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“Pattern, Schmattern”

Gary Copeland
01/19/25 - Sun AM

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That's the case, 211 Timothy chapter 2 verses 212 to 2110, and for context, in verse 2116, Paul has just said, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.

So don't be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me, his prisoner.

Instead, share in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God.

He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.

This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

For this gospel, I was appointed a Harold, apostle, and teacher, and that is why I suffer these things.

But I am not ashamed because I know who I have I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.

Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

Thank you to the AV booth people.

They do a great job.

It was just some miscommunication, probably my part.

Good morning.

I want to describe to you someone from the Bible who was quite the visionary.

And he was very much Very strongly pro-religion.

He advanced the worship of God in his time.

He acted very thoughtfully, not compulsively or impulsively.

He improved the, what we would call the look of religion, maybe you want to call it marketing, but in terms of a visual appeal and messaging, that's important.

We don't want to turn people away just by how we carry out God's religion and how we put into practice Christianity.

He opened up new places that people could go to worship.

He put what we would say nowadays church more easily into the reach of everyone.

He activated more people to get involved in religious service.

He even promoted a new religious holiday.

In fact, he single-handedly established a religious tradition that lasted for 200 years.

And all that sounds great.

His actions are to be lauded.

They looked like proper church, but I'm talking about Jeroboam.

1 Kings chapter 12.

1 Kings chapter 12.

He was a very wicked man.

He lived in ancient Israel.

He became king.

He sinned in what he did in changing God's religion, and he exerted a poisonous influence on everyone after him.

He was cursed personally by God and became the poster child for apostasy.

Apostasy is a departure from the faith, right?

And so this lesson looks at what he did, why he did it, and the consequences, and then makes some applications to us.

And so here's a quick review from my sermon back in September, uh, September 1st, 23, in case you're looking for it on the church website.

It was called Burdening the Church.

And uh so you see all the little people under that massive boulder burdening the church.

We made a point that there are two circles of activity.

One represents the work of the church.

But that's not the same as the sphere or the circle that is the works of the individual.

These things have, they do overlap some, but they have to be separate.

They have to remain as distinct to circles.

And one passage that makes that abundantly clear is 1 Timothy 5:16, where it describes benevolence given to widows, and it actually puts qualifications on the widows that will receive money from the church treasury.

If I can find it in my notes here, I don't have the same excuse that Alan does about foggy vision.

I just have trifocals.

Let me see here.

Um, it says if any believing woman has widows, she must assist them, and the church must not be burdened so that it may assist those who are widows indeed.

And so any widow can be helped by individuals, but only widows who meet those qualifications known as widows indeed can be helped directly from the church treasury.

And so there is a New Testament pattern.

And there's a New Testament pattern in terms of organization of the church, the work of the church, the worship of the church.

And God's terms for salvation.

The pattern is very specific and it is limited.

But many people just say, yeah.

Pattern smattering.

Right, that's my little fun phrase to, to show their disregard for the concept of a pattern.

And what we see in modern times is people who will say there is no pattern for the church.

That's, they argue that, um, and I won't go into those arguments, but they might say, well, yeah, there, we see these things in the New Testament, but, and then they find a way to disregard or set aside the pattern on any number of these points.

I want you to remember that from the very beginning of time, God has always had instructions, including on how to worship.

Moses was warned by God.

He was warned by God.

Hebrews 8:5, when he was about to erect the tabernacle, for see, he says that you make all things according to the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain.

God has always specified how he wants things done, and we must be careful how we put those things into practice.

And so let's look quickly at Jeroboam's apostasy.

Here's a picture of apostasy from 1 Kings 12.

1st of all, he sought advice.

He took counsel.

That sounds great, but he consulted people, he didn't consult Jehovah.

He didn't look into the word of God that was already expressed, written down, revealed.

No, he asked other people.

Well, he improved the marketing, like I said, Well, he made religion look good.

But you know how he did it?

He made two golden calves.

Oh my goodness.

He learned nothing from the 10 Commandments.

He broke Exodus 123:4 about make no grave an image.

And his excuse was to make it easier on people.

He learned nothing from the people's sins at the base of Mount Sinai, while those 10 Commandments were first initiated.

New places to worship.

Sounds great until you read Leviticus 23:1 Kings 8 and realize that God had a place where he wanted people to gather.

I mean the whole nation to gather there 3 times a year.

Leviticus 23.

1 Kings 8, once the temple was built, that was the place where God's name would be.

That's where it would dwell.

That would, that was where it was connected.

And so him making two new places.

