviction,

“…I will not remove mine integrity from me.  My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go…so long as I live(Job 27:5,6).

Is that how fast you’ll hold to Pauline truth if you lose everything you hold dear?

Will you hold the truth as fast as Tribulation saints, whom the Lord warns, “hold fast…if therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief” (Rev. 3:3).  Those believers will have to hold fast to their truth, and endure to the end of the Tribulation to be saved (Mt. 10:22; 24:13).  You don’t have to hold your truth fast to be saved—but you should hold it fast as if you did, as if your very eternal life depended on it.  After all, the eternal life of your hearers will depend on how tight a grasp you maintain on the truth of Paul’s gospel.

God promised the people of Israel, “I will give you pastors according to Mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (Jer. 3:15), and He will make good on that promise in the kingdom of heaven on earth that He went on to describe (v.16-18).  What’s a pastor according to God’s heart?  Well, God said of those same pastors in the kingdom, “I will set up shepherds over them which shall feed them: and they shall fear no more” (Jer. 23:4).  Thus a pastor according to God’s heart will hold the truth fast, and not allow fear to cause him let it go. 

That’s the kind of pastors God will have in the kingdom of heaven.  And if the pastors of our grace churches will hold fast to Pauline truth without fear of what it will cost, all of God’s people can experience a little bit of heaven on earth now, in this dispensation.  We have God’s Word on it.  If you’re not a pastor, why not encourage your pastor to stand firm with all the pastors who are “holding fast the faithful word?”

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.


Two Minutes with the Bible lets you start your day with short but powerful Bible study articles from the Berean Bible Society. Sign up now to receive Two Minutes With the Bible every day in your email inbox. We will never share your personal information and you can unsubscribe at any time.

What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Walk? – Colossians 2:6

 

Summary:

Our “walk” (Col. 2:6) is how we behave (Ps. 101:2), our manner of life (Gal. 2:14), i.e., how we live our lives.  God has always wanted His people to walk in ways that please Him, but as we rightly divide the Word, we know that how to walk to please Him changes dispensationally.

For instance, God told Israel to walk in the law (Ex. 16:4), because they got saved by the law.  But He tells us to walk as we received Christ (Col. 2:6), and we received Him by faith, by believing something (Acts 16:31).  So we should walk in Him by believing some things!

What things?  Well, Paul uses the word “walk” often, so let’s let him tell us.   First, he says to walk in “newness of life” (Rom. 6:2-4).  If you believe you died and rose with Christ and have been given a new life, you should walk in it.

Paul gloried in the cross (Gal. 6:14) because the Galatians were glorying in circumcision.  The Jews walked in circumcision (Acts 21:21), that was their rule, but we walk in the “rule” that only the newness of life of the new creature matters (Gal. 6:15,16).

We’re spiritually circumcised (Col. 2:10,11), so we have what the symbol of circumcision symbolized.  We also rest in Christ, which the sabbath symbolized, and we have the cleansing that water baptism symbolized (Tit. 3:5).  See how rightly dividing makes our walk different that 7th Day Adventists and Baptists?

Paul also says to walk in the Spirit so you won’t fulfill the lusts of the flesh (Gal. 5:16).  How?  By believing that we’ve already crucified the flesh (v. 24,25)!  If God sees you as sinless, why not walk that way, if you believe it.

Paul also says to walk “honestly” by not sinning (Rom. 13:13).  If God sees you as sinless, and you sin, you’re not being honest with yourself.  The way to stop that is to put on Christ (v. 14).  How?  By believing that you already have put Him on (Gal. 3:27).  He’s the “new man” you put on when you trusted Christ (Col. 3:9-12).

Paul also says to “walk by faith” (II Cor. 5:7).  Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about, walking in Christ by believing some things?  He had to add “not by sight” because that’s how the Jews walked.  God saved Abraham by faith (Gen. 15:5,6), but he didn’t have to take God’s word for it that he was saved.  God gave him wealth he could see (Gen. 13:2) to prove he had the salvation that he couldn’t see. He did the same for Job, who lived around the same time (Job 1:3).  But we don’t walk by sight like that, for God doesn’t enrich His people financially today.

