Understanding Church Structure

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The church is not a disorganized band of believers, but a structure designed and directed by God. In this lesson, which is part of our study of ecclesiology, Pastor Keith breaks down the basic biblical structure of the church.

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If you were here last week and you have your handout from last week, I did not complete the entire lesson.
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We took a little side journey into 1 Timothy 3 and that took up our time.
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So we're going to be back.
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If you were looking at this, this is our overview of Christian theology and doctrine, section nine, ecclesiology, part two, church structure.
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That should be the handout that you're looking at.
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Is she giving you a hard time? I tell you what.
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I'll leave it at that.
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No, I'm just checking.
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I just want to have it.
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Well, my notes don't look like the handout.
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So I like to have a handout too, just so I know what you're looking at.
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It says read 1 Corinthians 14, 40 on your handout, but that's what we looked at last week.
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1 Corinthians 14, 40.
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The apostle Paul says that all things and the context of that is in the church because starting in chapter 12, going through chapter 14, Paul is talking about the ministry within the church and the gifts of the church and how the church ought to operate.
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And in chapter 14 specifically, he's talking about people who are out of order in the church.
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And at the end of chapter 14, he says all things are to be done decently and in order.
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And so when we think of ecclesiology, I consider that verse sort of the foundation of ecclesiology because it tells us that there's a right way to do it.
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And if there's a right way to do something, then there's a wrong way to do something.
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If there's a seemly way, then there's an unseemly way.
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And that's what that word decently means.
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If you remember last week, it means seemly, means proper, according to propriety.
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And if there's a proper way, then you can believe there's an improper way.
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And if you've never been to a church that you thought was an improper church, well, they're out there.
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There are churches where people dress up like clowns and they have communion with clowns serving communion.
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There are churches out there, cowboy churches, where when you go in, everybody dress up like cowboys and they have rodeos and they're inside.
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And some of you are going, hey, kind of like that.
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No, the idea is I don't have any problem with clowns.
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I don't have any problem with rodeos.
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But it turns the church into a circus, turns the meeting of God's people into a venue of entertainment rather than in the solemn assembly of the people of God around the word of God to worship through the spirit of God and to exalt the son of God and all to the glory of God.
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That's, you know, there's a purpose in why we gather.
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And so I wanna begin tonight with, I'd like for you to turn to Ephesians 5 because this is, we're going to actually go back a step because we started last week.
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And as I thought about why this happened, and I went to part two of the lesson.
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And the reason why is because I do believe that church structure, though certainly clear in the mind of God, was something that developed in the mind of the apostles as they began to see need within the church.
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And that's what we talked about last week.
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The diaconate or the deacons arose because of a need.
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And I'm, you know, we know God has a plan and he has a purpose and a structure, but so that's what we talked about last week is how structure sort of grew out of need.
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And eventually the structure would become that there would be elders and deacons.
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And that was where we sort of focused our attention last week, we looked at 1 Timothy 3 and Paul's writing to Timothy giving us the structure of the qualifications of those two offices.
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And it's the only two offices in the church.
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That doesn't mean the church can't have other ministries and things like that.
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But as far as a biblical office that has biblical qualifications, it's the only two that we have from a New Testament perspective.
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There is no office of Pope.
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There's no office of priest, except for Christ who is the high priest and we who have the priesthood of the believer, but there's no place in scripture where it says to become a priest, you have to desire it.
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And here are the requirements of desiring to be a priest because it's not an office that we can hold within the body of Christ.
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But I do wanna mention this.
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Some people believe the church shouldn't have a structure.
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Some people believe the church should be somewhat of a free for all.
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And I have even heard people say, the Bible doesn't give us an outline or structure for the church.
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So really it's up to us.
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We have to sort of create.
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And that's why you see churches that go so far off the rails because they believe the Bible isn't adequate to provide structure.
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And so therefore they create their own sense of idea and structure.
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I wanna quote from J.L.
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Dagg.
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This is the manual of church order, page 84.
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This is what he says.
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It must be admitted that the scriptures contain very little in the form of direct precept relating to the order and government of churches.
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But we have no right to require that everything designed for our instruction and duty should be made known to us only in the way of direct command.
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Judicious parents give much instruction to their children by example.
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And this mode of instruction is often more intelligible and more useful than precept.
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It was made the duty of the apostles to teach their converts whatsoever Christ had commanded and to set churches in order.
