June 16, 2017 Show with Josh Buice on “Knowing God: A Biblical Understanding of Discipleship”

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 16th day of June 2017 and I'm delighted to have as a returning guest today one of my favorite guests,

Pastor Josh Bice, who is senior pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia.

He's a blogger at deliveredbygrace .com and he's the director of the annual

G3 conference, which is having its next edition, its 2018 edition coming up in January and that will be here before you know it.

People think of 2018 as being next year, but this is going to fly by until we are already on a plane, train or automobile to get to Georgia to experience

G3 2018 and I'm very excited about being there myself and manning another exhibitor's booth at the

G3 conference. Today we're going to be talking about knowing God, a biblical understanding of discipleship, which is actually the theme of the

G3 2018 conference and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Josh Bice.

Glad to be with you, Chris. And Pastor Bice just returned from the

Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix, Arizona this year and what was the first thing, the number one thing on his agenda immediately when walking through his study door was to be on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and we appreciate that after your busy schedule taking the time to do this today,

Pastor Josh. Hey, I'm glad to be with you. Looking forward to the discussion. And why don't, before we even go into a brief description of Praise Mill Baptist and Delivered by Grace, tell our listeners something about what you experienced at the

Southern Baptist Convention in Phoenix, Arizona. Yeah, I mean, so we are part of the

Southern Baptist Convention. I know that there are a lot of people that don't understand what that means, but basically it's a large group of churches that partner together for missions and discipleship.

What that means is that we collect money and we use it for church planting, for missions, evangelistic purposes in North America, but also beyond to the nations.

And so that, along with funding seminaries and Bible colleges, that's the, you might say, the foundational or backbone of the

Southern Baptist Convention's purpose. The convention itself is a voluntary matter, so we come to the convention as members and we partner with other churches, but they have absolutely zero, or the convention and all the leaders of the convention have no authority over our local church.

So being that it's a very large and diverse group, there are certain people and certain ministries and certain aspects of the

Southern Baptist Convention that we personally, as pastors here at Praise Newell, and we as a church would not necessarily applaud or that we would certainly promote or say that we are pleased about, but there are definitely aspects within the

Southern Baptist Convention and groups and ministries and certain leaders and that type of thing that we do partner with and that we do enjoy working closely with.

So we see some things within the SBC that we don't agree with and we see some things in the

SBC that we are certainly happy to see. So yeah, it's been fun. We just arrived back about maybe 10 minutes ago here to the church campus just west of Atlanta.

We traveled with 13 people, including 7 children by vehicle across the nation, so it was quite a trip.

But we did see some things at the SBC that we are certainly happy to see. There were some resolutions that were passed, one on the 500th anniversary of the

Protestant Reformation, just another statement that we would agree to promote the principles of the

Reformation, the historic Reformation being that this is the 500th anniversary. And also there was another resolution on penal substitutionary atonement that was passed, which is again something that is...

In other words, if you've seen any news surrounding this year's SBC, you probably saw it focused on the racial issue of the alt -right resolution and all of this, but really the best things that we could focus on would have been the one on the

Reformation and the one on substitutionary atonement, rather than talking about racism and politics, although those things are certainly important.

The main thing that we should focus on should be those doctrinal aspects.

They're very much at the core of the Gospel, and so I was very much pleased to see the

Convention of churches pass those resolutions and say that we are reaffirming those positions, and so that's encouraging.

Praise God for that. I'm going to ask you a very controversial question about something you just mentioned.

Let me speak for myself first. First of all, I believe that racism is a damnable sin.

I mean, the Scriptures are very clear that you cannot love God whom you have not seen if you do not love your brother who you have seen.

It was amazing how strong the language that was used in the

New Testament for those who were guilty of racism, and at that time it was primarily the

Jewish people who were holding onto racism against the Gentiles, even though those

Jewish people had known severe, harsh, deadly persecution from Gentiles and pagans.

They were still being held accountable and being demanded to repent of the sin of racism whenever it reared its ugly head, and you even had the

Apostle Paul rebuking Peter for this anti -Gentile stance that he had.

But I am concerned, though, that there are some today who are so terrified of being viewed as a racist and are so apologetic over the sins of people who lived a century or more ago that they are bending over backwards to accommodate the wishes and sometimes demands of those that are more of a liberal bent to acknowledge the sin of racism.

There are people as being bonafide Christian heroes simply because of their great place in history and their being champions of racial equality and things like that, which are very noble things.

I am not taking away from that. But when we start using a person's skin as a litmus test for their biblical orthodoxy, that is no more acceptable to us.

Well, I'm very much familiar with what you're talking about,

Chris. I think there are two things that I would say to fellow Southern Baptists, and that would be that, yes,

Southern Baptists had some troubling history, and we've sought to address that, and we've done so on numerous occasions, passing resolutions, making apologies, having racial reconciliation opportunities, and that type of thing.

I think one of the troubling things is whether it's as far as our nation is concerned or just specifically talking about and addressing the

Southern Baptist Convention, that sometimes we think that we have to just go back and continuously revisit these things to make sure that everyone understands that we love

Jesus and we love every people group on planet Earth. I think that we can just get ourselves in trouble if that's always what we're focusing on.

People do need to know that, but I do think that people know that already, so I don't know that we need to be consistently spending much time at conventions talking about those matters when we should be talking about, number one, the gospel and how to rightly preach the gospel.

Second of all, when it comes to Martin Luther King, Jr., when we think about the man himself, although we can applaud, you know, his desire to see equality across the board as far as the races go here in the

United States of America, Martin Luther King is celebrated often as a gospel preacher and a hero and that type of thing.