God also enriched the Jews (Deut. 8:18), and gave them other things to see, like parting the Red Sea.  They didn’t have to walk by faith when they saw that, but we do, for God isn’t doing miracles like that any more.

Rightly dividing also affects our “walk” (I Cor. 7:17) when it comes to the subject of divorce (v. 12).  Paul says to stay married to an unsaved wife, but under the Law God told the Jews it would give Him “pleasure” if they would divorce their unsaved wives (Ezra 10:2-11).

Rightly dividing also affects our walk in that the Lord said not to work for food and clothing, that God would provide it (Mt. 6:25-33).  The Jews to whom He said that were heading into the Tribulation, when God would feed them with the “daily bread” He taught them to pray for (Micah 7:14,15),  But Paul says we should work for our bread (I Thes. 4:11,12).

Can you see why Paul tells us to walk as he walked, and mark them which walk otherwise, so we have him as an example (Phil. 3:17)?

You hear a lot about identity theft these days, but you didn’t steal Christ’s identity, God gave it to you as a gift.  Men who steal your identity don’t love you so they charge things to your account, knowing you’ll have to pay for them.  When you sin, you’re acting like you don’t love the Lord, charging things to His account that He’s already paid for.  Why not “walk worthy of the Lord” instead (Col. 1:10)?

Video of this lesson is available on YouTube: What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Walk? – Colossians 2:6

Is God Faithful To His Word?

In describing the qualifications of a pastor (Tit. 1:6-8), the Apostle Paul saved the most important one for last, saying that a pastor should always be

“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Titus 1:9).

Pastors should always hold fast the faithful word, the Word of God!  The apostle calls it “the faithful word” because God is faithful to every promise in His Book.

But here’s the thing about that: He didn’t make all those promises to you!  You can pray “give us this day our daily bread” all you want (Mt. 6:11), but God will not be faithful to His promise to rain manna down on you as He did for Israel in the wilderness, and as He will do for them again in the Tribulation (Micah 7:14,15 cf. Rev. 12:14).  God also promised them that “all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive” (Mt. 21:22), but He will not faithfully deliver on that promise in the dispensation of grace either.

And there are still other promises in the Bible that God is not honoring today.  If the people of Israel were obedient to God’s Word, He promised to save them out of all their tribulations (Deut. 4:30), and He faithfully delivered on that promise (I Sam. 10:19).  But God has not made that promise to you!  Today, in the dispensation of grace, God allows us to go through tribulation, and then is faithful to the promise He gives us through the Apostle Paul that “tribulation worketh patience” (Rom. 5:3).  Paul is the apostle of the present dispensation, so you know God will be faithful to the promises He makes us through him.

And Paul gives us other promises to which God will be faithful.  When he says, “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13), he means that in executing the sinful works of your flesh you can live, really live—live it up, spiritually speaking!  If you want to live life on the highest plane imaginable, mortify the sinful deeds of your body and see if God isn’t faithful to that promise.

Finally, God will be faithful to His promise to us through Paul that “when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” (Col. 3:4).  That’s a promise that will come to fruition at the Rapture, the “salvation” (Rom. 13:11) that God promises through Paul to give us before the “wrath” of the Tribulation is poured out (I Thes. 1:10; 5:9).  When that day comes, God will also be faithful to the promise He gave us through Paul to “reward” us for our labor for Him (I Cor. 3:14).  In that day, you will see that He will be just as faithful to His promise to us through Paul that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

It is this faithful word—the faithful word given to us through Paul—that pastors must hold fast if they want to obey Paul’s command to “exhort and to convince the gainsayers” (Tit. 1:9), gainsayers like the ones who insist that God is still honoring the promises He made to the people of Israel.

To the Reader:

Some of our Two Minutes articles were written many years ago by Pastor C. R. Stam for publication in newspapers. When many of these articles were later compiled in book form, Pastor Stam wrote this word of explanation in the Preface:

"It should be borne in mind that the newspaper column, Two Minutes With the Bible, has now been published for many years, so that local, national and international events are discussed as if they occurred only recently. Rather than rewrite or date such articles, we have left them just as they were when first published. This, we felt, would add to the interest, especially since our readers understand that they first appeared as newspaper articles."

To this we would add that the same is true for the articles written by others that we continue to add, on a regular basis, to the Two Minutes library. We hope that you'll agree that while some of the references in these articles are dated, the spiritual truths taught therein are timeless.


