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Greetings, and welcome to the
Beacon Broadcast from Beacon Baptist Church on Kirkpatrick
Road in Burlington, North Carolina. The Beacon Broadcast is supported
in part by the gifts of faithful listeners. If you'd like to correspond
with Pastor Barkman and The Beacon Broadcast, or if you wish to
support this radio ministry, write to The Beacon Broadcast,
Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. The Beacon Broadcast,
Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. Now with today's message from
God's Word, here is Pastor Greg Barkman. The verse that we are currently
examining is found in 2 Peter chapter 2, and it is verse 5. And it divides into two parts.
Two-thirds is actually three parts, but two of the three parts
deal with the certainty of divine judgment, and the second of the
three parts deals with assurance of divine preservation. Peter's
point is that God has promised judgment for sinners and God
will carry out his promise. So you better get ready for it.
You better not gamble your soul. You better not roll the dice
on the assumption that somehow God will not do what he says
he will do. And that is exactly what many
people do. Many people deny the reality of God's judgment, even
though the Bible is very clear about it, but one way or another
they say, well that isn't so. That isn't really true. Well,
as we've said before, saying it isn't so doesn't mean it's
going to go away. You can say it, but that doesn't
cause it to disappear. The question is not, what do
you say about it? The question is not, what does
somebody else say about it? The question is, what does God
say about it? What does God's Word say about
it? What does the Bible say about
it? And that settles the issue. Whatever the Bible says about
it is the reality. That's the truth. And we need
to accept that as truth and prepare ourselves accordingly. So that
is the text that we are examining on this Tuesday, February 3,
as we gather together again around the Word of God by means of radio,
and do so because some of you, our radio listeners, help us
with the financial costs of maintaining this ministry. Well the certainty
of divine judgment is the first and the third part of verse 5.
It says, and did not spare the ancient world. And then it concludes
the verse with this phrase, bringing in the flood on the world of
the ungodly, the certainty of divine judgment. But the middle
part of the verse deals with the assurance of divine preservation. But saved Noah, one of eight
people, a preacher of righteousness. Did not spare the ancient world,
but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness. And we learned on the broadcast
yesterday that Noah was, according to these words, a preacher of
righteousness. He was, according to everything
we learn about the biblical account, a preacher of grace. Though judgment
was declared and promised, it was held off for 120 years. Plenty
of time. to repent, plenty of time to
veil yourself of the salvation which God provided. The ark is
here, the ark of safety. All you need to do is believe
the message of God and walk onto the ark, and you'll be spared
from the judgment which God has pronounced, God has declared.
But if you ignore the warning, and then the judgment falls upon
you, and you have no ark of safety, it'll be too late in that day.
When the rain begins to fall, it's too late to get on the ark. God shut the door. And when God's
judgment begins to fall, dear sinner, it's too late to come
to Christ. God will shut the door. Right
now, the door is open. This is a time of grace. Just
like that 120 years that Noah preached was a time of grace.
Hear the message, hear the warning, hear the the invitation, hear
the opportunity, come, come, come onto the ark, and save yourself
from the judgment to come. But all of those who mocked,
all of those who ignored, all of those who delayed, who equivocated,
all of them were caught in the waters of that torrential flood,
and there was no opportunity for salvation when they waited
too long. And the same is true in regard to eternal salvation
in Jesus Christ. Don't trifle. Don't delay. Certainly don't mock. Certainly
don't ignore. Certainly don't contradict and
deny. But even believing but failing
to avail yourself of the remedy is really not fully believing,
is it? You're playing. You're trying
to have it both ways. As the saying
goes, you're trying to have your cake and eat it too. You're trying
to have as much as you can of this world and its delights and
hope that you will find some way to slip into the arc of safety
at the last moment before it's too late, and inevitably you're
going to be caught short. God will shut the door. So Noah
was a preacher of righteousness, Noah was a preacher of grace,
but I also note that Noah was a preacher of disappointment.
