Should You Love The Church (part 7)

I'm going to be talking about, well, you know, basically, I guess the quiz gives it away.

I'm going to be, because I've been gone for a few weeks, from Sunday school, a few weeks, yeah, a few months, actually,

I'm going to be doing a little bit of review as we get back into the series, Should You Love the Church?

But I found this in Christianity Today this week, and it's called Spotlight, The Wars over Christian Beards, Christian Beards, listen to this, in 195,

Clement of Alexandria calls the beard the mark of a man, and therefore unholy to desecrate, let's see, in 411,

Euthymius says only bearded men can enter his Judean desert monastery, not boys with, quote, female faces,

Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, begins to show, or begins to grow a beard, this is in 1547, ostensibly to mark his mourning of the death of King Henry VIII, but also to signal a break with Catholicism, you know, in playoff hockey, they have playoff beards, but how about,

I'm done with Catholicism, therefore I will grow my beard, in 1170,

Pope Alexander III barred clerical beards, so, you know, there are all kinds of reasons to break with your brothers and sisters in Christ, I'm not really sure that beards qualify, but it might, so you have to watch out for that, beards, mustaches,

I don't think those are things to divide over, well, let me open up in prayer, Father in heaven,

Lord, we just thank you for this wonderful day as we transition from summer to fall, and we're just reminded again of just all the things that you give us, all the blessings that are ours in Christ Jesus, even the common mercy that you show us, the turning of the leaves, the changing of seasons, the sunlight,

Father, we thank you for this building, thank you for this time, most of all, we thank you for your word, for the work of your

Son, Jesus Christ, without whom there would be no reason for us to get together, Father, bless this time, we pray in Christ's name, amen.

Well, as I said, we've been going through this, and it is my intention, I just have maybe a few more weeks, and then

I'm going to start really on the opposite angle of things, I'm going to do a series I'm going to call

Church Destroyers, and I think that will be good for us, because it really, you know, many things that we just sort of take for granted, or we are not really attuned to,

I want to address those issues, but these questions here are done in the form of a true or false, so, you know, we'll just go from there.

The local church should not expect any particular loyalty from its members. Yeah, that's false, not all of them are going to be false, that's just a hint, by the way, but you know, again,

I think for those who were here in the first service, we understand that Christ loved the church, in fact, if we go to Ephesians 5, and we just simply look at it from this standpoint, how much did

Jesus love the church? What's that? Perfectly, and Ephesians 5 says

He died, He laid down His life for the church. In the Gospel of John, He says that He laid down His life for the sheep, the church.

So there is a love there, but I've been contemplating this, and just thinking, you know,

I think, well, let's just, let's go to another passage that I think might be helpful here.

Let's go to 1 Corinthians. I was listening to Pastor Ted Bigelow, Wax Eloquent, about this last week, and I'm not going to go into the same depth, but I want us to maybe contemplate this from a different perspective.

1 Corinthians chapter 12, and I'm going to start in verse 4.

Speaking of spiritual gifts, the Apostle Paul writes, now there are varieties of gifts, but the same spirits, and there are varieties of service, but the same

Lord, and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all and everyone.

To each is given, that is to every believer, the manifestation of the spirit for the common good.

In other words, for the church body. For to one is given through the spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same spirit.

To another faith by the same spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.

All these are empowered by one and the same spirit who apportions to each one individually as he, the

Holy Spirit wills. Now listen, verse 12, for just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

Down to verse 14, for the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, because I am not a hand,

I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, because I am not an eye,

I do not belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, what would be the sense of hearing?

If the whole body were an ear, what would be the sense of smell, etc., etc., etc.? And what is he stressing here?

What is Paul stressing when he is describing these gifts that are given to people? What is he ultimately trying to impress them with?

Stephen? Okay, that they all need to be unified to make up the church, and he refers to the church as what?

The body. The body of Christ. And I was thinking about that, you know, and I think it's...

Joshua Harris wrote, you know, Stop Dating the Church. And I think, you know, we have a consumerist mentality.

I think that's been spoken about and written about. And it seems to me like many of us have kind of a consumerist mentality.