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If instead of leaving dry precepts to serve for guidance, they have taught us by example how to organize and govern churches, we have no right to reject their instruction.
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Instead of choosing to walk in a way of our own devising, we should take pleasure to walk in the footsteps of holy men from whom we have received the word of life.
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We revere the apostles as men inspired with the wisdom which is from above and respect for the Holy Spirit by which they were led should induce us to prefer their modes of organization and government to such as our inferior wisdom might suggest.
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So what is Dag saying? He's saying, yes, there's nowhere in the Bible that says this is how the church ought to be structured.
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But when we look at the New Testament church, the first century church, and we see how the apostles did church, they teach us by example.
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They teach us not by precept, but by living it.
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And we see it.
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And this is where, like for instance, there's nowhere in the Bible that says Sunday is the day that we should meet.
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However, what we do see is examples that the early church met on Sunday.
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They even referred to Sunday as the Lord's day because that was the day that the Lord rose.
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And when we start seeing later first century and into the midst of the second century literature from the early church writers, they have already adopted Sunday as the day that they're worshiping on.
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And they're already calling it the Lord's day as John did in Revelation chapter one.
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So we know that by example, these things have been passed down to us.
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I've heard many people say, we shouldn't worship on Sunday.
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We should worship on Saturday because Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath.
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And that was the day that God sanctified.
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And that is true.
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God did sanctify the Sabbath, but the New Testament church does not observe the old covenant Sabbath, but rather we observe the new covenant day that we refer to as the Lord's day.
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And if you think of it as one of the major transitions from the old to the new, one of the major transitions was going from the old covenant, which as I said last week, I think, I believe the old covenant had its final moment in the destruction of the temple in 80, 70.
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I think that was the closing of that period of time.
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And the new covenant had its inauguration with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.
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And so there was a period of transition there between the death, burial and resurrection of Christ and the destruction of the temple.
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And that's what the book of Acts tells us about that transitional period.
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But following that transitional period, we are now firmly within the new covenant church and the new covenant church, the structure that we have is not the old covenant worship, but it's the new covenant worship.
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And we look at the new covenant church in the book of Acts and in the epistles as the exemplar for how we structure our worship, right? In fact, I would even go as far as to say, this is why some people, and I don't agree with this, but I do understand the argument.
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This is why some people do not believe that we should have musical instruments in the church, because there is no example in the new Testament of the use of musical instruments.
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One might say, yes, but we have example in the old Testament, Psalm 150, praise him with lute and harp and strings.
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Yes, but you'd be surprised how many new covenant believers have said that was an old covenant, not a new covenant principle.
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Even Charles Spurgeon did not believe in the use of instruments.
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He considered the voice to be the instrument that was to be used to glorify God.
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Therefore, no organ, no piano, no tambourine, you know? And so there are arguments that can be made and debates that can be had regarding church structure, but just because there are arguments and debates doesn't mean that we don't have the truth.
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It's just, we're trying to discern the truth from the word of God.
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See, I think that when the Bible says that we have Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, you know, it talks about that, and that's a new Testament reference.
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I think that does include the idea of instruments because I think that that's, though it's not specifically referencing that, that language was language that was used not only for voice, but instrumental.
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So I think somebody could worship God with a piano.
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But again, this is a conversation, an intramural debate, an interbrethren conversation.
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So getting back to the idea of church structure, there are three aspects of church structure that form the foundation that we should not ever forget.
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And the three are on your sheet.
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Number one, there is only one head in the church.
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Number two, there are only two offices in the church.
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And number three, it's long on your sheet.
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Let me make it simple.
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The church is not a democracy.
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That's the way it should read.
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So there is only one head in the church.
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There are only two offices in the church, and the church is not a democracy.
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So let's look first at there is only one head of the church.
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Who is the head of the church? Jesus Christ.
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In fact, the language is where we're gonna read in Ephesians chapter five.
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If you have your Bible to Ephesians five, verse 22, it says very clearly, "'Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, "'for the husband is the head of the wife, "'even as Christ is the head of the church, "'his body, and is himself its savior.
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"'Now, as the church submits to Christ, "'so also wives should submit to everything, "'excuse me, in everything to their husbands.'" Now, that particular passage is highly unpopular in our modern society, especially among those who would say that the Bible is filled with patriarchal arguments, and they would argue against it, saying that it's wrong.
