Adult Sunday School - Going Public Part 7 (Chapter 7)

All right. Well, good morning, beloved. Good morning. It's so good to have you here this morning. Let's open a word of prayer and go into our study this morning.

Father, we do come before you with hearts full of gratefulness, Lord, that you've brought us here to this place on the

Lord's Day to receive instruction, to receive teaching from your Word. We pray, Father, that you would edify us in this time together, and Lord, we pray for all the activities of the church, the children who are studying, those who are in Pastor Conley's group.

We pray, Father, for your Spirit to move in our hearts, to motivate us, to strengthen us in the inner man, so that we may do all that we can to serve you well.

For the glory of your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, amen. All right.

So if you are following along in today's book, we have a great discussion,

Chapter 7, on the badge of belonging, church membership, and its effective signs.

And we've been going through this book, and the premise is pretty simple, pretty basic, but yet it's still very much controversial in light of today's

Christian culture. And it's that what our conviction is, is that God's Word teaches explicitly that church membership, first of all, is important, and the entrance into church membership is

Christian baptism, and a reoccurring sign of the renewing of our

Christian membership or reaffirming our baptism is the Lord's table, is communion. And so this is a very simple premise.

The reason why this is even a discussion is because of the lackadaisical approach modern

Christians have taken to church membership, and where church membership is very much downplayed, and it's downplayed not so much for theological reasons, but for emotional reasons.

What are some examples of this that you have seen? How have we seen this topic become more of a emotional issue versus a theological issue?

Culture of inclusion. I love that. Yes. Is there wrong to be inclusive? Not necessarily.

We want to be an inclusive church in a sense, in that we are inviting, that we're warm, that we're engaging, that we want people of every skin color, of every background, of every nationality represented in the body of Christ.

It's that great scene we see in Revelation chapter 7 where all the nations are gathered before the throne and the throng of Jehovah.

We want that. But inclusion to the detriment of truth is no service to the kingdom.

One of the things that I've said is that in the culture that we live in today, the culture celebrates ignorance as a virtue.

Maybe you've heard it said, I have conversations with Christians all the time, I've made really good friends with a church and with Christians of this particular church, and it's a more non -denominational, seeker -sensitive church, but I really like the pastor, and so anytime we hit on a discussion that is not, in his mind, that is debatable, he says, well, everyone has their own point of view.

And as soon as someone goes there, to me, what that communicates is, one, a lack of knowledge, and two, a lack of conviction.

And I know that sometimes in the Reform camp we get the stigma of being know -it -alls, and it's well -earned, but at the same time,

I think that one of the things that, again, that is exalted within Christendom today is this idea that ignorance is virtuous, and it's not.

Ignorance is not virtuous. There's nothing virtuous about being ignorant. And so contending for the truth, contending for what is true, contending for what the

Bible teaches explicitly or implicitly, I think that's a virtue.

And so we have to prioritize what is actually virtuous in regard to our seek and understanding of truth.

And so this is one of those very basic things that it really shouldn't be that controversial, but unfortunately it is, and today's lesson touches a little bit on that as to the nature of the controversy and what

Bobby Jameson seeks to establish in regard to his thesis, which is, again, that church membership, baptism is the entrance of church membership, and church membership is of importance and value within Christian polity.

And so any thoughts or questions on this week's reading, if you've done it? Polity just comes from the word politik, which means the organizational structure of an organization or church, and so the church has a structure, therefore it has a politik or a polity.

Yeah, so we have, again, a very exclusive claim as Christians.

We don't have an exclusive claim in terms of denominational affiliation, though, and that's where a lot of Christians sometimes blur those lines, you know.

We confess that Jesus is the only way. Jesus says in John 14, 6, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except by me. There's an exclusive claim. There's an exclusive way to God. It is through Christ.

Scripture is emphatic in Acts chapter 4, verse 12, there's salvation, no other name given among men by which we might be saved but the name of Jesus.

So there's an exclusivity there, but we don't mean that there's an exclusivity in terms of denomination, right?

And so can a non -Reformed Baptist be saved? Can a Pentecostal be saved?

Can a Wesleyan be saved? Yes, of course. You know, Christ is transcendent above denominational affiliations and lines.

There are things in our theology that we must have wrong because no one has a perfect theology on this side of eternity.

The whole purpose of our desire to study Scripture is that we can be constantly refined, so we're always coming to a clearer picture and understanding of the truth, but that doesn't mean that we ignore our historical confessions and convictions and beliefs.

But there's inevitably something wrong in our theology, so we always have to be humble and always reforming in that sense.

This is one of the areas, I think, where evangelicalism as a whole has gone wrong, and we need to be reforming not to something new but something that's actually old.

Because what happens over time is that as the church progresses in an age, we tend to go to new things, and those new things are typically what's actually wrong.