Uh, and I've, um, Not wanting this to go till noon and so I'm trying to speed it along, but you'll notice if you're in 13 Kings 20, 1 Kings 12:28 is where it says he took counsel, verse 28 is where it says he made two golden calves, and he said to them, it's too much for you to go up to Jerusalem.

Behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up out of the land of.

I mean, that's straight out of what they did in rebellion to God in apostasy.

At the foot of Mount Sinai in Exodus.

And then there in verse 29, 1 Kings 12:29, he said one of these calves in Bethel, and he put one in Dan.

Now, that was very strategic, and we won't go into the map, but basically, he had a territory and he put one on either end of his, the northern and southern extreme of his territory, so the people wouldn't have to go out of that territory to actually go where God had put his name in Jerusalem.

That was mentioned there in First Kings A. Well, he put church within reach of people.

I mean, that's the way we, we talk about it.

But what that looked like in his day was he set up high places, so that every, basically every time you had a, a hill, you'd put something there and that became a place of worship.

Oh my goodness.

He invited on himself by doing that, all the curses from Leviticus 23.

It was a curses on the nation that would put high places and incense altars and idols on these high places.

Do you realize that those were the main reason that God tore the kingdom away from Solomon in 1 Kings 11 to begin with?

And we're only in 1 Kings 12.

And we see that Jeroboam is doing the very things that Solomon had done, some of those things which were specifically mentioned by God as his reason for punishing Solomon.

I said he activated more people.

He got more people involved in religion.

That sounds real good when you read verse 31.

Uh, in 1 Kings 12, uh, he made shrines on the high places.

Listen, and he made priests from every class of people who were not of the sons of Levi.

Anybody who's read anything from the Old Testament has probably come across Exodus 28.

It was Aaron and his sons, in other words, that one family line that were to serve as priests.

And then there's the whole story of the rebellion of Cora.

And how God made the earth swallow him and his family and all his followers and all their stuff whole, and they just got swallowed by the earth.

Jeroboam didn't care about that.

Totally ignored that.

What about number 17?

Where the big question was, wait, who can serve as priests?

And you remember Aaron's rod, he had one rod to represent his family, and then they had rods for all the other families.

And which one blossomed?

Which one miraculously showed God's approval?

Jerobo didn't care about that.

He totally ignored it.

How about this new holy day.

First Kings 113:32 says that Jeroboam ordained a feast on the 15th day of the 8th month like the feast that was in Judah and offered sacrifices on the altar.

So he did at Bethel, sacrificing.

To the calves that he had made, and at Bethel, he installed the priests of the high places which he had made.

So he made offerings on the altar which he had made at Bethel on the 15th day of the 8th month in the month which he had devised in his own heart.

That's where all this came from.

This was not the same feast that God had ordained, that God had authorized.

Joe Bone's just doing his own thing.

Patterns matter. Right?

That was his basic problem.

He just, he doesn't care about God's pattern.

And it looked good.

I mean, he got the whole country, his whole 1210 tribes of the 12 tribes that existed to go along with him.

They did it for 200 years.

It looked good.

It seemed right to the untrained and the undiscerning eye.

It looked fine.

Let's look a little bit more at his motivations though.

First Kings 12:63.

Jeroboam said in his heart, that's where the problem started, right, is his own thought.

He says, he had just been given by the way.

10 of the 12 tribes, God had ripped those away from Solomon, had put Jeroboam in charge, and he said, now the kingdom will return to the house of David.

If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the house of Yahweh at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will return to their Lord, even Derayaboam, king of Judah.

And they'll kill me and return to Raabboam, king of Judah.

And so we talk about his motivations, we've got to understand that they were number one selfish.

Number 2, they were fear-based.

He had a fear of losing his following.

Have you ever read Acts chapter 20 verse 30 that says, from among your own selves, talking to the elders of the church there from Ephesus, men will arise speaking perverse things.

To draw away the disciples after them. Right?

In other words, his motivations were carnal and power oriented.

That was Jerobo's thought process.

So him taking counsel and then doing all this stuff that he did had nothing to do with him trying to understand how to be pleasing to Yahweh, Jehovah.

That was not in his thought process.

Andre, the problem with some of these unauthorized things is the temptation to then Just justify what we've already practiced.

Right, I won't tell you the joke that goes behind this, but the point of this illustration is, it's a fun one, where there's a marksman, a sharpshooter that never misses.

He always hits the bull's eye square in the center.

How does he do it?

He says, well, he explains it, he says, you just take your best shot.

And then you go draw them pretty little circles around it. Right?

You practice first and then you go to the scripture and look for some justification for it.

You'll probably find some way to justify what you're doing.