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I'm not here tonight to talk about how much wives should submit to their husbands, and I'm not here to talk about that, but the point Paul is making when he talks about the relationship between wives and husbands is that there is a parallel between the husband and the wife, and between the church and Christ.
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And the parallel is this.
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There's a parallel of headship.
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And the word there, the Greek word, is the word kephele.
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It is the word for head, and in its literal sense, it literally just means the head, but it has the idea of lordship, or the idea of being the master of something, the idea of being over something.
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That's the figurative sense, and that's the sense that it's being used here.
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When we say Jesus Christ is head of the church, we're saying Jesus Christ is master of the church.
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One of the things that I try to help people understand is that when you become a Christian, before you were a Christian, you were, in one sense, you were the master of your own ship.
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You were doing what you wanted to do.
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You were master and commander.
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Now, God was still sovereign, so don't get me wrong, but my point is saying you did what you wanted to do.
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When you become a Christian, the captain of the ship changes.
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Jesus becomes the captain of the ship.
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And therefore, the whole idea of sanctification is me becoming submissive to my new captain, because I've always been submissive to the first captain.
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I've always done what I wanted to do.
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Till I was 19 years old, all I ever did was what I wanted to do, you know? Because I was the captain.
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In that sense, I was my master.
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I did what I wanted.
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And again, please understand, I'm not denying the doctrine of sovereignty.
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I understand God was in control.
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The point is, from my perspective, it was all about what I wanted.
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But when God saved me, my life changed.
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The mastership of my life changed.
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And now, my desire, though I do not fulfill this desire perfectly in any sense of the word, my desire is to please my master.
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My captain is Jesus Christ.
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And this is an important concept because it really does get to the root of what we talk about sanctification.
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The idea, remember when we were in soteriology, we talked about justification is changes our relationship with God.
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We go from being a sinner to saint.
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We go from being a child of wrath to a child of God.
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We're justified, we're adopted, placed into the family of God.
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But then there's a process that begins, and that process is sanctification.
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And what do we say sanctification is? Our continual conforming to our Lord Jesus Christ.
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The apostle Paul says in Romans chapter eight, we have been predestined for what? Heaven? No, that's not what it says.
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It says you've been predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
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That's the focus of that idea.
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The whole idea is you've been predestined to be conformed to Christ because you've been united with Christ through regeneration and adoption.
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There's union with Christ, but now you're becoming like Christ because he's the head, he's the master.
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And I fail, you fail, we fail all the time.
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But that is still the goal.
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And therefore the church must recognize Christ is the head of this church.
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And that may seem like such a simple thing, but it really isn't.
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I'll give you a very, very current example.
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In Sun Valley, California, Dr.
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John MacArthur's church has been commanded to close by the state.
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He has gone through several weeks of various threats from the local government.
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They've already taken away a lease that they had for property that they had used for parking for I think 40 years.
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They've had this property that they used for parking.
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They removed their lease, so they can't park there.
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And the last I heard, they have threatened to put John MacArthur, 80 something year old John MacArthur in jail because he's having indoor worship services during this situation with COVID.
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What did John MacArthur say? He said, we are following our master.
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Jesus said, gather, so we gather.
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Now, some people take issue with him.
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Some people take issue with how he's interpreting Jesus's command and the command to assemble.
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But MacArthur's point should resonate with us because the point is I have a master that's greater than Caesar, right? Jesus told us, render under Caesar the things that are Caesar's and under God, the things that are God's.
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So we do have a responsibility to our government, both at a local and state and even national level.
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We have a responsibility to be good citizens.
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Romans 13, first Peter chapter two, tell us that we are to obey the governing authorities, but always so far as they are not commanding that we disobey God.
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Because in Acts, we remember the apostles gave us that great example where they said, if it is to choose between obeying God or men, we will choose to obey God rather than men.
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And so we have that, that is the structure of the church has to follow Christ.
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If the government came in tomorrow and said, Keith Foskey, you are not allowed to preach on this subject because this subject is offensive.
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And if the Bible addresses that subject, then that's what I'm gonna preach.
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Because no matter what the authority says, there is a higher one.
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And this church certainly operates with some requirements from the state.
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We're a building and we have certain requirements that we have to maintain certain codes that we have because we have people who come in and the state has a burden to make sure that people don't come into a condemned building.
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And so we respect that law and order that they maintain.