Let's just make it a little crass and we'll say that we view church as a grocery store.

So, we go to the grocery store that we like, where the people are friendly, where everybody knows your name, you know, it's kind of like Cheers.

And we like it when our things... when our groceries are bagged properly, when everything is done just the way we like it.

And when it's not done the way we like it, what do we do? When they stop giving us the best prices, when they stop tripling our coupons, we go somewhere else.

And I think that's perfectly fine if it's a grocery store. But if we think about it as the body of Christ, if we think that we are individually fitted together, that we're all gifted differently, that we all serve

Christ within the local body, then if we don't like the way

Steve bags our groceries, or we don't like the way, you know, one of the deacons did this or did that, well, there's a way to address that.

And the way is not to say, you know what, I'm going to find some place where they do know how to bag my groceries, where they do greet me in the parking lot, where they do, you know, make sure that I have the seat that I want, where they do whatever the issue is.

And some of them are more serious issues than that, I realize. But we need to recognize, when

I talk about loyalty, I don't mean like, you know, we're not taking some kind of blood oath to the pastors, to the elders, because that's never the issue.

The issue is, if we view ourselves as members of the body of Christ, we're not going to just run off and go somewhere else.

There needs to be loyalty in the sense that this really is, it's not a grocery store, it's not a department store, it's not any kind of store, it's not a school, it's not any other thing other than the body of Christ, which really is a family.

It really is. We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are to be devoted to one another.

And so when I see, you know, that Christ laid his life down for the church, we need to just have that kind of mindset that we are collectively the church.

So, loyalty. Thoughts or questions about that? Yes, Peggy.

Well, that's an excellent question. How do you distinguish, she says, between, you know, the local church and the church universal?

And that's a difficult issue. I was just reading a post yesterday, actually, where a man says that basically it never refers to the church universal, that he's always addressing a local church.

I don't know if that's true, but if we look at, well, let's think about it for a minute. Christ loved the church, and in so doing, he directed, through the

Holy Spirit, letters to be written to whom? To certainly to some people, like Titus and Timothy, but what for?

Why were even those letters written? For the edification of the body, for the local church.

You know, when he writes to Titus, what does he say? To set in order that which remains. In other words, there were some issues on Crete.

He says, I want you to get some elders. I want you to sort of organize things, because it's become a mess.

With Timothy, what did he say? This is how I want you to run a local church. He wrote a letter to the church at Rome.

He wrote letters to the church at Corinth. It was focused on the individual churches.

In Revelation, he addressed specific churches. So, I mean, it's hard to say.

I think we could see that when we're baptized into one body, I think maybe that could be the church universal, but for the most part,

I think what we're going to see, or when he says, I will build my church, I don't think he's just talking about Bethlehem Bible Church, or Grace Community Church.

I think it is more the church universal, but how does he do that? It's through the local body.

But, excellent question. I mean, if we were to go through, now, I was just talking to somebody the other day who said there are,

I'm going to forget this, in the New Testament, I think, 117 uses of ecclesia, or ecclesia, the church, in the

New Testament. I forget, you know, I actually didn't memorize the context of every one, but, you know, it's there numerous times.

So, was there another hand? Charlie. Yeah, I mean, and that would get to it, too.

Hebrews 13, 17, you know, submit to your leaders for this would, so as to be, right, they're going to give an account for your souls, and also, it talks about you don't want to be a burden to your leaders, etc.,

etc., etc. But, I will address that in the, somewhere here in the future, at some point.

Was there another one? Yes, Tom. Excellent question.

Is there a time when it's all right not to give loyalty? Yes, and here's what I would say. If the church, and I'll just say this, and I don't want you to worry about it, don't go home and pray about it, but I've said, and I believe in my heart that if, you know, the elders here fired me, and, you know, things changed dramatically, as long as the word is being preached, the gospel is accurately delivered,

I'm not going anywhere. Why? Because this is where I am. This is where the Lord's placed me.

And, no, that's really not happening any time soon that I know of. But, the point is, when would it be okay to then leave, you know, say, look,

I've been loyal, but, well, if the church is not preaching the gospel, if it's not proclaiming the word, then what do you do?