Two Minutes with the Bible lets you start your day with short but powerful Bible study articles from the Berean Bible Society. Sign up now to receive Two Minutes With the Bible every day in your email inbox. We will never share your personal information and you can unsubscribe at any time.

What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Worship? – 2 Timothy 2:15

 

This message is also available on YouTube: What Difference Does Rightly Dividing Make to My Worship? – 2 Timothy 2:15

Summary:

Rightly dividing means to see the difference between God’s grace program for us and His law program for Israel.  When Paul began to preach it, the Jews accused him of worshipping “contrary to the law” (Acts 18:12,13).  He refuted that, insisting he worshipped “believing all things… in the law and the prophets” (24:14).  That means we worship in some of the same ways they did back then.

Abraham worshipped by being willing to obey God whatever the cost (Gen. 22:5), and so should you.  “The lad” worshipped by being willing to give his life as a sacrifice, and so should you (Rom. 12:1).  You can worship God by believing all things in the law by putting God first in your life (Deut. 26:10).  If you can worship God when you lose your baby son (II Sam. 12:20) or all your children (Job 1:20,21), you can worship by believing all things in the law.

The Lord said the unsaved Jews worshipped Him “in vain” by teaching incorrect doctrine (Mt. 15:9), which means teaching correct doctrine (as we do) worships Him correctly.  If teaching the commandments of men made for vain worship, then teaching the commandments of God would make for true worship.  And Paul repeats the commandments!

But we worship differently in that the Jews were told to keep the commandments or be cursed (Deut. 11:26-28).  We are told to keep them out of love, not fear (Rom. 13:8-10).  If you love your neighbor, you won’t lie to him, steal from him, etc. And the love He showed you by not sending you to hell for your lying and stealing should constrain you to keep them (II Cor. 5:14,15).

But there were 603 other commandments in the law, many of them like the “touch not, taste not” of Colossians 2:21.  Paul called them “the commandments…of men” (v. 22) because commandments of God imposed on people out of their proper dispensation become commandments of men.

 But worshipping God by keeping His commandments involves more than just recognizing that some of the commandments of God are no longer in effect.  It involves recognizing that God gave some new commandments through Paul.  Circumcision was a commandment of God, so for Paul to say it was nothing, but keeping the commandments was everything (I Cor. 7:19), he must have been talking about keeping the commandments given to him (I Cor. 14:37 cf. I Thes. 4:2; II Thes. 3:6,12).  Paul gave hundreds of commandments, and if you teach them you’ll avoid worshipping God in vain, for you’ll be teaching the commandments of God for this dispensation. 

The only other time Paul tells us how we should worship (besides Acts 24:14) is when he says we worship God “in the spirit” (Phil. 3:2,3).  That means to recognize that Gentiles used to be dogs (Mt. 15:26), but now the Jews are (Phil. 3:2) because we are the circumcision (v. 3), the spiritual circumcision.

We were circumcised with Christ (Col. 2:10,11) when He was “cut off” (Isa. 53:8; Dan. 9:26).  God told the Jews that He wanted that for them (Deut. 10:16 cf. Rom. 2:29), and promised to give it to them in the kingdom (Deut. 30:6).  But we have that now, so we have no confidence in the flesh.  The Jews had all their confidence in the fact that their flesh was the circumcised flesh of Abraham (Mt. 3:9), and in the fact that three times a year they had to march their flesh to Jerusalem for Israel’s feasts.  But we observe the feasts in the spirit (cf. I Cor. 5:7).  Our confidence isn’t in the flesh of a passover lamb, but in the Lamb of God that was slain!

We gave examples of how we worship as they did under the law, but we gave none of how we worship as they did in the prophets.  But the prophet Isaiah said that in the kingdom the Jews will worship God by looking into the pit of hell to see the suffering of the unsaved (Isa. 66:23,24).  This answers the question I’m often asked of how we’ll enjoy heaven knowing our loved ones are in hell.  God won’t erase our memories, He’ll change how we think about them.  We will agree with God that they are getting what’s coming to them (cf. Rev.16:7).  So if you don’t ever want your loved ones to be “an abhorring” (Isa. 66:4), tell them about Christ!