And what do I mean by that? Although Noah preached faithfully
for 120 years, he had very little visible success. Very few results
for his preaching. To many, in our day, Noah was
a failure. What do you mean? A preacher
who preaches for 120 years and nobody but his wife and his sons
and daughters-in-law believes him. He preaches for 120 years
and at best we can say that seven
people were saved under his ministry. Why, that's not even one in every
15 years, is it? Why? What kind of a preacher
is that? Why would anybody support him? Why would anybody believe
in him? Why would anybody commend him? Why, We certainly expect preachers
to do better than that in our day, and so many times we look
to preachers to produce certain results, and if they don't produce
the results that we think they ought to produce, then we're
off to find somebody who can and will. I hope you're not one
of those people. The measure of a preacher's success
is not visible results, not how many people believe his message,
but it is how faithful is he to the Word of God. I'm sorry
to tell you this, but a great many of the preachers in our
day are not preaching the whole counsel of God. I would say the
majority of preachers in our day are not preaching the whole
counsel of God. Some are complete apostates, they deny most of
the fundamental doctrines of the Bible. Others are just wishy-washy. They may believe these things,
but they're too careful. They don't want to offend anybody.
And many preachers are just basically too pragmatic. Their primary
goal is to accomplish visible success. They want to have a
growing church. They want to have growing numbers.
They want to have visible success. Many preachers go into the ministry
assuming that a growing church and increasing numbers and reports
of visible success are what God desires, what God has commanded,
they are the measure of a man's ministry, contrary to everything
that the Bible teaches us about that. The Bible says no such
thing. The Bible commends preachers
for being faithful to declare the truth, all of it, without
compromise, without equivocation, without obscuring it. without
repackaging it to try to somehow make difficult truths more popular. God's measure of success is faithfulness.
When preachers stand before the Lord, their standard of judgment,
of measurement, is going to be the same as that of every Christian.
Were you faithful to the assignment I gave you? And of course God
gives different people different assignments, in the sense that
we're not all preachers. We all have opportunities and
responsibilities to serve the Lord, but the details of that
differ from person to person. But the only test is, were you
obedient? Were you faithful? Did you carry
out your assignment as I gave it to you? And for the preacher
that means, I called you to preach the Word of God. Did you preach
the Word of God? All of it. Or did you think somehow
that I had called you to be an editor to edit the Bible, to
pick and choose what parts to teach and what parts to pass
over? That's what an editor does. You submit your manuscript to
a publishing company, and the editor goes over it, and he says,
I'm going to throw this out, and I'm going to change this,
I'm going to throw that out, and I'm going to change this.
And that's the editor's prerogative. Now you can say, I can't accept
that, and he can say, all right, then we're not going to publish
your material. Go find another publisher. But
if we're going to publish it, then you've got to understand,
I've got the the authority to edit it. I can reshape your manuscript
to suit our needs. That's the editor's prerogative.
Well that may be the editor's prerogative, but that is not
the preacher's prerogative, and in fact that's no Christian's
prerogative. None of us have the right to edit the Word of
God. God has given us the Bible as
He wanted to give it to us, and it is our responsibility to believe
it all and to preach it all. Now obviously you can't preach
all of it in every sermon. It's not possible to preach all
of it every time you stand in the pulpit. Sometimes I'll preach
a message and occasionally someone will say to me, well, why didn't
you say this? Why didn't you say that? I thought
you would have said this. And they'll bring up something
that I didn't say. And I will say, because I didn't
have time, I can only say so much in an allotted period of
time. or because that particular thought
or statement was not in this text. I have said that at other
times. If it's something that's true,
if it's something in the Bible, I believe that, I preach that,
but I can't preach everything on every occasion. Surely you
understand that. But I don't skip and choose. I think I told you about pastor
that I'm acquainted with who was preaching years ago, many
years ago, preaching through his church through the book of
Romans. And he preached faithfully, expository
sermons through the book of Romans, for the first eight chapters. But he began
to get bogged down a bit toward the end of chapter 8, and when
he finished chapter 8, he said to his congregation, I've changed
my mind. There are too many difficult
things in chapters 9, 10, and 11, particularly 9 and 11, particularly
9, so we're going to go on to a different series. He refused
to deal with that. That's what I'm talking about.
You don't preach Romans 9 if you're not in the Book of Romans,
necessarily, but you ought to be willing to preach it At times,
when it's appropriate, some people will avoid whole books of the
Bible where there's things in there they don't like. That's
not my prerogative. That's not anybody's prerogative.
And Noah was a preacher of disappointment in the sense that I'm sure he
wanted a whole lot more people to believe his message than actually
did. But as far as God is concerned, he was a good preacher, a faithful
preacher, and received a well done from God. Until tomorrow,
Greg Barkman saying good day, may God give you his eternal
peace.
Noah's Disappointment
| Sermon ID | 231582007 |
| Duration | 14:27 |
| Date | |
| Category | Radio Broadcast |
| Bible Text | 2 Peter 2:5 |
| Language | English |
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