I think we can applaud, I think we need to divide Martin Luther King up into his politics and then his preaching and his doctrine.

Martin Luther King was very much a troubling figure when it comes to the gospel. I don't really believe that Martin Luther King himself preached the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

I think that he was wrong on the gospel, I think he was wrong on certain things, even politically.

I think he approached things from an askew worldview. In fact, if he did not change, or should

I say repent from his doctoral dissertation, he did not even believe in the deity of Christ.

He did not believe that there was any atoning value or redemptive value in the crucifixion of Christ, that it was merely a great act of sacrifice and humility to be an example for us.

He did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. And I don't know, I'm assuming that if he had repented of those things, that would have been something he would be just as loudly proclaiming from a pulpit as racial equality.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think so, I think you're right. So I don't know if he, it doesn't seem that he repented of those doctrinal errors.

So I'm very much concerned with where he stood on the heart of the gospel. Now, do

I applaud the fact that he wanted to see racial equality among blacks and whites and other racial groups in the

United States? Yes, I'm very much happy that he did that, but I'm not happy with his gospel message,

I'm not happy with some other things that are troubling related to his character and his morals.

So that, you know, those are things that must not be swept under the rug. We should be very cautious to elevate to a pedestal people and just say that they're heroes, unblemished heroes.

Right. You know, just for instance, we're doing a Reformation tour, James White and I will be leading that here in September.

And so lots of times people say, well, don't you understand that Martin Luther and John Calvin believed things that were a little bit troubling and they, you know, do you believe every single thing that Martin Luther believed or every single thing that John Calvin believed?

And the answer to that is simply no. We're not seeking to raise these men to a pedestal where they're unblemished heroes.

We want to address the people and to be very balanced as to who they are, what we can celebrate, and then be honest when it comes to things that we don't necessarily agree with.

And I think that that should be done very much so as it pertains to the individual that we know as Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yes, I do consider him an American hero. I believe that his voice challenging the authorities and challenging

American citizens to bring an end to discrimination, racial discrimination and hatred.

Obviously, there are there are forms of discrimination that are very valuable that we all participate in, including our black brothers and sisters and neighbors.

But as far as and that is not in regard to big bigotry or anything like that.

I'm sure you understand what I say when I'm referring to discrimination. But in regard to racial bigotry and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s

call to bring these things to an end where where and when humanly possible, these things are going to remain with us until we're in glory, of course.

But in regard to laws and things like that, the fact that he did so while at the same time simultaneously calling for peaceful resolutions, rebuking those in the civil rights movement that were calling for violence or even participating in violence at the time when we had the rise of of Black Panthers and the

Nation of Islam, his was a much needed voice because violence may have taken sway in a much more dramatic fashion had he not been used to bring about a level of civility and peace.

But being an American hero does not make one a Christian hero. I would say the same thing for people like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and many of the founding fathers of this country.

I am equally upset when I hear Christians paint the all of the founding fathers with a

Christian brush. And even today you have this new ecumenical movement where you have conservatives painting

Roman Catholics and even Mormons with a Christian brush just because they are standing with us side by side on many moral and social issues that we are fighting against and sometimes standing for in our day and age.

So this is not a one -sided thing. I'm just not I'm not just upset about the Christianizing or making a

Christian hero Martin Luther King Jr. But it goes with all people of all races. Right.

Yeah, and I think that what you're saying is exactly right. One of the ways that we teach people within the church to understand to be balanced on these issues, whether it be, you know, politically speaking or whether it be doctrinal issues pertaining to the gospel, understanding these things and where we can, you know, applaud and where we can be cautious on these matters all traces its way back to the discussion today, which is discipleship.

We must be willing to teach these things from the pulpit and tell the truth and to rightly handle the

Word of God. And that's how we make disciples and we can have Christians that can, you know, stand up and be a voice of reason in a culture, but also understand that politics is not the ultimate answer for America.

Jesus Christ is. Amen. And by the way, I want to let our listeners know that we should have a fascinating discussion on Monday, July 24th from 4 to 6 p .m.

with a brother in Christ, Micah Edmondson, who is an

Orthodox Presbyterian scholar who happens to be also an African -American brother in Christ who wrote his doctoral dissertation on Martin Luther King Jr.

And I'm going to be having a two -hour interview with Pastor Micah, as I said, on Monday, July 24th, 4 to 6 p .m.

Eastern Time. So I hope that you mark your calendars for that. I think this will prove to be an educational experience for me as well.

I'm not an expert on Martin Luther King Jr. as apparently Pastor Micah is. Perhaps he will correct me in some errors in my ways of thinking, but I think that he will probably, most likely, be on the same page with me in my attitude toward recognizing heresy no matter where it may exist.

But so mark your calendars for that and get some questions ready to email us on Monday, July 24th, 4 to 6 p .m.

Eastern Time. But today, as you know, brother, we are discussing

Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question regarding that subject, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Before we go into the topic, for those of our listeners who are discovering you for the first time on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, Pastor Josh, please let our listeners know something about Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia.

Yeah, okay. Praise Mill Baptist Church is just west of Atlanta, Georgia in Douglasville, and the church

I serve is, again, a Baptist church, 175 years old this year.

We'll be celebrating that anniversary on October the 15th. Dr. Stephen Lawson will be here preaching to commemorate and to celebrate that milestone.

I have the privilege of serving this church as pastor. I've been here seven years. My wife and I both grew up here as children, and it's a delight to serve this church.

