📖 Doctrinal Preaching — Unit 4: Preaching the Doctrine of God

The sermon as preached:

There are few things in this world that remain steadfast. Men may build, but the forces of time and nature and God tear down all that we build. One of the great tragedies of Canada was the tornado of 1987. The newspaper was headlined, “Two Hours of Terror.” Tornadoes are not supposed to hit Edmonton. But it did, and twenty-six lives were lost and $150 million in damage was suffered. It was called one of the worst natural disasters in Canada. The people of Edmonton and the world were shaken.

This past week in Los Angeles, the City of Angels, there have been riots and looting. A man named Rodney King was beaten by police officers, and the officers were not convicted. People took to the streets and devastated entire districts. The total damage may be close to a billion dollars. Many lives were lost. Riots spread across North America — even to Toronto.

In the eleventh chapter of Genesis, men built a mighty tower of Babel which they believed would reach heaven. But God was displeased with their pride, and He brought the buildings tumbling to the ground, scattered the people, and confused their language. One of the first great buildings did not stand.

You have been reading recently about attempts to preserve the Sphinx. When it was first constructed from limestone, it must have been an imposing and beautiful sight. Because of the ravages of time it has been falling apart, and most of the preservation efforts of the last few hundred years have made it worse, not better.

So where do we turn? What will survive when landmarks and cities and even civilizations are shaken? I want us to look at some unshakable things.

I. God will not be shaken.

God is the one omnipotent, unchangeable Being. He declares, “I change not.” Project your mind as far back into the past as you can, and you will find God. He is the first Cause of all creation; all things come from Him, and without Him nothing came into being. Then project your mind as far into the future as you can — beyond the stars, the sun, the moon, the worlds, the judgment — and there you will find God the Almighty.

In all of eternity past, in all things present, in all of eternity future, God remains the same. We do not know how long it has been since He spoke the world into existence; some say millions of years, some say billions. But God was the same then as He is now and shall be forever.

During an earthquake a few years ago, the people of a small village were very much alarmed, but they were surprised at the calmness and joy of an old woman they all knew. At length one of them said to her, “Mother, are you not afraid?” “No,” said the good woman, “I rejoice to know that I have a God who can shake the world.” God shakes the world, but He Himself cannot be shaken.

II. God’s Word cannot be shaken.

Psalm 119:89 says, “Forever, O LORD, Your word is settled in heaven.” Isaiah 40:8 declares, “The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” What is the word of God? The word “word” refers to the mind or reason of a person; so the word of God is the way God communicates with us. Jesus is sometimes called the Living Word, because through His life and death He showed us what God is like. The gospel is the “preached” word, because it tells what God did through Jesus. And the Bible is the “written” word, another way God speaks to us.

Through the centuries men have tried to destroy God’s word, because it strikes to the heart and convicts us of sin. In the Old Testament, kings tried to silence the prophets who preached His word; but God stood behind His prophets, and His word endured. Men nailed Jesus, the Living Word, to a cross on Calvary, because His life condemned them; but God raised Him from the grave, and His word was not destroyed.

There have been many attacks against the Bible through the ages, but it still stands and shall stand forever. It has been burned at the stake; it has been chained to the pulpits so that common people could not read it; bitter things have been said and written against it. But it stands firm and true.

We are told that millions of gallons of water burst against the Rock of Gibraltar every minute, yet it has stood unmoved over the centuries. Millions of unbelievers have hurled their strength against the Bible, but it stands, and they have perished.

Years ago a missionary in Italy gave a Bible to a man who was building a wall. The man took it and with a laugh sealed it up inside the wall. Years later an earthquake tore down the wall, and another workman found the Bible there. Reading it, he became a new man in Christ Jesus. You cannot shake a book that has that kind of power over a man’s life.

III. God’s Church cannot be shaken.

When we speak of the church, we do not mean the buildings, the organizations, the denomination. We mean a spiritual body of believers carrying out the work of bringing men to God through Christ Jesus. Jesus loved the church and gave Himself for it. He said, “Upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18).

Now notice that little phrase: “and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” When we read it we think, “It is a comfort to know we can defend ourselves against sin and death and the devil.” Perry Sanders, pastor of First Baptist in Lafayette, Louisiana, says that when he was a boy of about twelve, his preacher preached on this text and pictured the scene. He pictured the church as a solid fortress, surrounded by a moat with a high wall, and the demons of hell crashing against it on every side — the fiery darts, the temptations, the opposition — doing everything they could to destroy it. But despite it all, the forces of hell could not conquer it. You can imagine the people saying, “O Lord, the forces of hell are strong and we are mighty weak; but if You come soon we will try to hold on.” That is a comforting picture in some ways, but it is wrong.