Well, you could stay there infinitely, you know, an infinite amount of time, or you can say, look, I'm going to go and talk to the leadership here, the ladies who have become the elder board.

No, I'm going to go talk to the men, or whoever's leading this church, and I'm going to say, look,

I have some concerns. Here are my concerns. You guys don't preach the gospel. You don't preach the word.

The saints aren't being equipped for the work of ministry. Other than that, you're doing a great job. It would go something like that, probably only nicer.

But that would be the right thing to do, right? Because even according to Matthew 18, they would be in sin if they weren't preaching the gospel.

They would be in sin if they weren't preaching the word. Because what does Paul say? He says, preach the word in season and out of season.

So if you're not doing that, you're doing something wrong. So it would be right to go to them to say, look, these are the problems that I see, and then they say, well,

Tom, with all due respect, you don't know what you're talking about. We're packing them in, so leave us alone.

Then it's fine to leave the church. You have to leave the church. Why? Because they're not really a church.

What about a church that doesn't practice? We've been going through the nine marks of a church, and we're going to get to more of those.

But what about a church that refuses to practice church discipline? Again, if Jesus says, do this, and a church says no, then what does that say about the church?

And again, I would say it's right to go and talk to the leaders. Look, we've got, just like in Corinth, we've got men and women living in sin, and we've got all this other stuff going on.

What are you guys doing to address that? Well, the right thing would be for them to deal with it biblically.

Was there another hand back there? Okay. So, number two, there is nothing wrong with video clips during sermons.

Well, you know, if it was good enough for Spurgeon, it's good enough for me. Okay. It's a terrible thing, but you know what?

It's actually become so accepted in today's church that actually they want to, you know, like every year we, you wouldn't know this, but every year we pay a licensing fee for music.

Okay? You want to use, you know, the hymns, or you want to use whatever kind of contemporary Christian music you want to use, then you need to pay a licensing fee, and then they make sure that the artists and the writers and everybody get reimbursed.

You know, Beethoven is getting rich. So, now, it started maybe four or five years ago, every year they want to send us a bill for video clips because they want to make sure that the movie producers and everybody get, you know, because everybody's using these movie clips.

It's just very common. I went to a church, I think it was last year, where they did this, and I found it just very jarring.

You know, you're sitting there, and a few verses are said, and there's something said, and then all of a sudden, you know, down come the screens, and here comes a video clip from a movie, and it's a very secular movie, and in this particular instance, they used

God's name basically as a curse word during the segment they showed, and I go,

I'd just like to think that you, if you're going to do that, that you would pick, you know, more carefully, but I don't see it.

There are illustrations that we can use where we don't have to go to a video clip, and I just think that, you know, it's kind of like a commercial, you know,

I know you guys can't pay attention for more than six or seven minutes, and then we're going to give you a video clip to kind of break up the monotony.

So, I'm not a huge fan of that, and again, if we understand that the Bible says, what, preach the word, or even in 2

Timothy 1, verses 13 and 14, retain a standard of sound words, which you have heard from me, well, what's sound about a movie?

And I don't care, you know, if it's Spartacus or, you know, whatever grand movie, a quickie like men, you know, and they want to show

Mel Gibson charging all the Romans, whatever. It's just not appropriate for a

Sunday morning worship service. We're here to worship God, not to be entertained, and if the Bible isn't enough, then we have other issues.

Number three, over the last 100 years, more and more churches have become focused on expository preaching.

You guys are laughing. It's clearly not true, I mean, as, you know, indicated by the video clips, but, you know, expository preaching, what, why is it so important that we have expository preaching?

Why is that so critical? It helps you to learn what the passage means in context, very true, without taking stuff out of context, right,

Nayyirah? Okay, gives no room to man -centered theology because you're going verse by verse,

Tom. Okay, teach the whole counsel of God, yep.

Charlie, yeah,

I mean, you can't skip a thing. There's another passage I just want to bring to your mind if we understand

Hebrews 4 .12 correctly, that the word of God is what? And so what does it do?

When we hear a sermon, I remember once, I know I've mentioned this one before, but I'll never forget this.