If I could just say one thing to brag on this church is that Praise Mill is a unique church because I see the people as the people who genuinely love

God and love the Word of God, and it's just a privilege to pastor a group of people that take the

Word of God seriously. Amen. And for anybody who would like to visit

Praise Mill Baptist Church, whether they already live in the Douglasville, Georgia area, or if they're going to be vacationing there, or if they have relatives or friends there, the website is

PraiseMill .com. P -R -A -Y -S -M -I -L -L .com.

Not the way you'd think instinctively that you would spell that, because Pray was the name of an individual who was the founding pastor of that congregation, correct?

That's correct. Yeah, so that's P -R -A -Y -S -M -I -L -L .com.

No apostrophe, obviously, since it's a URL. And I hope that many of you who are able to make it a point to visit there at some point, and if you're living locally there, consider joining it if you do not have a

Bible -believing congregation that you belong to right now. Now tell our listeners something about Delivered by Grace, your blog.

Sure. DeliveredByGrace .com is a blog that I started when I was a seminary student. It was formed just for the purpose of just talking about theology, talking about practical issues related to preaching and ministry among seminary students, and eventually it sort of morphed into what it is today.

I think it was called PracticalTheologyDiscussions .blogspot .com,

if I'm not mistaken. And now it sits in become just a place where I write articles.

So I write a couple of articles a week on Tuesday and Thursday, and then

I do a sermon review on Monday, and then I do what's called a spotlight, where I just highlight different links of different articles or particular sermons that might be helpful.

I do that on Wednesday and Friday. And so just try to use it as an opportunity to write and to help further sound biblical truth among Christians and local churches.

Great. And last but not least, tell us about how the G3 Conference came to be and exactly what those three

G's stand for. Yeah. So the G3 Conference is coming up on the sixth annual conference this

January. Back in about 2011, myself and one of my fellow pastors, we were talking about forming some type of conference here that could be a blessing to other churches, along with our church and other pastors as well, maybe in the

Atlanta, maybe just outside of the Atlanta area, maybe, you know, just the southeast.

We could reach out to a few churches. And so we formed this conference, and I just said, why don't we call it the

G3 Conference? And that stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory. We wanted everyone to know up front that this is a theology conference.

It's not a pep rally. It's not a place where we just come and hang out together and sing a few songs.

It's not a concert. This is a theology conference. So we're going to have, you know, 10 to 12, sometimes as many as 15 main session sermons, as well as breakout sessions.

We'll be singing the gospel, preaching the gospel, studying the gospel together for about three days.

And so we have a reputation of being very fast -paced, and we, you know, just try to accomplish a lot over that weekend.

So that was the first annual conference was held. It was started, you know, the planning process 2011.

The first conference was held 2013, and it sold out.

There was a waiting list in 2014, the same thing, 15, the same thing, 16, the same thing.

So we were looking at all of the registrations, and we could see that people were not just coming from the

Atlanta and the southeast area. They were coming from all over the nation. They were coming from outside of the

United States. So we decided to, with much planning, much discussion among the church, to move the

G3 conference to a convention center over across from the airport for the 2017 conference, where we had about, we went from about 750 to 800, which is all we can fit in our sanctuary for the first four years, to about 2 ,500 this past January.

And speakers at the G3 2018 conference include Paul Washer, God willing,

Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, H .B. Charles Jr., Tim Challies, our guest,

Pastor Josh Bice, James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a dear mutual friend of Josh's and mine,

Tom Askell, president of Founders Ministries, Anthony Methenia, Michael Kruger, who is actually at one time a member of the congregation where I am a member now,

Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He was a pastoral intern before he converted to Presbyterianism.

David Miller, Paul Tripp, who's going to be a guest coming up soon on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Derek Thomas, who is going to be a guest again on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, God willing, soon.

Martha Peace and more, if you'd like to join me at the G3 conference 2018, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, and click on G3 2018. And I thank you,

Pastor Josh Bice, for allowing me to have an exhibitors booth there again at the

G3 conference for Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Absolutely. Yeah, it was such a joy this past January to have that exhibitors booth, not only to meet so many people for the first time that listen already to my program, even our brother from England, who

I think may have moved to the United States, Kofi, who shouted to me from across the room, this

African American brother from England, he said, Oh, I'm shopping Zion! He recognized my face from the website,

I guess. And it was such a pleasure to meet him and dozens of other people who listen regularly to my program that I never had even heard from before, who had never even submitted questions to the program for my guests, and also those that had been writing in to me with questions for my guests that I had never before met face to face, and also introducing the program to a number of people who have begun to email me since with questions for our guests, and some of those that I've met for the first time have become guests themselves.

So it was really a wonderful time, it was a fruitful time and a blessed time. It was also a wonderful time of refreshment and edification and being challenged and educated and enlightened and just blessed by the speakers there.

Probably the best Bible conference I had ever been to in my life. So I'm looking forward to this one coming up in January.

We're going to go to a break right now. And before I go to the break, I am going to email you a listener question so you have it in front of you.

She actually has three questions. So I'm going to read the first question now.

And you could answer that when we return from the break, when you actually have these questions in front of you that you can mull them over during the break.

But this is from Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. This year's Southern Baptist Convention appears to have suffered much confusion and contention over the issue of racism as per media reports.

I understand that the Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 when a split from other Baptists that were against slavery.

In your opinion, why has it taken 172 years for the Southern Baptist Convention to openly acknowledge that there can never be any support given to individuals or organizations that discriminate against persons of color?

Probably better put discriminate against persons just because of their color would probably be a better way of phrasing it because obviously you wouldn't ordain a homosexual individual or person involved in that activity just because they were black or white or whatever color they were.

That's why we have to begin using the word discriminate in an actual grammatically correct way in our day and age.