You'll probably find something that you can take out of context.

You'll probably find something that looks like religion that sounds good enough.

To maybe pass the smell test with, if you don't really study.

And so off you go and you've justified your own thing.

I want to look at the consequences of Jeroboam's apostasy.

We just read from 1 Kings 12.

Now these rest, the rest of these, I won't give you time to, to look at them up, and I won't even read them all to you.

I had them at one point and I did like uh Mike Ison, you know, he prepared 30 hours' worth of stuff and then you spend the rest of your prep time trying to make this reasonable to say during one sermon.

But this was a drum beat.

It just came over and over again in the following chapters.

But in 1 Kings 23, God said a prophet to curse one of Jeroboam's altars, and it was miraculously split apart on the spot.

And when Jeroboam tried to intervene and to have the prophet arrested, his arm instantly withered.

I mean, God miraculously said 2 times there, or 3 times, I guess by the time he was healed, on the spot, this is not right.

We must learn, brethren, that God does not accept all worship that we may choose to offer.

We got to follow the pattern.

And then in chapter 14, back to Jeroboam's personal case, a prophet told Jeroboam's wife, listen in 1 Kings 14.

I sent you with a harsh message.

That was verse 6, verse 7.

Go say to Jeroboam, Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, You have not been like my servant David, who kept my commandments and who walked after me with all his heart to do only that which was right in my sight.

You also have done more evil than all who were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods and molten images to provoke me to anger.

And have cast me behind your back.

Therefore, I will cut off from Jeroboam every male person both bond and free in Israel, and I will make a clean sweep of the house of Jeroboam.

As one sweeps away dung until it is all gone.

Pattern smatter.

This is God's opinion when people leave the pattern.

And look, his sons, Abijah died, chapter 14.

Then his son Naab took over as king.

He walked in the way of his father and in the sins, and in the sin which he made Israel sin.

And so another man, Besa came along and he did what was prophesized.

He wiped out everybody in Jeroboam's household.

But he walked in Jeroboam's sins, and so did his son Elah, and so they were wiped out by Zimri, who continued the problem, and then who was killed by Amri.

Or died and then Amri took over.

Amri walked in all the way of Jeroboam and in his sins which with which he made Israel sin, provoking Yahweh, the God of Israel to anger with their idols.

And then Amri's son, Ahab, two of his sons, Ahaziah, Jehoram.

They kept on, they walked in the way of Jeroboam.

So God finally used Jehu to wipe out that evil dynasty.

To 2 Kings 13 by that time.

And it blew me away.

I always thought of Jehu as this great, you know, cleanser of the, the evils of Israel, but the text specifically says in 2 Kings 10:29.

However, as for the sins of Jeroboam and you're like, oh no.

From these Jehu did not depart.

Even the golden calves that were at Bethel and that were at Danver 31, Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of Yahweh, the God of Israel, with all his heart.

And so if you do a quick count, If you use Vicky's simplified summary so that you can quickly count, 17 of the 20.

Kings of the northern tribes are said to have, it was either Jeroboam or the other 16 walked in the sins of Jeroboam that he started.

They did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam.

So a great sermon might be Jeroboam's other son, and we could talk about an imaginary son that he didn't have that would have said, whoa, that was not right.

I got to turn this thing back to the way of the Lord.

But Jeroboam didn't have that son.

And so the destruction that was predicted came on more than just Jeroboam's house.

Right, are there additional kings there.

Back in 1 Kings 14:133, the prophecy was that Yahweh will strike Israel as a reed is shaken in the water, and he will uproot Israel from this good land which he gave to their fathers and will scatter them beyond the river.

Because they have made their Ashura, provoking Yahweh to anger, and he will give Israel over on account of the sins of Jeroboam which he sinned and with which he made Israel to sin.

Now, he didn't force them to sin, right?

Everybody chooses to sin.

But all those 10 tribes kept on choosing, kept on for 200 years until God finally wiped out that part of the nation by scattering them to Assyrian captivity.

So do we need to go into detail about modern denominational errors?

Point out how they resemble the New Testament pattern.

They're packaged neatly to look good, seem right.

Can we understand that changing God's religion is sinful and horrible and provokes God to anger?

Apostasy in the church has been happening since the church was established.

And church leaders who continue unauthorized practices are making many people sin in the same way that Jeroboam did.

When I tell you stories about churches that we meet in other countries, other places, whether it's Ecuador or Tennessee.

If we talk about delaying the start of services because they're busy preparing the coffee or women leaving the Women's Bible study to start preparing food, or up in Berryville where coffee and donuts interfered with the greeting of the visitors, interfered with the sermon preparation.