There were a few sermons in seminary. I mean, there were a lot of them that I just thought, oh, you know, please, do

I have to listen to this? Missionaries would come in and they'd say, you know, I remember one guy said to the

Jew first and then the Gentile, that meant we had to go to the Jews to evangelize them first. I'm like,

I don't think that's what it means. You know, can we have a second opinion on that? But there was one sermon and it was given by a student and his text was, do all things without grumbling and or disputing, you know, no, no complaining.

And then what did he do? He started going like this because he was talking about what we students did every single day.

And I'm not joking. You know, it was one of those times where, you know, I mean, there's 300 men in that room.

We're all studying to be pastors. And after he got done, you couldn't even have heard that.

It was so silent that all the oxygen was just sucked out of the room. They didn't open up the doors.

We walked under them as we left that day. What the word of God does is it reveals yourself.

It reveals what you're doing. It shows you your sin. And so if we're going to do something else, you know,

I was in fact, it's just right here. I saw this and I couldn't even believe it. Talking about beards again.

But recently one church had the folks from Duck Dynasty preach there. Now I haven't seen that show and they might be wonderful men of God and preachers and all that, but it just struck me as, you know, just wanting to be hip and cultural.

What we want, and it doesn't mean that every sermon that you hear has to, you know, fillet you wide open, but you know what?

Here's the problem. The problem is what do people want from a sermon? Well, either that or something for somebody else.

I know like eight people that need to hear that sermon. Really? Because I thought the

Lord directed towards you and me and we need to hear it. It needs to, the word of God needs to examine us.

It needs to look at us. And the only way we get that is by going through the word. If we're just kind of hop, skipping and jumping, then we're no different than any cult.

And I speak as somebody who came from a cult where, you know what? I, I mean, I, I was just, I mentioned some weeks ago, you know, talking to one of my relatives who's still in that church and for them to understand the gospel the way they do, trust me, you have to, you have to take this verse and that verse and this verse and that verse, because if you put everything in context, you would never come to the understanding that they have ever.

Okay. We need to move on. Number four, good theology is essential to a healthy church.

Good theology is essential to a healthy church. Absolutely. Why? What's that?

Yeah. I mean, what you believe about God affects how you worship him, how you structure things.

You know, uh, theology, uh, informs your methodology, which informs your doxology.

In other words, what you believe informs what you do, which informs how you praise. So it's very important that we have that right.

Number five, if you don't agree with everything a church teaches, you should not join. False. And, and I'll, I'll tell you why

I believe it's false. First, if we consider again, in first Corinthians 12, there is to be a unity and, you know, you might say, well,

I'm just the little toe. Who really cares? I wouldn't want to give up my little toe.

Would you? You know, if I just said to you, well, the little toes, no big deal. Would you like to have it chopped off this afternoon?

I don't think many of us would say, you know what? I'm, I'm all for that. We should not discount the part.

Any of us plays within the local body of Christ. Each of us has a part to play.

The fact that some of us choose not to play it doesn't mean that we shouldn't be playing it. Again, if we just think of ourselves as not that important, then

I would say we need to look again at first Corinthians 12 and what it talks about. And it's the totality of the body.

If, if everybody here, everyone, and I clued myself in that, if we all exercised, exercised our gifts to our greatest extent,

Bethlehem Bible Church would be a formidable weapon in the hands of God. We would see changes coming about in our community and in our families and in our lives because we all would be doing, we would all be obeying what the

Lord wanted for us. We'd have a greater impact.

Let's put it that way. And what about joining? Well, again, I, you know,

I don't want to turn this into a membership class, but I think if we understand certain aspects of what the

Bible teaches about elders, what it teaches about, uh, belonging to a local body, about assembling together, all these kinds of things that we wouldn't be so skittish about joining a local church.

Number six, the gospel must be central to the ministry of a local church.

Has to be, has to be. Why? Because it's all we have. If we're not, you know, and I've read a lot lately about, uh, you know, having a, an impact on society, having an impact in the, uh, local community, you know, feeding the poor, clothing the poor, doing all those things are fine.