So if you look at the early heresies of the Christian church in the first three centuries, the earlier heresies were

Christological, concerning Christ. And among those heresies were two primary heresies.

One was Arianism. Anyone know what that was? Emmanuel? Which was?

Well, define that, because your own wounds are broad. Yeah.

So they essentially believe that Christ, they deny the deity of Christ, they deny the exclusivity of Christ and his divine nature.

So an Arian was someone who denied the deity of Christ, essentially. And that was among the earlier heresies.

But even prior to that heresy was a Gnostic heresy. This was also a Christological error in that the

Gnostics believed not that Jesus was not God, they affirmed the divinity of Jesus, what they denied was the humanity of Jesus.

So the earlier heresies of the church were Christological. They were attacking the person and work of Jesus, which then has implications for everything else, including church polity, including church life and structure.

And so those things had to be corrected through councils, through debates.

And so the Nicene Council, the creeds that came out of that were, in fact, creeds that affirmed the majority view, which was the old view, which was that Jesus is both man and God.

These creeds had to later, obviously, develop more firm theological language.

And you see those, okay, you have the Apostles' Creed, you have the Nicene Creed, you have the Athanasius Creed, and all of them build on a more robust Christological understanding that's actually much older than the confessions themselves.

And so oftentimes in history, in church history, we have to go back in time in order to fix the problems of the present, okay?

So problems of the present today in regard to church polity is that a lot of folks believe and say that, hey, you know, you don't have to, you know, be baptized.

You don't have to be a member of the church. If you... I remember my youth pastor of the first church

I went to. This is a great church, and they had church membership, and they believed in church membership. But the youth pastor...

The youth pastors usually always have kind of a more seeker -sensitive, dumbed -down polity than maybe the senior pastor, because they're working with teens and stuff.

And so I remember one Sunday I heard that, hey, they're doing a membership class, and, you know, talking about membership, and said, well,

I want to be a member. And the youth pastor said, you want to be a member? Okay, great, you're a member. I was like, that's it?

But of course the church itself had a process and had... But you know, what he was trying to do, he was trying to say, well, if you want to be, you are.

What's the danger with that mindset? What's the danger of that mindset?

I mean, it's really... It's kind of nice in some regard, but it's also kind of dangerous in another regard. What's the danger behind that mindset?

That's a very good point. So why do we have a membership process? And I think you just hit the nail on the head. It's because we want to preserve the unity of Christ's church and Christ's doctrine, right?

And so if anyone just walks here and they say, I want to be a member, great, you're a member. Well, what you believe, what you practice, what you hold on to, your life, your testimonies are all things that need to be heard and well understood and grasped in order for you to become a member.

Why? Because we want to preserve, according to Scripture, the unity of Christ's church and also the doctrine of Christ.

And it's the job of pastors to protect the flock, Acts chapter 20, from ravenous wolves who may teach things contrary to Christ's doctrine.

And so there is a lot of practical reasons, and the danger behind just being too open -ended in one's membership is that you inevitably will have just a breeding ground of false doctrine and false converts.

And so there needs to be a process in place for people to enter into the membership of the local church.

Now, what does he mean in this chapter, in chapter 7, when he talks about the effective signs?

Remember, the badge of belonging, church membership, and its effective signs, what were some of the things he meant by effective signs?

Correct, those are effective signs of church membership, of one's relationship to Christ.

Let's break that down a little bit more. What did we learn last week and a little bit this week in the reading in regard to the

Lord's Supper? What is the purpose of the Lord's Supper in its polity, in that ecclesial context?

Everyone know what ecclesial means, or ecclesiastic? It means just church. The word for church in the

Greek is ecclesia, and ecclesia just means congregation or assembly, and so things that are ecclesiastic have to do with the structure, organization of that local assembly or congregation.

That's right. So one of the things that's mentioned in page 138 in the second paragraph of that heading, in order to come full circle, we need to discern not just the ecclesial shape of baptism but the ecclesial shape of membership.

That is, we need to describe more accurately what church membership is in light of the fact that baptism is one of its effective signs.

And he says, of course, membership has a Eucharistic shape too. What does he mean by Eucharistic? Close. What does that sound like?

Eucharistic, Eucharist. Close. Anyone ever been to a

Catholic church? Yeah, so the Eucharist. So the Eucharist is a word for the sacraments of the body, bread, and the wine representing

Christ's body. And so Eucharistic means that it just means communion, essentially.

So church life and its effective signs has two very outward means. One is baptism.

That's the initial entry into church membership, into your identity as a

Christian. And then again, reaffirming oath, the reaffirming act is communion.

And so think of it very basically as this, you know, again, Christian life is a lot like marriage.

And so you take that initial vow at your wedding and you exchange rings.