I'm not talking about efficiency.

I'm not talking about preference and opinion.

I'm not just saying about eating in the building.

I'm talking about a problem that is much deeper, brethren.

Once we allow any unauthorized practice.

We have left the New Testament pattern.

Some would say we're on a quote, a slippery slope.

We have failed to establish biblical authority.

We've entered into apostasy.

And all these matters have to do with our collective works.

I, all the members, you have to be able to support the work that's being done in all good conscience.

So these are topics that are fundamental and they affect our worship, our fellowship together, and our work together.

But to give you a quick history lesson from modern times, thank you, Eric for the song.

We see Her, the church, sore oppressed.

1952, yes, that's modern.

Some of you, some of our brethren here were alive then.

The Herald of Truth radio station was established by Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas.

It was called Highland Avenue back then.

What a great work preaching by radio.

That's great stuff.

Within a few years, they started receiving funding from other congregations to fund this effort.

That's where they deviated.

The New Testament pattern shows each congregation doing its own work.

Money from one church's treasury was only sent to another church in the case of benevolence.

Acts 21, Romans 22, 211 Corinthians 26 and 22.

But this biblical centralization of funding meant that small churches could send money from their treasuries and have a part in that work.

We'll go into more about that.

But I will say that those small churches had no say in the decisions, and they did not directly participate in that work.

And then the slippery slope starts showing.

The Highland Church established a board of directors for their radio program.

Wait, wait, board of directors.

Obviously not New Testament stuff.

And the brethren who had conscientious objections to that practice were disregarded.

The leaders often didn't care about their opinions or about them.

Because they were about, they were from the minority.

And so when that minority, Said, wow, we can't support this in all good conscience, so they went and formed the congregations.

They were labeled with a pejorative term anti.

Well, just for the record, I am anti a whole lot of things, right?

I'm anti, I'm against leaving the New Testament pattern.

Well, what if the preacher was in the minority?

Well, the congregation out in Texas fired my grandfather, who was their evangelist at the time.

Another congregation canceled an invitation for my father to preach because he was my grandfather's son. Right.

This topic is very personal.

It affects my family.

21 out of the 23 of my of my great uncles and great aunts.

Followed this apostasy.

22 out of the 210 tribes of it, I don't know.

Some of you have the same problems in your families.

I'm just asking you what happened to Unity.

Whatever happened to caring about the pattern?

Whatever happened to say, look, can we sing and preach and pray and do the Lord's supper together on Sunday and take a collection only from our members?

That's what we do here.

And brethren, that's beautiful.

And I promise, I've had a lot of Bible studies of people.

I've never heard one objection, not a scriptural objection to what we do together.

That means we can establish unity based on what we're doing.

So let's do this.

Let's get everybody doing this and we'll be unified.

But these conversations, So often aren't talking about that.

So if they're not looking for unity, then who is the troubler of Israel and who's causing the division?

Now I know the time.

And I want to tell you a little bit more about the slippery slope.

Because you may not be thinking of anything except coffee and donuts in the building, but I promise other people will.

And then they'll put in their dining hall, and then they'll put in their Christian Life Center, and then they'll put in their Starbucks.

Maybe you only want a piano.

But when somebody wants their rock bands, you will have no voice.

Oh, that was a poem.

I like that one.

You'll have no voice in objecting to it.

Because you've already left the New Testament pattern.

Brethren, it's not a slope, it's a cliff.

And churches of Christ have stepped off the cliff and have been falling in slow motion for 216 years.

Give you some examples of churches of Christ in 2024 and 2025.

And my intention is not to Bash anybody or air dirty laundry.

Listen, every religion in the world has its divisions.

That's just a fact.

People end up not agreeing eventually on something, and that's happened in the Lord's churches.

If you want a private study, I'd be happy to get into that.

I'll just tell you that brethren have established association of the churches of Christ on a national level in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Nicaragua, and etc.

At the state and provincial level in Ecuador, it's, you think, well, that's the denominational pattern.

Now, you know what it is?

It's the Roman Catholic pattern.

And so at least it takes away autonomy from local churches.

We can't govern ourselves anymore.

Now we got somebody higher up on earth telling us what to do instead of just getting our authority directly from the scripture.

Well, churches have money and money equals power.

Did you know that the Church of Christ Association in Mexico takes 5% of every congregation's collections.

Sometimes more, um.

Conversations with leaders no longer center around Bible study or discovering God's will.

They become about maintaining power and objections and those voicing them are summarily dismissed.

They send their treasury money for so many good works.

