Consenting to wholesome words

Jesus said, “If a man speaks a word against the Son of Man it will be forgiven him, but if he speaks a words against the Holy Spirit it won’t be forgiven him in this world or the world to come.”

Jordan says, “Listen, in order to save Saul of Tarsus, he had to separate this world and the world to come and put a new world in there. If there was no other reason to understand a new dispensation began with the Apostle Paul that verse right there would tell you it did!

“Paul says of himself that he ‘was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.’ He did it ignorantly, like the Gentiles who walked in unbelief just as did Israel.

“By the way, Paul was both of those. He was a Hebrew of the Hebrews born of the tribe of Benjamin, but he was also by birth a Roman. He was Jew and Gentile by birth; both in one person.

“There were 12 Apostles because there were 12 thrones to reign over the 12 tribes of Israel. There’s one apostle in the dispensation of grace who’s ‘the apostle of the Gentiles’ because there’s one Body of Christ, but that one apostle is two people. He’s a Jew and Gentile in one because that’s exactly what the Body of Christ is.”

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Paul says in Galatians 1:13-14: “For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:
[14] And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.”

Jordan says, “When Paul says he’s was ‘the chief of sinners,’ he wasn’t saying he was the worst profligate that ever lived and the way you know that is in Philippians 3, where he said, ‘As touching the righteousness of the law I was blameless.’ A chief is the guy who leads people.

“In all of the right activity that the law said to do, Paul said, ‘I did it all.’ Well, if you are as touching the righteousness of the law blameless, you’re not someone who lives in the gutter of life. Paul was the opposite of that. He had all the human good, not the human evil.”

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Paul goes on in verses 15-16: “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,
[16] To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood:

Jordan says, “Paul is the first in a line of a bunch of people who are going to look to him as their leader. He’s THE apostle; the one you’re going to learn and receive and hear and see the things that god wants you to follow today. He’s your pattern.

“Somebody says, ‘I thought Christ was my pattern.’ Well, it’s a good thing He’s not because He lived a perfect, sinless life. Christ is the Savior of sinners and He’s given you the chief of sinners as your pattern. And when you take your place with the chief of sinners and depend on the Savior of sinners, you got it.

“Think about what you don’t have if you don’t have Paul. You’d never have clarity of the gospel. What is the gospel whereby you’re saved? Isn’t it how Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day? Isn’t that the Good News?”

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Paul says, 1:16 ashamed: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

Jordan says, “If you’re trying to follow the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and you’re going to go back to His earthly ministry to get your pattern and your doctrine for today, you’re going to have a problem with understanding what the gospel is.

“We call them the Four Gospels but that’s a title, not the content. Luke 18:31 says, ‘Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.’

“Don’t think they responded, ‘Thank God, praise the Lord, Jesus is going to die for my sin.’ No, verse 34 says, ‘And they understood none of these things: and this saying was hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.’

“Just in case you didn’t understand what He said, He said it three different ways in one verse. They don’t understand it, it’s hid from them. They didn’t know what He was talking about. What’s He talking about? The death, burial and resurrection. And they don’t even understand it.

“Listen, these 12 apostles have been preaching ‘the gospel of the kingdom’ for three years and they don’t even understand it! They don’t even understand He’s going to die, much less what it’s going to mean!

“Now if you cannot understand that Jesus Christ is going to die and be raised again, much less what it means, and you’re preaching the gospel, and that’s the gospel Paul preached, can you understand you’ve got to have some confusion?

“If you don’t rightly divide the Scripture and understand there is something different going on in Paul’s ministry than what is going on in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and you’re going to go back and live in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and follow those instructions, you’re never going to know how to tell someone how to go to heaven when they die and stay out of hell; how to have peace with God. No wonder there’s confusion about all these different things going on!

“In Titus 3, Paul says ‘not by works of righteousness which we have we done.’ As late as Acts 10, Peter said, ‘I know that he that works righteousness is accepted of him.’ The problem isn’t where the verses are found; the problem is the people preaching it and the message they’re sent to preach.

“One’s preaching the gospel of the circumcision; one the gospel of the uncircumcision. That is two different messages. But if you don’t understand something about where you’re supposed to be in that, if you been taught all your life that we’re part of the church Peter’s the head of . . . you see a lot of people didn’t get too very far away from Mother even after the Reformation.”

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“I love Paul’s buts. But is a disjointive conjunction meaning ‘stop.’ Paul says, ‘But you have not so learned Christ.’ What you learned from Christ is the reverse of all that other stuff.

“He says, ‘If so be that you have heard him and been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.’ That’s an interesting verse because Christ didn’t hear for you to hear. People say, ‘Well, the Lord spoke to me,’ and my first question is what kind of accent did He have?

“I mean, Isaiah said, ‘I heard him in my ear.’ You say, ‘Well, He didn’t speak with an audible voice.’ How do you speak without an audible voice?! You say, ‘Well, it was in my head.’ Well, you had to hear it in your head . . .

“I got a little voice in my head that speaks with a southern accent. What’s the voice in your head speak with? It’s got an accent. It sounds just like you because it is you.

“How did you hear Him? Well, He isn’t standing here. He’s not personally here but He’s given us His thinking. Paul says in I Corinthians, ‘That you may have the mind of Christ.’ In Col. 3:16 he talks about ‘the word of Christ dwells in you richly.’

“In I Timothy 6, Paul talks about ‘consenting to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ He’s talking about the epistle that he’s writing. You understand when you listen to Paul’s epistles, you’re listening to Jesus Christ tell you what His thinking is? You literally are hearing Him!

“That’s why, folks, if you don’t understand how to rightly divide the Scripture, you’re going to wind up absolutely out in left field out in the dark.”

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Paul says in Galatians 3:1, “O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?”

Jordan says, “To be foolish does not mean to be stupid. ‘The fool has said in his heart there is no God.’ I talked to a fellow this past week who told me he was an atheist. Now, I can tell you the guy’s not stupid. He’s an educated guy who’s got advanced degrees from the university. He’s not stupid; he’s foolish.

“Psalm 14 says that. Jesus said, ‘O foolish and slow of heart.’ But being foolish in the Bible is not being stupid. It’s being slow to use your mind. It’s to not think; to be thoughtless, unobservant, lazy-minded, not to think the thing through.

“When I asked the man why he’d be an atheist, he said, ‘Well, there can’t be a God because if there is a God He would be terrible for being responsible for all the suffering in the world. There can’t be a God; look at all the suffering.’ All the suffering and injustice means there’s no God.

“Some of the great atheists of our day, Richard Dawkins, for example, that was his same excuse for becoming an atheist: the sufferings of humanity. ‘There can’t be a God.’

“I said, ‘Okay, let’s say there’s no God. Now, what’s your answer for suffering? I don’t think he’d ever thought about that.

“If the suffering of humanity means there’s no God, what do you put in God’s place? Atheism. So the answer to suffering in the world today is atheism, but how’s that an answer for suffering because if there was no God—there can’t be no God; just look at all that suffering in the world.

“I think it clicked with him as we were talking. If you say there’s no God because of the suffering—what is your answer? He didn’t have an answer. If anything, his answer was to be an atheist. But look at all the suffering in the world; how can you be an atheist? The same reasoning gets you to the same conclusion.

“If you’ve got a foregone conclusion that you want to be there, though, that’s what happened with the Galatians. They’d come up with another idea. ‘O foolish Galatians.’ Someone had cast a spell on them. There’s a spiritual deception going on here.”