Is the Bible Enough Part 1
I remember a few years ago I was driving through downtown Corpus Christ while listening to John MacArthur preach about the sufficiency of the Bible for faith and conduct. It suddenly hit me like never before. You see, I had known that something was amiss in my circle of evangelicalism, but I couldn’t quite express it. It was a gut feeling that not all was well. I had been on staff at a church that was growing numerically, but I was bothered by the seeker sensibilities/marketing approach and had begun to question whether our outreach methodology was actually undermining the claim that the Bible is enough (2 Timothy 3:16). Here is what Dr. John MacArthur said in his sermon entitled “The Sufficiency of Scripture,”
First of all, in the last few years in the church, there has grown to be among church leaders a great preoccupation with what I would call "worldly management technique." With all of the books being written on successful corporations and successful styles of management and leadership and so forth, the church has perked up its ears and gone after that really as if it were the very life of the church. There are many who bow, as it were, to the gods of worldly management technique. Churches are learning those kinds of methods as if they were the keys to building the Kingdom of God. And in a very subtle way, this is an attack on the adequacy of Scripture, as if to say, "Knowing the Word of God and understanding its principles and the principles taught therein related to the growth of the church is not adequate and we must go to the management techniques and the systems of success the world uses in its corporate environment and transfer those to the church if we want the church to really grow and develop." I believe this is a subtle attack on the sufficiency of the revelation of God for the matter of the growth and development of the church. Secondly, another angle that I've been recently concerned about is that there are many people who feel the Scripture is not a sufficient diet for the saints of the church and there must be along with it a certain amount of entertainment. And churches are spending a lot of money to entertain people. We have developed because of our penchant for entertainment in our society a sort of a Christian celebrity list. We are heavy into entertainment which is costing the church when you include Christian TV entertainment, billions and billions of dollars of the Lord's money. And it is, in a sense, a concession to those people who do not believe that the teaching and the study and the learning and the application of the Word of God is an exciting enough diet. In fact, there are many people who seem rather bored with the things of God revealed in Scripture and are really in desperate need of some entertainment. And there is in that, I believe, an attack on the sufficiency of the Word of God to bring to the life of believers all that is needed not only for the matter of spiritual battle but for the matter of joy and fulfillment in life
I immediately repented and decided that I would, to the best of my
ability, try to conduct ministry in such a way that it communicates that the
simple presentation of the gospel is sufficient for people to be saved.
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