Children's homes and orphanage, disaster relief, feeding the community, a wellness clinic, a Christian camp, so-called women's clinic, free medical services, pregnancy tests, schools.

These institutions receive funds from treasuries of churches of Christ to give secular education.

And so we see all this good work being done.

And we forget about the two circles.

And we think that bigger is better.

I'm here to tell you that bigger is not always better, and that the ends do not justify the means.

Just look at Robin Hood.

You think robbing from the rich is to give to the poor is OK because it's giving to the poor.

And so we do something that's wrong to supposedly justify some good work.

Brethren, God has the ends figured out, and he has specified the means.

And so let's just be contented with that.

So when churches from their treasuries send money for these works, See, the work ought to determine the work of the church as defined in the New Testament ought to define our and limit our use of the treasury and that's, it's that simple.

Let me give you another example.

Well, this is a local example.

It it surprise shocked me, so maybe the shock is useful.

Roots Cafe, that's not a Starbucks, right?

They, they went in-house, is our in-house coffee shop that has been open for business since 2012.

We serve several different blends of hot coffee as well as iced drinks and pastries.

Come early to church and fellowship by drinking coffee with a purpose.

All of our profits go to support our global and local mission points.

It's amazing to watch God's math multiply our dollars one coffee cup at a time.

That's local folks.

The New Testament pattern shows only free will offerings collected on Sundays making up the treasury.

The church is not a business, and the church doesn't go into business to make money.

Churches of Christ accept divorce for any reason.

But God said in Matthew, in Malachi 2:16, I hate divorce, says Yahweh, the God of Israel, and Matthew 103:9 has Jesus showing that there's only one acceptable reason for divorcing and then remarrying.

Like, they changed the plan of salvation.

We've had that here.

We've had to withdraw from some from this congregation who start questioning the necessity of baptism.

What about instrumental music?

Local example here.

Instrumental music on the first Wednesday of the month.

The Church of Christ.

They still call it that, but they've left the pattern, they've fallen off the cliff.

So that's unauthorized worship.

There are various arrangements that change roles within the church.

I thought, oh, this will never happen in a Church of Christ. Right.

Here's a local example.

Women participating fully in the welcome, prayers, singing, communion meditations, testimonies, and announcements.

That's local, that's straight from their website.

It's in violation of First Timothy 2:12 says, I do not permit a, I'm sorry, that's my new King James brain.

The, the, uh, LSB says, I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet.

Did you know that in Massachusetts, one of the churches of Christ has female preachers?

You say, ah, That's true.

What about going back to Highland that started a lot of this?

The Highland Church in Texas now has female elders.

And you're like, wait, female, you know, does not compute.

What about the New Testament qualifications in 1 Timothy 2?

Yeah, Paul hated women and so they dismiss it income female elders.

The Pasadena Church of Christ out in California has board members.

Board members, there we go again.

In Pennsylvania, one Church of Christ, according to brethren that I met in Boston last June, promotes the homosexual agenda.

And so this immorality in violation of Romans 11 Corinthians 6.

is where we go with apostasy when we step off the cliff.

And maybe it's falling in slow motion.

Maybe you want to call it a slippery slope and you're just gradually going down.

But brethren, that's where it is ending.

That's where it is now.

Because we don't have book chapter and verse for what we do.

So can we learn from the harsh message to Jeroboam about God's great displeasure when we leave his stated will?

Well, if you're new to the faith, this may be a lot to consider.

Um, I'd be happy to talk to you in private, share my notes, uh, study from the scriptures, all these various points about the New Testament pattern.

But the conclusion is that the New Testament pattern for the church is simple and straightforward.

And what we're doing now and here at this place fits with that pattern, and we can give you book chapter and verse for what we do.

We can be faithful.

We can avoid apostasy.

But we've got to guard our hearts.

We must be content with God's pattern, and we must always give a book, chapter and verse for what we do.

Otherwise we're off the cliff.

So from the scripture reading earlier in 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 13 said, hold fast the pattern of sound words.

I Congratulate and laud this congregation for doing just that.

And I want you to know that the New Testament pattern for how to be saved is also simple and straightforward.

In Acts 2, Peter preached the first gospel sermon, and he said, repent and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

And then we have 10 examples in the book of Acts of people doing just that.

And we have an example from a couple of days ago.

If someone here connected to this congregation doing just that.

And so we praise God, and we remember like we sang that Jesus, he the great example is and pattern for me.

And so to close Romans 16, thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were given over.

If we can help you in your spiritual walk, whether it's by accepting your confession of faith in Jesus and baptizing you for the forgiveness of your sins, or receiving any kind of prayer request, we would encourage you to come to the front while we stand and sing.