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We don't deny that they have a certain responsibility, but they do not have the right to tell us what to say and what not to say from the pulpit.
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They do not have a right to come in and tell us when or how we may gather because they're not the captain of the ship.
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Jesus Christ is the captain of the ship.
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It's not me and it's not Andy Montoro and it's not Mike Coyer and it's not Jack Bunning and it's not Richard Taylor.
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Though we do bear a certain responsibility of stewardship and leadership.
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We're gonna talk about that more next week.
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I'm gonna talk about five things that the elders have to do as leaders of the congregation.
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But the first and only commander is Jesus Christ.
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I can tell you nothing other than what Jesus Christ says.
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I have no authority apart from this book.
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I can't come to you and say, hey, you need to dress like me or you need to act like me, you need to do this with your kids or that with your kids because I do it.
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That's making myself the standard and that would be wrong.
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I think that's one of the most dangerous things that pastors often do is they set themselves up as the standard and therefore the head is no longer Christ.
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The head is what I call the Protestant Pope.
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A lot of pastors set themselves up as sort of mini-popes, right? They're the king of their little castle and it becomes their will be done rather than his will be done.
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That's why I think a plurality of elders, we'll talk about this again next week too, a plurality of elders is not only a good idea, but it's a necessary idea because it eliminates a singular man who is ruling over all without checks and balances.
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And I know that's a governmental language, but you understand when I'm preaching, I'm preaching to all of you and I am subject to every one of you in this sense.
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If I preach what is wrong, you have the right to challenge me.
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You have the right to come to my office.
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You have the right, you don't have to make an appointment.
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You come knock on my door.
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I heard a pastor, pretty big pastor too here in town.
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He said, my door is not open because I don't want stupid questions.
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And when I heard that, I about swallowed my tongue because honestly, my door, the door is always open.
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And I know this, there's four men in this church whose job is to come through that door if it's necessary.
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But anybody could, they're not the only ones who could correct me, but that is their job.
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In one respect is that we correct one another.
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We talk to one another.
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We ask questions of one another.
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We don't always agree, but I generally, you know what's funny? I generally go into the pulpit.
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If I know we disagree, I generally go in the pulpit knowing it and with a healthy respect for whatever the subject, because if it's something we disagree on, it's usually something that's either a secondary issue that doesn't matter, or it's something that we have thought through and talked through very well.
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Very, very seldom do I stand up and preach something and afterwards, all of them come to me and say, that was wrong because I'd be brokenhearted.
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And I didn't, I'm serious.
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It's part of the job because I'm not the head.
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It's not Keith's will be done.
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That's the point I'm trying to make.
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Christ is the head of the church.
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The elders function as stewards.
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And we say, well, what's a steward? A steward is a manager.
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And what do we manage? We manage God's people.
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How do we manage God's people? With God's word.
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This is the governing document.
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This is greater than the constitution.
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You know, we have our men in the military, men and women stand up and what do they do? I take an oath to protect the constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, right? Jack, you were in the military, you took that oath, right? We as the elders take the oath.
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We are gonna follow this book and we're going to protect the church from those who would come in and try to get us to go away from this book.
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In that sense, we have a responsibility.
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It's a greater responsibility because if you violate the constitution of the United States, that's bad.
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If you violate the word of God, that is infinitely worse.
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So Christ is the head.
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May we never forget that.
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And some people say, well, it looks like the elders are the head.
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No, the elders are submissive to Christ and his word.
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That's their job, first and foremost.
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Now, last week, we looked at the two offices and we're gonna dive into the eldership more next week because if you notice, the next thing is part three, church leadership.
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And I do wanna look at five responsibilities that the elders have.
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I want you guys to understand that.
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But we're gonna look at that next week.
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Let's jump quickly to the third thing.
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There is no democracy because that's a little offensive to some people.
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And I wanna, because as Americans, one thing that we tend to love is the concept of one man, one vote.
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And everybody has say.
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Everybody gets to have a say.
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And the idea of voting in the church really came as a result of the church becoming more and more Americanized.
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There are three forms of church government.
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Three, well, there are three primary forms.
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What we would call Episcopalian, which is Episkopos is the Greek for overseer.
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And that's usually a one-person leadership.
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Catholic Church is an Episcopalian form of government because they have the Pope, who's the one overseer.
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So his word goes, right? And the Anglican Church, they have an Episcopal form of government.
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That's why the American Church that's Anglican is the Episcopal Church.