That is, in effect, your baptism. It is a public display.

It is a public means that declaring that I am of Christ and I am in Christ, I am identifying in the gospel through the life, death, burial, resurrection of Jesus what the waters represent.

It represents what again? The waters represent? Represents a grave, right?

And so again, we're good Baptists, so we have to have a pretty robust understanding of what baptism is and what it signifies and why it matters that we do it biblically and not just in a sprinkling or a patal

Baptist, but instead of a creedal Baptist position is again that we believe that baptism is by full immersion by those confessing the gospel.

And so they go down into the waters, they are identifying there with the death and burial of Jesus.

Jesus, oftentimes water again in Scripture represents two things that are detrimentally opposed to each other actually.

Life, because without water we cannot have life, all ancient cities and civilizations settle around waters, freshwater ports.

And then you also have in Scripture, water also represents death, represents the grave.

In Genesis chapter 1, the Spirit of God is hovering over the surface of the deep, which is

Hebrew idiomism for saying that God is controlling the third uncontrollable evil that is associated with the deep.

When people went off into the deep, this is the place of Leviathan, this is the place where shipwrecks happen, where people go onto the horizon and never to be seen again.

And so water has those two connotations, life and death, detrimentally opposed, but also linked together in perfect symmetry and harmony.

You have Christ in His death and in our baptism we are identifying in His death by means of the water.

We are also being represented, the water also represents life as well because not only are we buried in it, but we come out of it representing the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

These are powerful symbols, these are effective outward symbols of our union with Christ.

And so the symbols matter, right? So when a paedo -baptist or what

I call the sprinklers, those who are baptized by sprinkling, when they say, well, it's not so important, well, no, it is important, and it's interesting because it's from these denominations, usually

Lutheran, Wesleyan, that practice some form of paedo -baptism or sprinkling, they pride themselves in having a liturgy, liturgy meaning order of service within the church context, that is seeped in rich symbolism of the gospel.

So you'll see that priests will often come and they'll have the sprinkling, they'll have chalices with incense, and they're saying all these things are lifted from gospel imageries, they'll have a

Bible reading from one of the gospels, and so they say our liturgy is seeped with rich symbolism of the gospel, yet in the most important aspect of church liturgy, they fail to see the rich symbolism of full immersion.

And so that's always been a point of contention and contradiction amongst what's called a higher liturgical church, such as what you see within those who confess paedo -baptism or sprinkling.

So these are important things because they shape our understanding of how it is and what it means to be a

Christian. A Christian need be baptized, not ought to be.

So the position, the posture of modern Christians is that, well the important thing is that you believe in your heart and that you confess

Jesus as Lord. Now, who would say otherwise, right?

Clearly those things are important. Clearly you cannot have, you cannot be a Christian without confessing with your mouth that Jesus is

Lord. You cannot be a believer without having these firm convictions. But is that where we stop?

And so professional faith is important. We call people to repentance and faith in Jesus, we want them to make that professional faith.

Yeah. Yeah. And again, that's, so just to clarify, so John Piper, very famous pastor, a person that I look up to and respect very much as well, you know, he has a more contradictory view on church membership where he would take the position that one doesn't necessarily need to be baptized in order to be a church member, rather what is the prerequisite is instead a profession of faith in Jesus.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Absolutely. And so the question becomes, what is necessary for salvation and what is necessary for church membership?

These two things are not necessarily the same answer and I'll explain why.

In order to be a Christian, in order to be born again, regenerated, is regeneration a work of man or of God?

It's a work of God. We believe that God is one who initially puts in that deposit of faith, he calls you by his good mercy and grace, he regenerates the person so that they may profess with their mouth that Jesus is

Lord, okay? So we believe regeneration precedes that initial confession because one cannot confess, according to Paul in 1

Corinthians 12, I believe, one cannot profess Christ as Lord unless by the

Spirit of God. Okay? So the Spirit of God has to come, has to precede that belief, that statement.

So a person can be regenerated, that is to be born again, saved, okay, prior to, well not can, but must be saved prior to baptism because baptism is not an effective means of salvation, okay, meaning that we don't believe that baptism saves anyone, right?

But baptism is a covenantal, outward display of an inward transformation, right?

So what precedes baptism of water is baptism of the Spirit.

So one must be baptized in the Spirit, that is regeneration, then be baptized in water as a symbol of that initial conversion.

Make sense? So for instance, we always point to the thief on the cross, right?

Jesus says, you'll be with me in paradise. So presumably that person, you know, is saved.

Now, we kind of mess up the terms and we think that, well, he went to heaven that day.

That's not what Jesus meant by paradise because Jesus did not ascend to heaven until the ascension.

So when Jesus died, Scripture teaches and our creeds confess that He descended to Hades, okay?