But anyway, you can you could respond to Jenny's question and the other two questions when we return from the break.

And I'm emailing that to you now. If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA and you may remain anonymous. It makes you feel more comfortable. So don't go away. We will be right back after these messages,

God willing, with Pastor Josh Bice of the G3 Conference. I am

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Pastor Josh Bice of Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia.

He is also the founder and director of the annual G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question regarding our theme, Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And before the break,

Pastor Josh, Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. Her first of three questions is, in your opinion, why has it taken 172 years for the

Southern Baptist Convention to openly acknowledge that there can never be any support given to individuals or organizations that discriminate against persons of color?

Yeah. Well, first of all, Chris, it hasn't taken that long. So through the years, the

Southern Baptist Convention has sought to make it very clear that we do not celebrate any form of racism and that any support of the historic founders or the historic people that were around the time period of the founders of the convention that would have supported slavery, we have apologized for, made resolutions to stand against.

So the Southern Baptist Convention today is nowhere even close to being where it was on these matters 172 years ago.

For instance, in 1995, there was a resolution on racial reconciliation that was passed on the 150th anniversary of the

Southern Baptist Convention. And that meeting was held in Atlanta, Georgia. You can go and find that if you Google it. You can look for the resolution on racial reconciliation of the

SBC in Atlanta, 1995. And you can read all of the language pertaining to the issues of race where the

SBC not only acknowledged but apologized for those historic problems.

Okay. So that's an issue that must be understood. Now, the problem with the discussion this year on the alt -right movement was that it's not just an issue of history.

It's an issue of an ongoing racial and politically racial problem that seems to seep into certain religious groups such as the

SBC. Now, I don't know of any real big problems to be quite honest. This was much of a surprise to me.

But I do know that being that the SBC is so large, they want to address these matters even if they hear about it on a small scale at some level.

So this alt -right movement, you can go and you can find some I think there's an article on the

Gospel Coalition's website that explains the history and the backdrop of this movement.

But basically it's not just... What the movement is, is it's basically a white nationalist movement.

It's a political movement that favors the white race. So it's definitely racism. But it's not to be confused with a white supremacy movement.

There is overlap, but it's not the same thing. And so once again, I was blown away with all of the attention that was given to it because I don't know of one single individual.

I've not heard of one report or of one church that's pushing this agenda. So where this is coming from,

I'm really not sure. But I can assure you of the fact that at the convention, that the churches represented at the convention,

I saw no one standing up in favor of this stuff. So the media likes to take it and then use it and twist it and just use it to be the focal point of the convention, which again,

I would say, as I said at the beginning, I think the focus should have been on the resolution on the Reformation and the resolution on substitutionary atonement.

So again, that's the answer to the first question. And Jenny's second question, which

I'm assuming you have in front of you as well now since I forwarded it to you, but though I am aware that you are not a spokesman for the

Southern Baptist Convention, do you know what plans the SBC are contemplating to advance pastors of color within the organization?

Well, I just heard something recently very exciting about H .B. Charles, Jr., one of the speakers at the

G3 conference. Yeah, absolutely. So if you go back to 2012, in 2012,

Fred Luter was elected as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. It was the first African -American man to serve in that position.

And that would begin in 2012. This year, 2017, the Pastors' Conference, which is not the

Southern Baptist Convention, it's the Pastors' Conference that's in conjunction with the Southern Baptist Convention and it's always held on Sunday and Monday prior to the

Tuesday -Wednesday meeting of the convention. But H .B. Charles, Jr., again, a friend of mine was elected as the president of that conference, which will be held in conjunction with next year's convention.

And so basically what it means is that he, along with his staff that he will build, will be given a budget and then he can invite speakers to come and speak and preach within that conference over those two days.

He'll choose a theme and so he basically runs with it. And so that's really encouraging and you can look for that to be a very healthy conference next year.

And I happen to know that my friend Eric Redmond, who is now on the faculty at Moody Bible Institute, Eric Redmond at one time was the second vice president of the

Southern Baptist Convention. That is not that he was the second vice president in the history of the

Southern Baptist Convention. That is actually an office. Second vice president is the actual office.

And he some time ago filled that role and he is an African American brother and quite a precious brother to me and friend.

And I'm sure there's a lot of other things that we have not even mentioned. But I'm sure you would agree, Pastor Bice, that tokenism is never a good thing either.

It's never a good thing to appoint somebody or give somebody a role or responsibility merely because of their color of their skin, whether it's white or black.

I'm assuming that you would agree with that wholeheartedly. I absolutely agree with that. I don't think that you should give anyone a pass because of the color of their skin.

I think that it should be because they're the most capable individual for the position. And I can say this without question, that's the precise reason that H .B.

Charles was elected. It was not, he was not elected because he, you know, people were sympathetic because of the color of his skin.

He was elected because he is a very capable preacher and will do an excellent job. And in fact, even the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

were that we should judge people not by the color of their skin but according to the content of their character.

That's right. So number three, a very controversial question. What is your opinion on the unfounded and rabid attacks against Dr.

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries concerning his apologetic approach to Muslims? It is clear to me that his approach is biblical.

After all, he uses the same approach when he has confronted Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Roman Catholics and cults, such as more recently the

Iglesia Ni Cristo from the Philippines, who are beach -heading efforts here now in the

United States among the Filipino population. Shouldn't we study their materials and dialogue with them so as to become more effective ambassadors of the gospel?

Well, first of all, you know, this whole thing about attacking James White, yeah, I think that James White is just a great big lightning rod.

I think people like to just figure out ways to attack him. That is true.

