Chruch Central Authority

➡ Paul, the voiceover for a ministry called Your Daily Bread, emphasizes the need for a stronger, centralized authority in the church, which should be based on the Word of God. He believes that the church’s leadership should clearly and powerfully proclaim God’s Word, rather than relying on personal charm or coercion. Paul insists that preaching should carry the full weight of biblical authority and should aim to establish God’s dominion in people’s souls. Despite people’s resistance to authority, Paul argues that the church needs more of it, not less, and that it should be based on the clearly preached and taught Word of God.

Hello, my name is Paul, and I am the voiceover for a ministry provided to you by Jim Pugh at God Is Government called Your Daily Bread, taken from Christ’s teaching of the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, verse 11. This is a daily devotion ministry focused not only on uplifting Scripture, but Scripture that will grow your spiritual connection with Christ. We hope that you receive these devotions to uplift you, encourage you, but most importantly, advance your knowledge base of the Holy Scriptures. Today’s focused discussion will be on the church central authority. What the church needs today, more than it’s ever needed it in my lifetime, is a more centralized authority, a more singular authority, a more focused authority, in that the Word of God, which is the only authority that speaks to the church, is carefully, clearly, and powerfully proclaimed by the leadership.

That’s what the church needs. And that authority, I again say, doesn’t operate on our personality. Paul says to the Corinthians, I didn’t come to you with human wisdom. I didn’t come to you with cleverness of speech. It doesn’t come from intimidation. It doesn’t come from creating fear. It doesn’t come from personal charm. It doesn’t come from coercion. It doesn’t come from cleverness and ingenuity or any other device. The only authority over the church is the Word of the Lord of the church. And preaching that doesn’t carry the full weight of biblical authority is a sad, poor counterfeit of the real thing.

Paul said, preach the Word. 2 Timothy 4.2, Peter said in 1 Peter 4.11, if anyone speaks, if someone speaks, let him speak the oracles of God. In the church, when you open your mouth, let God be heard. And why? Peter wrote, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. For the glory of God, let God be heard in his church. All preaching is designed and required by God to give his voice a hearing. It carries the character of a command to establish God’s dominion in the soul.

I mean, I suppose we could say that’s what preaching is to do. It’s to establish the dominion of God in the souls of men. 1 Timothy 4.11, Paul said to Timothy, these things command. These things command. And it’s not a burdensome thing. John Piper, in his book The Supremacy of God in Preaching, says, God’s aim is not to constrain man’s submission by an act of raw authority. His aim is to ravish our affections with irresistible displays of glory, producing glad submission. I like that. As the Word of God is unfolded and you see the irresistible displays of glory, your affections toward God are ravished and your submission becomes a glad submission.

1 Timothy 4.11, Paul said, A faithful preacher is concerned to bring the strong and blessed authority of God’s Word to the church. The church does not need decentralised dialogue. It doesn’t need less authority. Lord, help us if that happens. There’s hardly any there now, as it is. It needs more authority. It needs the clearly preached and taught Word of God. Now, if you’re going to survey people to find out what they want, I understand what you’re going to get. I agree. The surveys will reveal this is not what people want. People don’t want authority.

They don’t want the binding Word of God upon them, especially if you survey unbelievers outside the church, or unbelievers inside the church, or if you survey ignorant Christians. The other day there were some men who were singing in a place that I was speaking, and they said, well, we’d like to introduce ourselves. And one introduced himself from the assembly of God, another from the Church of Christ, and another from another Pentecostal group, and another from the Free Methodist, all of which are basically theologically Arminian groups, and very, and very different in many ways in their doctrine.

And the last gentleman said, and isn’t it wonderful? It doesn’t matter. None of that really matters. What church? All that matters is we all love Jesus. And the audience broke into applause, and I was pained in my heart. It does matter what you believe. Theology does matter. It does matter that you’re precise with Scripture. It does matter that you’re accurate. But you see, that’s the non-authority mentality, the mentality of the world in which we live, where everybody’s opinion is as valid as everybody else’s opinion. Strong, authoritative pulpits, which bring the word with conviction and challenge, are not popular with sinful people, and they’re not popular with ignorant people.

Why? Because it’s the spirit of the age. This is an anti-authority age that we live in. It hasn’t always been this way in the world, and it isn’t always this way in every place. Russian believers who were growing up under the regime of communism in Russia understood authority very well. They understood it very well. And I suppose in some ways the Church benefited from that, because people were raised to comprehend the significance of authority. We’re living in a society today where all authority is being undermined at every level. It’s being undermined from every conceivable perspective, philosophically, religiously, politically.

Let me tell you why people resist authority. This is just a little bit of a sidelight here. We’re not surprised that if you go out and survey somebody, you’re going to come up with the idea they don’t want an authoritative speaker. They don’t want an authoritative doctrinal statement. They don’t want somebody telling them what to do. They don’t want to have God’s law put upon them in a binding fashion. They don’t want to submit to the supremacy of God and to the truth of his word. We understand that, and I’ll give you several reasons.

Number one, it’s the nature of sin to be rebellious. The Bible says sin is rebellion. Nothing is true of sin than to say it is a form of rebellion. And it is a rebellion against whom? God. All sin is a rebellion against God. That’s the definition of sin. You want to know what sin is? It’s a rebellion against God. It’s an unwillingness to do God’s will. Any violation of God’s will is sin. Any violation of God’s will is a form of rebellion. Satan inaugurates the whole deal. Bolts out of heaven in rebellion against God.

Eve inaugurates it on a human level, rebels against the commands of God, believes the lie, and Adam joins her and catapults the human race into fallenness. Romans chapter one says it’s the cycle of history. When they knew God, they glorified him not as God. And neither were thankful, turned against him, and so forth. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the Church Central Authority. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com.

Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. God bless you, God bless you, God bless you,
[tr:trw].