This Hades at this point according to, you know, I believe what the Bible teaches has, you know,

Hades is the place of the dead, and there's Abraham's bosom, and then there's a place of the damned.

And Jesus empties Hades, the righteous part of Hades, Abraham's bosom, or what would have been referred to as paradise in the

Old Testament. And then they go into the presence of Christ. That would be in line with what

Paul seems to teach in Ephesians chapter 4 when he says that Christ descended into the lower regions of the earth.

He also ascended. And when He ascended, He brought with Him a host of captives, okay? And so those were those who were in Hades.

That's a side note. But, of course, we believe and we confess that as a result of this understanding of God's Word in regard to salvation.

One does not need to be baptized in order to be saved, but one must be baptized in order to be recognized as a member of the

Christian church. Are these two things contradictory? Because they might almost sound contradictory.

How do we harmonize this? Because in one breath we're saying you don't have to be baptized in order to be saved, but in order for you to be recognized as a

Christian, you need to be baptized. Mm -hmm. Correct.

Correct. So, when we, as a church, we're going through this right now, when we affirm someone's testimony, we hear someone's testimony, they affirm our beliefs and our standards, and we vote them into church membership.

What we're saying is that we've heard your testimony, we've weighed it to Scripture, we are affirming your testimony, therefore, we're saying together declaratively that we recognize you as a

Christian, okay? Would we admit every

Christian to membership? No. Why not?

It's also possible. Yeah. It's possible. That's right.

That's right. That's right. That's right. We don't necessarily affirm, well, if someone has a more charismatic understanding of Scripture or a view that's detrimentally opposed to Reformed doctrines, we probably wouldn't admit that person to membership.

What we're saying is we're not saying you're not a Christian. We're saying is that according to our understanding of Scripture, we cannot affirm you as a brother based upon our standard and understanding of Scripture.

Same is true for when we look at issues of church discipline. When we exercise the authority of church discipline collectively as a church, we're not necessarily saying this person is no longer a

Christian. That's not necessarily what we're doing. It could be, it may be, but it's not exclusively saying to this person they are no longer

Christians. What we're saying is we can no longer validate the claim that you're a

Christian. Salvation is individual. The Lord knows those who are His, and God is the ultimate judge of the living and the dead.

So God ultimately knows those who are His, even those who He chastises and has to discipline. We're not saying that they're not saved, but what we're saying is that they are inconsistent with the claims of their original confession.

Okay? Yeah. So we would say, for instance, if someone departs from the faith so drastically as to espouse a doctrinal error, like Arianism, you know, something that's major in terms of the personal work of Jesus, someone says, say,

I don't believe Jesus is God anymore. Well, at that point we would essentially anathematize that individual in saying they are not a

Christian. We are speaking declaratively because this is what God has said a

Christian is, someone who believes that Jesus is God, and you reject that. Therefore, you know, we can declare with confidence that person is not a

Christian, right? But when a person is going through a disciplinary sin issue, it's not necessarily the case that we're saying they're not a

Christian. What we're saying is that we can no longer affirm the testimony that they initially gave because they're now living in a different way.

Correct. Correct. Does that make sense? Okay. So I just want to lay these things down very simply as best as I can because sometimes these things are a little bit complicated.

And so like John Piper, for instance, one of those folks who believes that church membership should be more open. Well, how do we define church membership in the first place?

How do we define church membership? What is church membership?

Don't you all jump at once? Yeah, it's pretty simple.

Church membership is a covenant arrangement. Okay? It's a covenant arrangement.

What do we mean by covenant? Well, covenant means an agreement. And so there are different kinds of covenants.

There are different kinds of agreements you can come into. You can come into a business arrangement, a business covenant with someone.

You can go into a marriage covenant, an agreement between two people to be in covenant relationship.

You can also come into covenant arrangement with the local church, and that's what we mean by church membership. It is a covenantal agreement saying, we affirm the same things and we hold the same values and doctrines to be true.

And as a result of that, we are covenanting together and saying, we affirm these things to be true and we're going to live in covenant community, meaning that our goals, our aspirations, our beliefs are all heading towards the same direction.

And that's what you need in order to be in covenant relationship. So if you come into a business arrangement with someone, you'd probably be best if you have the same vision for the business.

Because if you have two divergent views of where the business should go, that business is no longer going to be viable.

Why? Because it's being pulled in two different directions. That covenant isn't a viable arrangement.

Same is true in marriage. If you meet someone you really like, but you have two totally different philosophies of life, of morality, of family, that arrangement probably won't work too well.

The same thing is true of the local church. You have to have the same common values, beliefs, structures, vision for the future, so that you can have a cohesive arrangement so you're not being pulled to and fro by every wind, by every wind of doctrine, the

Bible says. And so, again, quite simply put, church membership is individuals coming into covenant community together under the gospel of Jesus.