First, the text refers to “the gates of hell.” Is a gate an offensive or a defensive structure? A gate is used to repulse, to throw back. The enemy does not attack with a gate; the gate is a defensive structure. Imagine Satan saying, “All right, boys, pick up the gates and tear into the church. This is going to be a real fight, so grab every gate you can find.” You attack with swords or archers or battering rams, not gates. The gates of hell are the defensive structures of the enemy.

Second, the text says the gates of hell shall not “prevail” against the church — and that word actually means “to withstand.” The church is on the march; hell is on the defensive, and it cannot hold.

Listen: if the church were built on any man, it would surely fall. But it is built on the solid Rock, Jesus Christ Himself; and as long as the Rock stands, the church will stand.

One of the outstanding features of Calgary is the Calgary Tower. It stands some 626 feet high and can be seen from as far away as 100 kilometers. Despite the strong winds of Calgary, there is little danger of the tower blowing away, for it has a firm foundation. The church that Jesus built has a more solid foundation than any tower: it is built on Jesus Himself.

IV. God’s Kingdom cannot be shaken.

Pharaoh built a kingdom, and it fell. David built a kingdom, and it fell. Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon built their kingdoms, and they fell. These kingdoms have gone the way of all the earth. But God is building a kingdom that will never fail or fall.

We are always trying to build our lives out of material that will not last. We accumulate money to be our support; we build on talent, or health, or family. But all these things are temporary, and when God shakes them, they fall. We may build our own little kingdoms, but the only unshakable kingdom is God’s.

In the earthquake of 1923 the Japanese learned some important things about building materials. The flimsy structures of paper and wood collapsed; the buildings of brick and steel were undamaged. We too need to turn to the unshakable God before it is too late.

God says in the text, “Once more I will shake not only the earth, but also heaven... so that what cannot be shaken may remain.” Our history is littered with shakings — the destruction of Solomon’s temple, the exile to Babylon, where the people cried, “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:4). Later, in A.D. 410, the barbarians overran Rome and shook its morale as nothing else had done, for the civilization and the church had grown corrupt and cold.

Sometimes God has to knock out the props that hold us up, to show us how much we need Him. The only prop we need in life is God Himself; it is only when we lean on earthly and temporal supports that we are in danger. The young depend on health and looks; some depend on money, some on prestige or power, some on personal achievement. It is when a man is supremely self-confident and proud that he does not see his need of God, and is in danger of having his life crumble because he built on a flimsy foundation. The only solid Rock is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

V. God’s Son cannot be shaken.

Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” History has found fault with even the greatest of men. One of my sons once did a report on the missionaries of Alberta; some sacrificed greatly, yet they made many mistakes and had many faults.

There have been great prime ministers, yet they were all human; great artists and teachers and wise men, yet all imperfect. The Bible says of each of us, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” and “there is none righteous, no, not one.”

But Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God, never made one mistake in His life. He never broke any of God’s laws, and positively, He always did the perfect will of God. Sometimes I do not even know what God’s will is, and I certainly cannot always obey it. But Jesus did.

Often a man runs for public office, and his opponents say, “Let’s see if we can find some dirt on him, something to defeat him.” And often they can ruin his chances. But not so with Christ. For nearly two thousand years men have been unable to find anything wrong with the character of Jesus. They have tried to strip Him of His deity and call Him only a man; they have tried to reduce Him to the level of other men; but they have all failed. They cannot destroy His character.

The verdict of the ages has been the same as that of the heathen Pilate: “I find no fault in this just man.” Do the same for yourself. Examine His life; look carefully at everything He did or said; you will find nothing wrong. He was the one spotless, stainless, sinless, perfect life. Sidney Lanier, the poet, called Him “the Crystal Christ.”

And hear what men have said of Him:

Judas said, “I have betrayed innocent blood.”
The centurion said, “Truly this was the Son of God.”
The demons cried, “You are the Son of the Most High God.”
John the Baptist said, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”
Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Thomas declared, “My Lord and my God.”
And God Himself said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

Yes, Jesus cannot be shaken. He was sinless, and because of that He is able to remove the stain of sin from our lives. Several years ago a pastor was in Japan on a preaching mission, and he went down to Kamakura to see the great statue of Buddha that sits there in a beautiful park. The statue is forty feet high, the face eight feet high. In 1495 it was knocked over by a tidal wave, and the people began to call it “the god who couldn’t get up.” They later set it back in place, and it has stood for hundreds of years — but it has no power and does nothing for anyone. How different is Christ our Savior and Lord! He never falls; time and tide never touch Him. The Son of God cannot be shaken.