You know, there's a movement now to give clean water to people in different areas around the world. That's all well and good.

But what, you know, why isn't Bethlehem Bible Church concerned about people in Africa having water?

Why aren't we concerned about people in India having clothing or people in South America having this, that, or the other thing, or even people in Worcester having this, that, or the other thing?

Because the issue is this. First of all, we don't have unlimited funds, but secondly, the most important thing for any single person anywhere is salvation.

When we're praying for Ray's wife's cousin, Ray's cousin -in -law,

I don't, I don't know how else to say that. What does he want? I mean, it's great to have, you know, prayer for the doctors.

We want his, we want him to live and everything else. But apart from that, let's say he comes through great.

He has no effects from his aneurysm, which is doubtful, but he has no effects from that. Awesome.

But if he doesn't come to believe in Christ, then all of that is what? It's just prolonging the inevitable.

The gospel has to be at the center, must be the central focus. We want God's word to change lives.

We want souls to be saved. Number seven.

I don't know why this kept coming up. Probably because it's just in all throughout my notes, because I was trying to pull them from this.

Church membership is at least implied in the New Testament. I think that's true.

How do you submit to your leaders if you don't have any leaders? That's rough. Number nine.

I'm sorry, number eight. Church discipline is a good thing. No, it's not.

Well, yes, it is. Remember, I think it was, well,

I'm sure it was Harriton who said, you know, we were here the first week and you guys did church discipline.

And he goes, everybody was just kind of breathless. And he goes, I turned to my wife and I said, this is a church for me. Why was he happy that we had to practice church discipline?

No. And I'll tell you what, it is never fun. There is not one single minute of it.

I enjoy it. If you if you could just understand the love that you have for somebody like that and then to watch what they're doing with their life and you want to do anything to stop them from wrecking their lives.

You wake up at night and you pray for them and you cry in the middle of the night because you know that if they keep going the direction they're going, what they're really telling you is they never knew

Christ. We church discipline because Jesus said it.

Matthew 18. If your brother sins and by the way, Pastor Mike alluded to it,

I don't want to spoil his whole message, but how do you reprove him in private?

You go to him in person. You don't go to three other people first. You know, did you hear about Steve?

You know, gather a little posse to come. No. Why? Because the goal of Jesus was to win.

He told us we should want to win our brother or sister. So we go to them.

We say, you know what? This is what you've done is contrary to the word of God. I'm begging you.

I'm urging you to repent. And then if they won't, then what we do, we take one or two witnesses with us and we go and we confront them again.

Why? Because we want to shame them. No, because at that point now we need a witness or two witnesses to see that they're really hard hearted and they don't want to repent, but we want to plead with them.

We want to pray with them. We want to do whatever we can to get them to repent. And then what we do here, the next step is the elders.

We usually send them a letter. We want it. We're slow about this. We don't want to just go after somebody and squash them, but eventually we'll read their name from the pulpit.

Why? Again, to shame them. No, no.

And again, if you knew the burden of this, you would understand, and I think you do, that we do it with great reluctance only after we've confirmed that this person is not going to repent.

And then we want you guys, all of us then, it's all 300 plus of us, to be focused on that one person in prayer.

If we can see them or talk to them, we want to urge them again to repent. And you know what?

I mean, this is the day that I would long for, is the day where we have to, not that I want to ever announce anybody's name from the pulpit again, but the day we have to do that, and then that person repents.

I cannot even tell you what that would be like because it's not like, you know, see, we told you so.

It is rejoicing because we've won them. They're back in the fold. And that was the goal from the beginning.

And you know, in that case, we would say to God, be the glory. There would be hugs all around.

Well, it is a good thing, not because it's fun, but because church discipline needs to be practiced because sin cannot be tolerated.

Number nine, even though we may not agree on every doctrine, church unity is a non -negotiable.

Well, it's true. You may not agree, I may not agree with everything

Pastor Mike says. You may not agree with everything I say. I may not agree with everything you say. It's not the issue.

The issue is, do we unite behind the gospel? Do we unite in gospel ministry?

Or do we pick, do we look for things, you know, maybe in the index that we don't agree on?