So one of the examples that the book gives out is let's imagine, for instance, a first century Christian meeting somewhere in probably what would be today, what was

Asia Minor would be modern Turkey today. And let's say Christians are gathering together and someone hears the gospel preached in a very pagan context.

They believe in Jesus. At that moment, upon profession of faith and belief, they receive regeneration of the

Holy Ghost. They're a Christian, but they see this church that's meeting, and so they start attending this church.

They're under the teaching of the pastors and elders there. They receive letters from the apostles.

And what does this person do who's confessed faith? He goes and gets baptized, as the scripture says to do.

This optional baptism that's become very cultural within Christian today was not the norm.

It wasn't normative at all within the early first century of the church. It was believe and be baptized.

So repent, believe, be baptized. That was the formula every single time. That is the apostolic formula for the

Christian. It's not repent, believe, and when you're ready, then you go do it.

It might take you 20 years, but you'll get there. No. That's such a far cry from what we see in the

New Testament. It was almost immediate, even more immediate than what we would do actually.

Sometimes I'm convicted, not that we don't baptize often or as quickly as these early first century

Christians did. And so to them it was very simple, it was very clear, repent, believe, be baptized.

That's the formula. And this is why there isn't this drawn out ecclesiological statement in the epistles regarding this issue because it was already implicit.

Because there wasn't this long gap between confession, believing, and then being baptized.

It was almost instantaneous. It was a natural progression for each person who believed in Jesus. And if you were not to be baptized, it would be a very strange thing.

You would not be considered a member of the early church, and you'd be considered more so akin to maybe a visitor, someone who is maybe learning a

Bible study rather than being considered a member of the congregation. Because the congregation in the first century didn't have strict criteria, and we know this not just from Scripture, but we know it from extra biblical materials that come around that same time.

If you look at the Epistle of Barnabas, you look at the writings of Polycarp, Ignatius, all these early church fathers, pre -Nicene church fathers, they had a very strong church polity and a very strong understanding of church membership, very much akin to what we would confess today.

And so again, the notion that a person could just wait until they're ready to be baptized is a far cry.

If you're not ready to be baptized, you're not ready to be a Christian, and so your initial confession comes into question.

And so how do we know someone's a Christian is because they confess with their mouth that Jesus is

Lord, and that is then turned into action, and that action, that initial action is baptism.

Any thoughts or questions on this so far? So you have an early first, second century document called a didache, anyone know what that is?

Yeah. Yeah, D -I -D -A -A -C -H -E?

Yeah. And does anyone know what that is? What's that? Yeah. Yeah, it was kind of like a, almost like a church manual, like a, yeah, like a manual kind of explaining certain like basic things and terms and practices.

And within the didache, what you'll see is, you know, the importance of baptism. So one of the things that they had, and these are extra biblical documents, so we have to take them with a grain of salt, but it's also important because I think it does give us insight into the early mindset of early

Christians. So among baptism, they had a couple of requirements. One is that you actually fast, right?

So you have to fast. Not only do you have to fast, but the church has to fast as well. Then, okay, ideally you will baptize them in full immersion in living water.

Anyone know what living water is? What's that? Raining or running?

Running water. Running water, that's right. So it has to be running water, so like a river or stream, a lake, you know, something that's moving.

If you can't, then, you know, static water is fine. You know, you can find a, you know, pond or something, you know, or bathtub of some sort.

That's okay. But, you know, the preference was clearly you have to fast, you baptize in full immersion, and then you do it in living water.

And if not, if you can't do it, in order to fulfill the ordinance, then you baptize in static water or still water.

And then you baptize, if you don't have enough water, then at that point, you can take as much water as you can, and then you dunk, you know, over their heads.

So that's where sprinkling inevitably arises from. And so I think that the didache,

I think, takes too much liberty in that regard. And so you start seeing this pretty early in Christian history.

This becomes pretty early in church history, the dominant means of baptism was sprinkling.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's free and easy to find. You just Google it, and you'll find it. And so, again, we believe, however, a little differently,

I think more scripturally sound is to hold baptism in a high view.

Why? Because it is a church ordinance. And when it comes to ordinances of the church, ordinance, what comes to mind when you hear the word ordinance?

Law. Law. That's right. Law and order. Ordinance. It's literally in the word. It is a means of orderliness.

And so when we think of church ordinances, who is the one who establishes them? Who establishes a church ordinance?

Christ. No. Who said it? Christ. Christ. Christ sets the ordinance because it's

His church. It's His ordinance. That's why we call it the Lord's ordinances. Therefore, we do not have the liberty to exercise those ordinances however we feel, rather, that's why we hold to what's called the regulative principle of worship.

We adhere to what Christ has set as the model and standard for such practices because they're

His. And we don't have the liberty to change them as we please. And so that's why we take these things very seriously.