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That's where the term comes from.
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And it's the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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He has a certain level of ultimate authority within the body.
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I was just gonna say, it's the Wizard of Oz.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Don't, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
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So that's one form, single head, single government.
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And then you have the government, the opposite sort of extreme is what is known as congregational government.
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Congregational government means the church functions through democracy and all decisions are made ultimately by vote or some form of affirmation.
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And so if you think about it, those are two wide extremes of two different positions.
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You either got one guy who's the sort of the dictator, or you got the other side where it's a, and excuse the expression, the mob makes the rules.
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Because really, if you think of what democracy is, democracy is mob rule.
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And for those of you who think that America is a democracy, it is not.
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America is a republic.
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And the difference between a republic and a democracy is a democracy never protects the minority.
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Because in a democracy, the majority always rules.
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And if the majority votes to take away everything the minority has, then the majority gets it.
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That's the danger of pure democracy.
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Pure democracy is dangerous.
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So we are a democratic republic, which means we vote for our representatives and they make decisions.
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That's democratic republic, but not a pure democracy.
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Yes.
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Jesus was crucified because of the democracy.
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Yeah, crucify him, right? Yeah, who do you want? Judas or, I'm sorry, who is it? Barabbas, yeah.
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You want Barabbas or Jesus? And everybody voted for Jesus.
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So the third form of government, which I think is the biblical form, and I would say I believe is the biblical form, is what we would call a Presbyterian government.
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Now you understand there's a Presbyterian church, but the term Presbyterian comes from the Greek presbyteros.
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So there's an Episcopal church and there's a Presbyterian church.
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But the idea of Presbyterian means elder governed.
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And typically what that means is that there are men in the church who have been chosen by the congregation and appointed as the leaders of the church.
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And therefore it's not a single leader who has all authority.
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And it's not every man, every vote, but it becomes a group of men who fit certain qualifications.
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That's what we talked about last week.
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What are the qualifications for an elder? First of all, he must have a good reputation.
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He must be above reproach.
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We'll talk more about that next week.
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But the idea of being above reproach has a list of what that means.
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Husband of one wife, not a brawler, not a drunkard, not a greedy person.
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And it goes on to say that he manages his household well.
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Right? Which means that he's already demonstrated the ability to be a governor in a small sphere.
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And as Jesus said, if you can't be trusted with the small things, you won't be given the greater things.
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So he's proven himself a governor in the small sphere, which is the sphere of the family.
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And as one of the Puritans said, the family constitutes a miniature church.
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We're gonna talk about, I'm gonna actually show that on the board in a minute.
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The family sort of functions like a small church.
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And so if a man can't manage his home, then how can he manage the church? And so that's Paul's argument.
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And therefore, the men who are called to this role have this role as having been chosen by the congregation to represent them as their elders, as their leaders.
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And ultimately gifted by God to do that, because they do have to have the ability to do it.
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And the church recognizes that gift.
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So having said that, here's something to consider, because I know there are those who would say, well, I still think the church should vote on everything.
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I still think the church should vote on everything.
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Okay, consider this scenario.
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Imagine a group of people who are within the church, and they began to be convinced that homosexuality was not a sin, and that the church should recognize homosexuality as a positive alternative lifestyle choice, and that the church should welcome homosexuals into full membership without repentance.
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Imagine that happened in the church, that there was a small group within the church, and they began to petition within the church, and they were able to build a coalition within the church of 51%.
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Remember the whole idea of majority rules.
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So they were able to build a coalition of 51%, and there you have a church change.
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But is it a godly change? Is it a change based on scripture? Is it a change based on Christ as the head? Or is it a change based on mob rule? Well, you see, this is, I think some people say, well, that's an extreme example.
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It's not an extreme example, because it's happening all around us.
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Churches are constantly bringing in false teaching, false doctrines, false teachers, and it's this overwhelming sense of everybody gets a say, and there's no qualifications to have a say.
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There's no qualifications to have a voice.
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There's no qualification, everybody, one man, one voice.
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And I think it is a danger that is often overlooked.
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Remember this, righteousness is never determined by vote.
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Righteousness is determined by God.
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If I stand up and preach Jesus Christ is the God-man, and half the church stands up and say, no, we don't believe Jesus is the God-man, he'd still be the God-man.
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If 75% of the church stood up and said, Jesus is not the God-man, he'd still be the God-man.