So he attracts this, but nevertheless, you have these Internet trolls that want to just figure out ways to punch him in the nose, so to speak, on the

Internet. The fact of the matter is simply this. You can choose,

I guess you could say it like this, you can choose various different approaches. You could choose, just to sum it up, two different approaches.

You could choose the first approach would be to just say that all Muslims are on their way to hell, they have a false god, a false theology of God, a false document, you know, and false scriptures, and a false prophet.

I mean, you can just simply make broad statements like that, and then just shove them off on their way to hell, or you can simply try to approach them with respect and dignity, that they were created in the image and likeness of God as a human being, they have a soul that's going to live for eternity in one place or the other, either heaven or hell, and then you could seek to approach them in such a manner that brings them to a place where they can reason and understand and see the true beauty of the gospel and the errors of their own religion.

So you can do one of two approaches. You can either just say, go to hell, or you can try to approach them in such a way that they can see the beauty of the gospel so that they would not indeed go to hell, so they could bring glory to God and the salvation of sinners.

And so I think that James White's approach to dealing with Muslims is not to say that he's trying to give them a free path.

He's certainly not. He's very clear on the gospel, he's very clear on the errors of the religion of Islam, but at the same time, he wants to have a meaningful dialogue in such a way that brings them to see the true beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Anyone can just say, here's a Bible and smack someone over the head with it, you know, and just tell them to go about their merry way.

Do that. But it takes a completely different type of approach to say, no, what we're going to do is, you know, we're going to make sure that we point people to the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and then try to help them understand why it is that we believe what we believe and why it is that Jesus Christ is the exclusive way of salvation.

I think that the latter approach that James White takes is a much more meaningful and helpful way to approach the matter, and it doesn't matter if you're talking about a

Muslim or if you're talking about a Jehovah's Witness or if you're talking about a Mormon. I think that you should try to make sure that you're going to approach them with dignity and respect, and then show them the errors of their own position.

And to clarify, I know that you believe that all unrepentant

Muslims will, unfortunately and tragically, go to hell. Absolutely. He is the only way.

He is the exclusive means of salvation. But we also need to understand that those individuals have real souls that will live on forever.

Either in heaven or hell. And so to just go about, you know, to just go about your merry way on your way to the celestial city with a spirit of arrogance and pride is not helpful.

And I think that we need to just, you know, even in the debates, if you watch the James White debate, you will see that he treats people with respect and dignity, but yet at the very same time he does not give them a free pass when it comes to the subject of the gospel.

He points them to their errors and then he elevates the true beauty of the gospel. Yes, and one of the things that is very ironic about these recent attacks on James, I have been working with him since 1995 on debates and speaking engagements.

The vast majority of those 22 years have been me, have involved me attempting to correct or rebuke those slandering him for being a nasty, hateful bigot.

And these were totally unwarranted accusations and malicious slanders and with no basis in truth whatsoever.

And in fact, as I posted recently on Facebook years ago, I had invited a very well -known

Roman Catholic apologist who is an ecumenist. He's a convert from, are you still there,

Pastor Josh? Oh yeah, I'm here. Okay, I heard some kind of weird noise there. He was a convert from Presbyterianism, I believe, to Roman Catholicism, is even thought very highly of by evangelicals, some evangelicals.

But I invited him to debate James on the mass. And he initially agreed to do the debate and then later backed out.

I pressed him for a reason and after hemming and hawing, he finally admitted that he was warned that James was an unscholarly brute and that debating him would be nothing more than a mild -mannered professor walking into a cage with a professional wrestler.

And when I told this apologist that he was guilty of gossip because he had not investigated these accusations himself, he actually acquiesced and agreed that I was correct.

So he watched videos of Dr. White in debates with Catholics. He called me back and apologized, saying that Dr.

White is far from being unscholarly, that he was impressed by his brilliance, and that the only reason he was then at that time backing out of the debate was because Dr.

White was way out of his league in regard to the topic of the mass. He was far above the league of this

Catholic apologist. So it is ironic that now he's

Mr. Rogers reincarnated in Captain of the

Cream Puff Ecumenical Factory. Yes. That's how this works.

But once again, it doesn't matter what approach he takes or what approach I take or someone else takes.

There's always going to be a group of people that are scrammed behind their computer screens. They're looking to just try to make an impact out of it.

And so it's really sad. To be quite honest with you, why don't you try to spend your time being an effective witness and an ambassador of the gospel of Jesus Christ rather than just seeking ways to attack

James White? That's a good question to ask. Yeah. And I have to give a caveat here.

I don't think that James White is an untouchable. I think that someone may have a legitimate disagreement with having a

Muslim speak for any reason in a Christian church. I think that that is a legitimate argument and a debatable argument.

I think that you could be opposed to that kind of thing without delving into the depths of slander.

I mean, to call someone a traitor because of that, to say that they are preaching another gospel and all that kind of nonsense, that is nothing more than malicious, slanderous, wicked behavior.

To give you an example, I have friends, a very small handful of friends who are very opposed to the fact that I orchestrate debates very frequently between believers and those with unchristian or anti -christian or non -christian religious views because they have a belief system that a debate requires

Christians to hear either an apostate or a heretic or an enemy of Christ present their views and in an essence proselytize their views.

So these folks that I know, they're very opposed to any kind of a debate for those reasons.

But as much as they have been disapproving of the fact that I run debates and even saddened that I run debates and heartbroken that I run debates, they have never escalated in their rhetoric to the level of calling me a traitor or a preacher of a false gospel or running ecumenical tea parties or things like that.