I was talking, again, friends of this pastor, and I asked him about communion.

I said, okay, how often do you guys do communion? Oh, you know, maybe once or twice a year. I'm like, really?

That little? I'm like, that's so disappointing to hear that. Like, why? Like, why do you not do it more often? Oh, well, you know, we don't want the ordinance to lose its sacredness.

I said, how often do you pass the collection plate? Right? And they do it every week.

Well, you know, why that? Why do that weekly and not the

Lord's Supper? I mean, one is pretty explicitly taught as being a weekly ordinance in the

New Testament church. Look at the book of Acts. They weekly met together, and they weekly broke bread, which means that they took communion.

And offerings were not necessarily a weekly arrangement within the church.

Some people would say that it is within the bounds of the regular principle. I would probably say otherwise.

I don't think that taking an offering is permitted within the regular principle of worship.

And it's actually something the pastors here have studied, and we came to that conclusion last year, that this was not something in line with the regular principle, primarily because it takes away...if

the communion...I mean, well, if offering, for instance, was done weekly or done in the context of the church service itself, it would contradict what

Paul says, that giving should not be compulsory, right? And giving is a private act of worship, not a public act of worship, right?

So that seems to be the pretty clear consensus of the early church, and also of this

New Testament as a whole. So we would say that giving, tithing, is a private act of worship, not a public act of worship.

But that's something for a discussion for another day, if you ever wanted to have it. So when we look at communion, communion is so important.

It should be a weekly ordinance. We don't get to change, manipulate what it is or how it should be practiced.

It should be at least a weekly ordinance. And I get why churches maybe do it once a month, and I understand even less so those churches that do it maybe once a year.

It's almost very Jehovah Witness to me, where they celebrate the memorial once a year, and they kind of coincide it with Nisan 14 in the

Jewish calendar, Passover. But this is very clearly a weekly observance in the early church.

So these are the Lord's ordinances, and that's what we want to establish. God gets to set the standard for His ordinance.

God gets to set the standard for what is and what is not church membership, okay? And so again, without laying this foundation over and over again, as we already have, the initial sign of church membership is baptism.

Why is that so? What convinces us of that fact? Why is baptism the visible sign of church membership?

All these things might seem very trivial. But if you go to a wedding, and the groom or the bride, at the moment when they're supposed to say,

I do, they don't say, I do, wouldn't that be kind of weird? That'd be really strange when it comes to, and you know, now so -and -so, you can say,

I do, and then there's just silence. What would that communicate to you about that arrangement?

There's doubts, right? In the same way, baptism is the I do. Baptism is the outward sign of the

I do, of me saying, yes, I believe in Jesus, I'm going to follow Jesus. And we, as pastors, I see this all the time, especially when we're dealing with new or younger folks who are contemplating church membership.

They'll say, oh, I believe in Jesus, I grew up in a Christian home, but I'm not so sure about baptism. Well, if you're not so sure about baptism, you're not so sure about Jesus, because if you believe in Jesus, if it was that conviction, then it would be clear, okay, yeah,

I need to be baptized. But we look at baptism as a huge commitment. But if you truly confess

Jesus, you've already made that commitment. Now this is just an outward sign telling the world that you've made the commitment, right?

And so obviously, this is a committal arrangement, and it is a covenantal arrangement.

It's a personal covenantal arrangement in that this is something that's between you and the Lord, but it's also a public arrangement in that it involves the church, because who administers baptism?

Church. Can Joe Blow just baptize you? You know, actually,

I know of a guy who paid someone to baptize him, and he didn't want anyone religious.

He like paid some like just dude off the street, literally a guy off the street, and like paid him like 20 bucks.

The guy was like, oh, this is kind of weird, but yeah, sure, I'll do it for you. And his reasoning behind it was he didn't want to be baptized by any religious organization or denomination, but because he thinks that baptism is a private, you know, one -on -one thing between you and God, he thought that was totally appropriate.

And he thought himself kind of a genius in thinking of that. But that's wrong, because baptism is not just a private thing, arrangement, it is a public arrangement, and it's to be administered by God's church, by God's people, right?

So just, you know, Joe Blow off the street baptizes you, it's not a legitimate baptism. It needs to be administered by disciples, because it is a disciple act, okay?

Yes? Say again?

Overrule him? Well, he's not a member of a church, and that's his whole reasoning, is that he doesn't want to be a member of a church, and he thinks he can just, this is between him and God, yes.

Which is very inconsistent with Catholic dogma, because, for instance, a priest,

I think, in Mexico was reprimanded because all his baptisms were done wrong.

So 30 years of baptisms became instantly invalid, because he was baptizing, his formula was off by one word, and he had been doing that for 30 years.