I think, you know, one of the marks of the church from maybe 1875 forward,

I was reflecting on that last week as I was listening to Ted do Sunday school.

If we started at the, and some of you are like, 1875, why 1875? Because that's when the course I took in seminary started with the

Niagara Bible Conference, which was really the founding or the beginning of the fundamentalist movement.

If we were to go from 1875 forward, there were a frightening number of splits and schisms in denominations.

I mean, like they were splitting like every couple of weeks, it seems like. We went from having a number of Protestant denominations to innumerable

Protestant denominations. And I would say a lot of it was because people refused to ignore the minor points and instead they just zeroed in on them.

Well, if, you know, if you think a man can wear a beard, then get out of here. If you think a man shouldn't wear a beard, then get out of here.

You know, and it was, it was both ways, but focusing on minor issues.

And you know, what would be minor issues? I'll give you an example of, you know, the, I think maybe the preeminent minor issue, which is eschatology.

The Lord's going to return. It's going to be soon. And if you're post mill, a mill or pre mill, that's the biblical truth.

And, and the question is how do we live in light of the Lord's soon return?

So, you know, why don't we do left behind, you know, part 57, because it's not the issue.

And if it was the issue, then I would say that the entire Bible would be devoted to eschatology and it's not.

Church unity is a non -negotiable. Again, that doesn't mean we have to agree on everything because we can't.

Why? Because we're sinful fallen creatures and we're not going to. All right. Number 10, discipleship is optional in a church.

True or false? False. And it's not just pastor Mike's discipleship class.

You know, if you didn't get in there, then you're done. There's no discipleship for you. What did

Jesus say? You know, everybody knows the great commission. I think they think it's about what baptism making converts.

And it's really about making disciples discipleship. That's what's to go on in the local church.

What is discipleship? It's a formal time where you get to meet with pastor Mike and his study and discover, you know, the truths that Lorraine Bettner wrote that great woman of the

French. Oh, wait, Lorraine. That's like a boy named Sue. Who would do that to their kid?

Discipleship is life on life. And how does that happen within a local church?

Well, it's serving together. It's talking together. It's having someone in your life who doesn't know as much as you or having someone who knows more than you.

Someone who struggles in a different area than you do and someone who is stronger in an area where you're weaker.

You just kind of say, you know what? I want to learn how to do hospital visits better. I want to learn how to do this better.

I want to learn how to do that better. I want to learn how not to struggle with this sin. Well, then find somebody contra the world.

You know, the world says that everybody who struggles with the same sin should get together. I don't think that's a good model.

I think the right model would be find somebody who doesn't struggle with your sin and find out how they do that.

So discipleship is important. Number 11, Christians grow spiritually. No exceptions.

True. He who began a good work in you will just leave you to your own devices.

How do we grow? Sanctify them in truth.

Thy word is truth. John 17, 17, right? Although I'm pretty sure it doesn't say thy in the

English Standard Version. And the word, we grow by the word.

You know, as Peter would say, by the pure spiritual milk of the word, we should long for that.

Why? Because that's how you grow spiritually. You say, you know, I'm really stuck. I can't grow.

How's your Bible intake? I love these guys.

Some of our more enthusiastic people on Facebook, Mario Gill, others,

Ben Mercedes, and they say, you know, get fed. There are a lot of there are a lot of people out there doing what they're going to churches and they come home on Sunday.

And literally, they're like, we didn't we didn't not only did we not learn anything, not only were we not challenged in our thinking, but we're starving.

We're starving for the word because we're not getting it. Number 12, because we've been talking about biblical leadership.

In fact, maybe I'll just skip to there here. That's where I was talking low those many months ago.

And it was many months ago. Number 12, Congregational rule is just as biblical as elder rule. And I just can't

I just can't get

I can't wrap my head around that because it's pretty clear, you know, where would the idea for Congregational rule?

Where would where do you think that idea would come from? What's that fallen man?

Well, I would agree with that. I think it's from American democracy, which really springs forth from the

Enlightenment. You know, the idea that there is an inherent value in every person, which is true.

But the question is, you know, are we're all equal in Christ? The question is, are we all equally gifted?