I mean, I don't know if you want any comment on what I just said there. I guess,

Chris, what I would say is that I agree with you, but I also want to say that, you know, as a pastor, I am sympathetic to the idea that people would be concerned about giving up a pulpit, say, you know, for someone, you know, that's a heretic to come in and be able to influence people.

So like, for instance, the G3 conference, you know, we've had a debate here this past year in conjunction with the

G3. Keep in mind, that's different than saying we're not going to have the typical Lord's Day service today, but in its place we're going to have a debate between a

Muslim and an evangelical Christian. I would not be in favor of that.

I would not be in favor of canceling the Lord's Day. Now, I know that there are people that disagree with me, and you might be one of those, and that's not an issue of contention or division in my personal opinion.

If we have a different position on that issue, that's fine, but I'm saying I think that there's a place for debates.

I think that there's a really good place for debates and for people to hear and listen, you know, and reason and understand the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Understand this. I believe in the sovereignty of God and salvation. I do not believe that a genuine

Christian is going to swerve from the faith and lose their salvation by listening to a

Muslim talk about their beliefs. Amen. I do, however, believe that a genuine

Muslim might actually come to a debate and hear the gospel, and by the power of the gospel and God's sovereign grace, might actually come to faith in Christ.

Amen. My sheep shall hear my voice. Yeah. And I know them, and they follow me. Right. Well, we have to go to a break right now, and thank you,

Jenny, in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania, and we're going to a break right now. I'll let you know about something that you've just won as a result of writing in, but if anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Don't go away. We're going to be right back. Thriving Financial is not your typical financial services provider.

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I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

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We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do than how men view these things.

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Iron Shopping's Iron Radio. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnsen, if you just tuned us in, here at Iron Shopping's Iron Radio.

Our guest today for the full two hours, with about an hour to go, is Josh Bice, Senior Pastor of Praise Middle Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia.

He's a blogger at deliveredbygrace .com and Director of the annual G3 Conference, the next edition of which is coming up in January, and we are discussing

Knowing God, a Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. But before I return to my discussion with Pastor Bice, I have some announcements to make.

Next week, I am going to be in New York City, from June 22nd through the 23rd, at the

Foundations Conference, a conference orchestrated by Sermon Audio, and if you would like to join me there, go to thefoundationsconference .com,

thefoundationsconference .com. And this is an excellent conference as well, with such speakers as Dr.

Stephen J. Lawson, Dr. Joel Beeky, Phil Johnson, Executive Director of Grace TU, the

Ministry of John MacArthur, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and more.

And as I said, you could go to thefoundationsconference .com to register, thefoundationsconference .com.

And if you do attend this event, I hope you look me up there in New York City at the Foundations Conference.

And please also tell them, if you register, that you heard about the conference from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And by the way, they also have good news for those of you who cannot attend this event. Thefoundationsconference .com

will be live -streaming the event, and sermonaudio .com will also be live -streaming the event.

So either way, you can be blessed by the Foundations Conference. Then after that, in August, from the 3rd through the 5th,

Fellowship Conference New England is being held at the Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine.

And speakers at this event include Pastor Don Curran, who is the Eastern European Coordinator with HeartCry Missionary Society in Radford, Virginia, which is the organization founded by Paul Washer.

My dear friend Pastor Mack Tomlinson, who is an author, and he is the pastor of Providence Chapel in Denton, Texas.

I'm looking forward to sharing fellowship with him again. Pastor Jesse Barrington of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, who's been on this program.

He's also the pastor of a church that is the Sister Church of Grace Life Church in Lake City, Florida, who have a radio station,

Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM, that airs Iron Sharpens Iron every day, and that came about as a result of my exhibitor's booth at the

G3 Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, this past January. Pastor Nate Pickowitz is also going to be speaking at the conference.

He is pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Gilmanton Ironworks, New Hampshire, and he is the author of Reviving New England, which

I will be interviewing Pastor Nate on, that book, Reviving New England, two weeks from now on a

Tuesday, so I hope that you mark your calendars for the last

Tuesday in June, the 27th of June. And then, if you'd like to register for this conference, go to fellowshipconferencenewengland .com

Then after that, in November, we have the

Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology, which is a conference of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, and that's being held

November 17th and the 18th. Actually, one of those days is the birthday of the woman who led me to Christ 30 years ago.

That's interesting. So it's November 17th through the 18th in Quaker Town, Pennsylvania, and I hope that you can attend this conference with me.

I will be there, God willing, and it should be a wonderful time of edification and fellowship at this conference.

And the speakers of this conference include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

The theme is for Still Our Ancient Foe, which is obviously a line from the classic Reformation hymn,

A Mighty Fortress, by Martin Luther. Go to alliancenet .org to register, alliancenet .org,

click on Events, and then click on Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology. Then the aforementioned

G3 Conference from January 18th through the 20th in Atlanta, Georgia, on the theme,

Knowing God, A Biblical Understanding of Discipleship, which is our theme for today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And speakers include, as I mentioned earlier, Paul Washer, Stephen Lawson, Vody Baucom, H .B. Charles, Jr., Tim Challies, Josh Bice, James R.

White, Tom Askell, Anthony Matheny, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, and others.

And you can register at that conference at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

And lastly, I must remind you that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is in urgent need of donors, additional donors, benefactors.

If you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to provide for your local church, as you always have, we would never want to siphon money out of your giving to your local church.

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But if you're blessed above and beyond your ability to do those things, because those two things are commands of God that you take care of, providing for your home and your church.

Funding Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is not a command of God. But if you are blessed above and beyond your ability to support your home and church, we would love to receive a check of any amount.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line.