So they took all those baptisms and made them null and void, essentially. So it's a very inconsistent thing that Catholics confess and say.

But go on with your point. Yeah, Romans chapter one,

I'm sorry, Romans chapter six. Do we not recognize that all we have been baptized, we've been baptized into Christ's body?

What is Christ's body? The church. So we've all been baptized into Christ's body, that is the church.

So that is a very clear demonstration of that. Yes? How about the simple fact that we're baptized?

Yeah. That's right.

I don't know where the debate is at. That's right. And it really shouldn't be a debate. And also, it's a comeback. That's right.

It's not the Great Suggestion, it's the Great Commission. And so, absolutely. Absolutely. Any other thoughts or questions?

Yes. And so here we understand, again, that baptisms and that the

Lord's Supper, these are ordinances that shape the ecclesiology of the church, that is to say, it shapes the life and practice of the church.

And one comes before the other. So baptism comes first, and then again you have

Lord's Supper as a weekly, essentially recommitting of that initial oath that we took.

So baptism and Lord's Supper, both are oaths, essentially. And that oath is the

Lordship of Jesus. You confess with thy mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God was raised from the dead.

Thou shalt be saved. So the creed of the Christian is that Jesus is Lord. We confess that upon baptism, and then we confess it continually, weekly in the

Lord's Supper. Does that make sense? There's a continuation, it is a recommitment to that initial oath.

And so when we talk about the spiritual presence of communion, the importance of communion, it's not just that we have a little snack, you know, at the end of service.

It's that there's a seriousness, there's a gravity, there's a spiritual presence that's in the elements of the sacrament.

And it is a true spiritual experience. So just like baptism can be profoundly spiritual, and it is profoundly spiritual, so is, again, our weekly partaking of the

Lord's Supper. It's a spiritual experience. Now, church membership is often misunderstood as it just being a 20th, 21st century way of just counting people, right?

And so, and that's typically how evangelicals will look at it. When I was a pastor of a non -denominational church, you know, again, church membership wasn't heavily emphasized other than, so I remember when

I first became a pastor at the last church I was at in Wisconsin, and I came in, and the previous pastor gave me a list, and the list had, like, all the people that generally attend, and they had, like, three classifications.

One was a member, second was a regular attender, and then the third was people who regularly, irregularly attend, okay?

So three categories, and so I'm asking, okay, okay, great, there's members here, wonderful. So these non -members, why are they not members?

Well, one of them is a worship leader, and the worship leader doesn't believe in church membership, therefore, you know, we just don't push it because we don't want to lose people.

And so I said, well, that's not a good place to start with. And most of those people who were not church members, we would eventually lose them anyways over the course of four years, because, again, if you're not committed, if you're not, you know, you don't see the value, the importance of the church membership, then once something is said or done that you don't like or affirm, well, that's it for me,

I'm going off to this one over here. I'm going to go to the church on the street, because there's no concept of covenant community.

Instead, modern churches become like a buffet table. Oh, I like this from over here. I like the youth group over here.

I like the worship from this church. And you kind of just take and you sample from each table whatever you like, whatever you want, and it becomes a thing where you become a

Christian consumer. So you just take, take, take, take, take, take from the church, but you're not giving.

Is church membership a take -only relationship? No. It is a two -way relationship.

You are being fed God's Word. You're being given things, so there's a taking aspect, but then you also give of your time, your money, your resources, your efforts to further edify the body of Christ.

It's not a one -way street. It has to be two ways. It has to be a mutually beneficial arrangement, just like in any covenant, it has to be mutually beneficial.

If not, it loses viability. And so the local church has to have a viable relationship with its members, where it is not just a, you know, top -down or bottom -up arrangement, but rather it is really a two -way street where we're mutually benefiting, we're mutually coming into a covenant arrangement and community.

So the church membership is mutual, meaning that it's beneficial for the two parties, right?

If the membership is only beneficial for on one end, then it loses its purpose in some respect, okay?

Lots of Scripture that we can go over, and, you know, if you've done the reading, all the Scripture references here are just really, really fantastic, but one of the points that are made in this paragraph as well is, so like page 148, we see

Jonathan Lehman's definition of church membership, and he gives us this four -point analogy of church membership in page 148.

Church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian, a covenant that consists of the church's affirmation of the

Christian gospel's, the Christian's gospel's profession, so that's someone's profession of faith or testimony, the church's promise to give oversight to the

Christian, and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight. So you see how it's mutually beneficial?

You see how there's responsibilities and obligations on both ends of that relationship? Yeah. Yes, by means of our local affiliation, by means of our local commitment to the local church, we are an adherence to the

Lord's covenant to the, what would be called the universal church.

So if you are in covenant with the local church, you are then by virtue in covenant with the universal church.