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Sin is still sin, right is still right, wrong is still wrong, no matter how we vote.
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But I wanna say this, just because a church is not democratic does not mean the congregation has no voice.
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The congregation does have a voice.
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There are times in scripture when the congregation speaks.
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They chose the men in Acts to be the first deacons.
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Choose from among yourselves, seven men of good reputation, right? So the church had an opportunity to speak in the process of church discipline, Matthew 18.
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What is the final step of church discipline according to Jesus? He says, first, you go to the person, you tell them their sin, if they repent, it's over.
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You go to them, if they don't repent, you take two or three witnesses and you try to call them to repentance.
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If they don't repent, you take them before the church, right? And in that sense, the church affirms their excommunication.
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It's a sad day when that has to happen, but the church has a voice at that moment.
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So I'm not saying the church never has a voice in scripture.
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And I'm not saying there's never a time.
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Every year, you know what we ask the church to affirm? We have a big congregational meeting.
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Big, this is a big meeting.
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It's our annual meetings.
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It's the only meeting we have, so it's big.
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We have a big congregational meeting somewhere around November.
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And you know what you get to affirm? I don't use the word vote.
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You'll notice, I always say we either affirm it or not, but I don't like the term voting.
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We affirm the budget, why? Because we're saying as a congregation, we believe we can support this.
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If I brought you a budget of $300,000, you should all not affirm it because we can't support that budget.
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You understand? We're bringing you something and saying, can we support this? And it's already been examined by the elders.
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It's already been looked over by those who are in charge of the money and looking over the money.
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And it's been carefully decided, but we wanna know you're gonna support this.
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You understand? That's what we're putting it out there.
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And so the congregation has a voice every time we choose an elder.
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We ask the congregation, come and talk to us.
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And then when it's the time to lay hands on that elder, we ask the church to affirm that they trust that man.
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In fact, our constitution demands 90% affirmation for an elder, not 51%, not 75%.
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If a man doesn't have 90% confidence, and I would say it would be 100% unless I didn't know that there was gonna be somebody who voted no.
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There's always somebody who wants to vote no.
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And it's not fair that the one person who just wants to vote no would be able to squash the idea.
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But you understand though, 90% we're asking for a lot.
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But I said this when we came up with that number in our discussion as we were forming the constitution, I said, I wouldn't go to a church where more than 10% of the people didn't want me.
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I mean, it's just that simple.
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If I knew 10% of the people didn't want me or more, this is not the church for me.
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And I think that that's the reason, well, that's not the reason we picked 90%, but we wanted to understand this is a, this is almost a unanimous affirmation of this man.
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The church, and I will say this, when we chose Mike and Andy, because they're the last two elders that we've chosen in the last couple of years, 100%, the whole church affirmed.
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There was no one outlier trying to be funny.
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There was nobody, it was 100%.
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We trust these men to do this job.
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And I was thankful for that.
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So this again, Christ is the head.
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The two offices have their place.
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And then the church is not a democracy, but it does have a voice.
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And the elders have a functioning leadership in the body.
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I wanna show you one thing and we'll close.
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Real quick, this won't take one second.
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A while back, I saw a picture and I thought it was great.
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It was a picture of an umbrella, if you can imagine an umbrella.
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And it said, if you think about a family, God, and then the father, and the mother, and then the children, and you think about the umbrella as sort of the role of protecting, you know, that's what an umbrella does.
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And so God is the ultimate protector, provider of the family.
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And then the first one down is the father.
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He has the job of protecting, providing, and doing that thing.
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And then of course, the mother is his helpmate.
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And then of course, the children are the beneficiaries of what they're doing.
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And I said, that's a beautiful picture, but you can do the same thing with the church.
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You can say Christ is the head of the church and his word is the governing document.
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And the elders have the responsibility to teach that word to the people of God and maintain the order of the church in light of that word.
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And I'm not saying the members are children.
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Don't paint too close of a correlation, but the point is there is a structure and that's the structure.
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Christ is the head.
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The Bible is his word.
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And we are all to submit to his word.
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That's the simple structure.
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We don't get to create righteousness.
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We don't get to determine righteousness.
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We discover what is right by studying the word of God.
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All right, let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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Thank you for this time to study together.
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Lord, may you be glorified in what we do at this church and may Christ always be the head of Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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May we always submit in humbleness to him and to his commands and it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.