Well, as we just read in First Corinthians 12, the answer is no. Now, does that mean you're less important?

Well, that would be like telling your kids, you know what, you're less important because you need to listen to me. Would you tell him that you kids, you know,

God doesn't really value you because he's put me over you. You could never say that to your kids.

But Congregational rule, and I don't care what church you're at anywhere. What what happens in a congregation?

Well, besides chaos, what happens in any church in the United States that has membership?

Charlie, and can

I just tell you, I'll repeat what he said in a second, but he just gave you the best case scenario. The immature outnumber the mature.

And that's the best case scenario. What's the worst case scenario? And probably even more common, Dave, tares and wheat, unbelievers, because I don't care how rigorous the the test is for membership.

I don't care if they make you go to a two week thing where you have to live in the pastor's house and, you know, rise for devotions and all that stuff, which obviously nobody does.

So I just want to stress the ridiculousness of the situation. No matter what they do, you're going to wind up with unbelievers in the church.

And so now, you know, it's like I like to say about voting, people who know nothing cancel out my vote.

Right. And by the same token, then, if you have Congregational rule, you're going to wind up with unbelievers canceling out the vote of believers, people who understand

God's word, according to First Corinthians to 14 and people who don't understand it. And, you know, then there are issues of maturity and whatnot.

But I you know, I think one of the benefits and I'll just say this about Congregational rule.

I think one of the benefits of it is there is a sense in which everyone says, you know what?

We're a part of this enterprise. We're part of this church. We all have buy in. I get that.

But the question was, is it just as biblical as elder rule? And I think the answer is no.

And I could go to just right off the top of my head because I'm not going to get to the page right away.

But if we look at First Timothy five, let's just go there.

And we've already talked about submit yourself to your leaders. We see this concept of elder led churches, elder really ruled churches fairly frequently.

And, you know, that's a that's a tough thing for people to swallow. What does that mean that the elders are perfect? No, that's not what it means at all.

In fact, there are ways of going to the elders and bringing issues to them. But look at First Corinthians five or 17.

Let the elders who rule will be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching who rule well.

Well, what does that mean? If he wanted to say, for example, if he wanted to say that they just shepherd, they get around everybody, they minister well, he could do that.

But this isn't this isn't that idea. The word has to do with having charge of being over.

So it's pretty hard to see the idea of in fact,

I just don't know of a vote or a vote taken by the congregation. For example, you know, a lot of churches have votes on who should be an elder on who should be a deacon.

We would not see that kind of language, you know, here,

Timothy, I want you to pick men who are of this character. First Timothy chapter three, verses one to seven, men who have these qualifications and then hold a vote.

If they get 80 percent or more than they get to serve for three years. Wait, those must be the missing verses because they're not there.

Timothy, you know, if you if you have men who are such and such qualified and have wives that are deacons only if they meet a certain threshold of the congregation, pastors should be removed by such and such a vote of the congregation.

We don't see that anywhere in the Bible. And people say, well, you know, the elders then are going to lord it over the people.

Well, that's Peter wrote his fellow elders. And what do you say? Don't do that. And in Hebrews, we're told that the elders are the leaders of a church are going to give an account for the souls of the people at the church.

What does that mean? It means they're going to stand before the Lord and they're going to have to account for what they've done. How would you like to be the one who lorded her over the flock?

That would not be good. You want the Lord to be pleased with what you do. Anyway, our time is up and we will finish talking about elder qualifications next week and then we will.

Oh, yeah. I remember the last one I did was the most controversial one ever in Sunday school. Elders who believe or have children who believe, wow, that was a barn burner.

You should really listen to that one. OK, well, let's close in prayer and then we'll pick it up next week. Father in heaven,

Lord, we just we we look at these things and we think about your church and really it is in many ways beyond human comprehension, even in Ephesians, as we look at how you brought

Jew and Gentile together into this new creation, the church.

Father, how you've set your son over the church, how he died for the church, how you gave instruction again and again and again to churches.

Father, make us the people who want to serve one another, love one another and exercise our spiritual gifts for the benefit of one another.