So it's just like if you are in compliance with the laws of this government, you are in compliance not just with the local county that you live in, but also with the federal government, right?

So if you're applying for a passport, you have to obviously follow federal regulations in order to meet the criteria, but those are all things that are submitted locally, right?

And so in that same organizational way, by virtue of our submission to the local embassy of Christ's church, which is the local church, we are in compliance with the universal embassy or the universal church as a whole.

Okay. Does that make sense? Say that again.

So that's a good question. So first of all, we have one God and one mediator between God and man, the man

Christ Jesus as 1 Timothy 2 .5. And so our mediatorship is through Christ. Christ has set under shepherds, and which is why

Hebrews 13 .16 or 13 .17 says obey your leaders for they watch over your souls.

These are shepherds who watch over your souls. Scripture refers to a church. So I guess the question that we must first answer is what makes a church a church?

We went over this last week. What makes a church a church is first, faithful gospel proclamation.

Two, those people believing and professing the gospel, covenanting together under the leadership of elders, and then constituting together, covenanting together, saying we're going to be a community that not only believes and affirms this truth, but we're going to be actively now engaging the world with this truth.

And that's what essentially makes a church a church. And so in order to satisfy your question, that needs to be addressed first.

A church, a legitimate church are those who profess, who hear the gospel, profess it, believe it, teach it under the leadership of elders.

So the arrangement isn't necessarily by two elders, so like elders are not the ones to whom you're going to be exclusively in covenant with, but part of the covenant arrangement is being under the leadership of godly pastors and elders.

It's to one another. It's to... So the distinction that you'll see within, for instance, Catholicism is foreign to Scripture, where in Catholicism you'll have a distinction between what's called the laity and the clergy.

There's a clergy -laity distinction. Anyone know what that means? What's the clergy?

Yeah, so they're the officers of the church, essentially. They're the priests, the deacons to an extent, but then also the bishops, archbishops, the pope.

This is what would be referred to as the clergy class, and then the laity are those who are in the pews. Laity are just the regular members.

That's a foreign concept to the New Testament. The Bible doesn't teach a clergy -laity distinction in the same way that Catholicism teaches it, so there is no...

The covenant isn't just between you and the leaders. The covenant is with the covenant community, so it includes the pastors, but it's not exclusive to the pastors.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. And we're a nation of priests.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, so just to put a nice bow on all of this, the last page of 157 of this paragraph, or not this paragraph, but this chapter, 157, kind of gives us the bullet points that I think should be the things that are kept in mind as an overview.

So the first is, a church is born when the gospel people form a gospel polity and the ordinances of baptism and the

Lord's Supper are the effective signs of that polity. Baptism and the Lord's Supper give the church visible institutional form and order, then knit the many into one.

Church membership names the relations which the ordinance create. The ordinances mold the church into a shape called membership.

So again, the importance, why we talked a lot about the Lord's Supper, baptism, because these are things that shape church polity, they shape the life of the church, okay?

Therefore we can't remove baptism from membership because without baptism, membership doesn't exist. That would be like speaking of a marriage with no vows.

Marriage is a covenant relation constituted by vows. Membership is a covenant relation constituted by sign, by oath signs of the ordinances, okay?

So that's what I was saying. It would be very strange if you went to a wedding and there were no vows. There's no I do.

There's not that exchange of commitment by means of words in front of witnesses.

When a church extends membership to someone who hasn't been baptized, they misunderstand what church membership is and grant the label to something which lacks the reality.

Yeah, I mean, that's one way. That's one way. Jesus has appointed baptism to be a person's initial entry into the church.

Baptism is the front door of the church. There is no other way in, which is why in the Great Commission we're told, therefore, go and baptize, okay?

Not just evangelize, we are to baptize the nations into the obedience of Christ's teaching.

And so this is, to me, a very concise, clear way of understanding what has been laid down so far in this book.

Any thoughts or questions on that? All right.

Well, with that being said, let's pray and get ready for our morning service. Well, Father, we do come before you thankful,

Lord, that you've given us your word, the instruction that comes therein. We pray, Father, that as we come together in this covenant community under this church polity,

Father, that we would do so in accordance with Scripture, that we would be molded by your word and be a church that practices your word as best as we can and as best as we understand it.

Lord, help us from where we fall short, and Lord, help us to keep our eyes clear on the gospel mandate, which is to go ye, therefore, unto all the nations, to all the world, baptizing in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching men everywhere to observe what it is you've taught us, and that you've given us, even within that commission, you've given us words of hope and faithfulness where you say, and lo,

I will be with you even always until the end of the age. And Lord Jesus, you have proven to be with us every step of the way.

May your church continue to advance in this cold and evil, dark world as it even gets darker.

May your light shine all the more for the glory of your name and the advancement of your kingdom. Amen. All right.