So now we are back with our discussion with Pastor Josh Bice. And if you'd like to join us with a question for Pastor Bice, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. By the way, before I go to our listeners' question,

Joe in Slovenia wrote us a question that I did forward to you, so I'm assuming you have it in front of you,

Pastor Josh. But before I do that, I believe from our last discussion you said that there was still availability for a discount for anybody registering before a certain deadline.

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So if you register before midnight on June the 26th, then you can receive additional savings, because as everyone should know by now, we have certain dates that there are rate increases.

This is just the nature of the beast. It's not trying, you know, we're in no way trying to get more money.

It's just we have, you know, a huge undertaking as far as all of the convention costs at the convention center and all of the hotels and various different things.

So all of those rates increase if you wait longer. So we typically have a big surge of attendees that want to start registering in the fall.

If they would simply register in June, before June 26th, and you can find out all this information at G3conference .com.

It's right on the home page. But, again, rates will increase on that particular day.

And, in fact, Pastor Josh, the first 50 people who register as a result of hearing your interview on Ion Sharpens Ion Radio, if they attend the

G3 Conference and register from hearing this interview, if they come to my exhibitors booth at the conference, they will receive a free

New American Standard Bible. So I just want everybody to make a note of that.

If you heard about the conference from Ion Sharpens Ion Radio, and you're one of the first 50 that register as a result of that, just come to the exhibitors booth, and that Bible will be waiting for you there on site.

And it will be a very attractive Bible, not some cheap paperback

Bible. Not that any version of the Bible is not valuable, but it will be a very attractive version of the

New American Standard Bible. And I hope that you've—I'm sorry, Pastor Josh, I interrupted you.

No, no, I was just going to encourage you to remind your listeners that, yes, the

G3 Conference does start on the 18th, but it actually starts on the 17th. And the 17th, that entire first day will be in Spanish.

It's our first annual Spanish conference, and we're very excited about that. So people can find out more information on the website.

But all day on Wednesday on the 17th is Spanish, and then we're going to be releasing some information about a debate that will be held in conjunction.

That will be Wednesday evening, and then Thursday morning we'll start the G3 in English.

So again, you can certainly find out that information at the website. Great, and I will talk to you after the program is over about a couple of Spanish Christian stations that we might be able to work something out to promote that aspect of the conference.

Yeah, that would be good. And once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Oh, I forgot to mention Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. Thanks for writing in your question today.

And because of that, you have won a free copy of a book by one of the

G3 2018 speakers, Paul David Tripp. This is a book called

Sex and Money, Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That Satisfies by Paul David Tripp.

That is yours for free. Compliments of our friends at Crossway. And it will be shipped to you, compliments of our friends, at the

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com. C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for Bible Book Service dot com.

And, Pastor Josh, I believe you have in front of you Joe in Slovenia's question.

He says, thanks so much for having Brother Bice back again. He's such a blessing to me every time

I hear him. I came across this quote recently that seems to go along with the basis of today's topic.

Many modern evangelicals have a real aversion to doctrinal discussion. There are two reasons for this.

First, they live in a culture promoting tolerance and have been taught that disagreement is wrong.

Second, they don't know their doctrine because they've been raised to feel and not to think.

These two issues go hand in hand. And a person who doesn't think doesn't know how to disagree.

And a person unwilling to disagree has never been forced to think. Sadly, this creates a culture of whims, emotions, and experimentalism.

And, I'm sorry, experientialism. My experience bears this out. Apart from you and a few other apologists and polemicists, podcasts,

I know no one who is willing and able to engage in meaningful discussion on the types of important topics you address.

Has this always been the case? Is it unlikely to change in the future? What would need to happen to change the situation for the better?

Thank you for your bold faithfulness to the gospel and proclaiming it. That's Joe in Slovenia. Well, again,

Joe, thank you for the kind words. I would simply say that there is a problem within evangelicalism today as far as having a zeal without knowledge.

There's this, you might say, attraction some people have to just being extremely zealous.

And sometimes that leads into pragmatism. And all of their Christianity is focused on just zeal without knowledge.

And so their worship is all emotional. Their service to God is all full of zeal.

But they don't know how to think. They don't know how to really give themselves to thinking earnestly about the depth and the breadth and the width and the height of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And so I would say there are two dangers when it comes to Christianity. There's one danger that is knowledge without zeal.

That's certainly a problem. In fact, I've written an article about this, and it's going to be published in the

September edition of Table Talk put out by Ligonier Ministries. And so having knowledge without zeal is extremely problematic.

If all you do is think, and all you do is look at books and stare at doctrinal statements and creeds and confessions, but you have absolutely zero zeal to go out and put feet to action and to put action behind your doctrine, then

I would call into question your doctrine. Because, again, faith without works, as James says, is death.

And so we need to make sure that we don't just have a whole lot of knowledge without zeal, but we also don't want to fall into the other ditch, which is to have an awful lot or an abundance of zeal without knowledge.

And so there needs to be a balance. And I think that Christians need to be well balanced. And so you don't want to be the guy that just comes in, and he sits in the church library all weekend long, and he doesn't ever serve

God. All he wants to do is read. All he wants to do is study. All he wants to do is just look down and parse verbs.

You actually want to have an ability to go out and put your faith into action.

But you don't want to be the guy that's just running around with a sword, and he doesn't know what in the world he's talking about.

And so he doesn't know how to make sense of systematic theology or biblical theology, or he doesn't know how to make sense of even his own doctrinal statement that undergirds his church, for instance.

So you need to be able to think. And so, again, a right view of God and a true understanding of God and a deep appreciation for the depths of the gospel will produce high worship, and it will produce a zeal to serve the resurrected

Christ. And so I think we need to avoid both ditches. Well, thank you,

Joe, in Slovenia. And you have also won a free copy of Paul David Tripp's book,

Sex and Money, Pleasures That Leave You Empty and Grace That's Satisfied.

Paul David Tripp being one of the speakers at the upcoming G3 conference in 2018.

And I thank you for providing your daughter's address in Georgia, where that will be shipped more affordably by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

That saves them a ton of money when they can ship things domestically as opposed to overseas. And, by the way,

Joe in Slovenia, why don't you make a trip to visit your daughter in Georgia this coming

January, 18th through the 20th, so that we can share a time of fellowship at the

G3 conference. That would be great if you can arrange something like that. And we'd love to meet you face to face.

You've written quite a number of excellent questions to us for our guests on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. So please do that if at all possible and try to do that while the discount is still available.

And once again, that is G3conference .com. G3conference .com is the website address.

We have an anonymous listener. How does your guest feel about the lack of church discipline, especially in the area of the

Lord's Supper? The Southern Baptists seem to not guard the Lord's table as much as they guard the baptistry.

I am a member of a Southern Baptist church and certain areas seem to be handled loosely.

Thank you, Anonymous. And by the way, I'm sure you would agree, Pastor Josh, that you would probably have just as much variety and difference of opinion in the

Southern Baptist Convention as many other denominations where not every church would fit the description that our anonymous listener gives, but some would be probably very accurately described by him.

But if you could comment. Yeah, once again, the Southern Baptist Convention is extremely large, so I'm not saying that the

Southern Baptist Convention is the most healthy group of churches out there.

I'm simply stating that I think that while I might say that I have some problems with certain aspects of the

SBC, I'm also very much pleased with some things that I do see that are happening within the convention.

But pertaining to this question, I would say that you're exactly right. There's an awful lot of lack of guarding the table and fencing the table when it comes to the

Lord's Supper. So the way that the question was phrased, I would simply state that I don't know that an awful lot of Southern Baptist churches are guarding the baptistry as well.

I think that there's an awful lot of severe anemic health, you might say.

Yeah, in fact, I've heard, perhaps you could correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard from people who live in the heart of the

South, surrounded by Southern Baptist churches, with family and friends who are members of Southern Baptist churches, and there is almost a practice that would be not far afield from being paedo -baptist, in that although they would never baptize an infant, they would automatically, very often, baptize someone as soon as they turn 12 or something, just because they've turned 12.

Not because of any repentance or faith. Right, right. I like to tell certain people that the

Southern Baptists are very much baptistic when it comes to 11 months out of the year, or 10 months out of the year, but when it comes to June and July, when we have

Vacation Bible School, they become, or we become paedo -baptists, because we take in a lot of children and ask very simple questions like, how many of you don't want to go to the bad place and burn in hell?

And how many of you want to go to the good place and have streets of gold and gates of pearl and have all the great food that you can eat and never die again?

How many of you want to go there? And everyone raises their hand, and they say, well, then repeat these words after me, and then you can become a

Christian. And so then they take children that don't know the Gospel, and then they dunk them in their baptistry.

I would simply state that that's not believer's baptism. That's something else. And so that's not guarding the baptistry.

I think that that's, we need to be careful here. Again, these are souls of people who are going to live on for eternity, either in heaven or hell, and as a product of that type of methodology, we need to be very careful because I was a lost church member from six until I was 25, until the

Lord converted me. So there's an awful lot of people who are dunked in a baptistry at an early age that don't really understand the

Gospel, and then they're entrapped in this religiosity, and they don't know how or why it is that their heart is not fulfilled in God, and it's because they're not genuinely converted.

That's the reason that the health of the church is in the state that it's in today. But to the point of the question,

I think that we need to make sure that we fit the table and we need to make very clear as to what this is actually representing, what we are doing.

We are engaging in worship at the Lord's table. And so what we typically do, and the elders and I try to make sure that we're very clear about this, we think that the children being in the church with us for the observance of the

Lord's table is extremely important. We want them to see it. We want them to see their parents, their grandparents. We want them to see us worshiping at the

Lord's table. But we also want to make sure that we tell the parents and the guardians of their children that they are to govern their own families, specifically the men here.

We want to make sure that they govern their families well so that they are not allowing children to partake of the

Lord's table if they're unconverted. And so if they're not a baptized follower of the

Lord Jesus Christ, we simply ask them to not partake. This, again, this is an aspect of worship.

It is at the core of the gospel. We are celebrating something. We are celebrating the penal substitutionary death of Jesus Christ for wretched sinners.

And so we should take this extremely seriously. I love what Calvin did when some troublemakers in his church had been guilty of all types of vile sin and womanizing and various other things in Geneva, and there had been some political aspects related to church discipline that had taken place, and they had overturned

Calvin's decision to let these people or to bar these people from the Lord's table. So when they barged into the church on the

Lord's Day and they wanted to take place in the Lord's Supper and they wanted to partake, he came down and thrust himself over the table and basically said that they could lop off his arms if they so chose, but they would not partake of the

Lord's table. It would be over his dead body, so to speak. So if you look back at something like that and you say, why such a serious approach to the

Lord's table? And then you look at our culture today, we basically turn it into a mid -worship snack, so to speak.

I think we need to be very careful how we treat the Lord's table. We're talking about the blood and the body of Jesus Christ, the

Lamb of God who saves sinners. Amen. Well, Anonymous, you have won a different book, also by a speaker at the upcoming

G3 conference in 2018. You've won It Happens After Prayer, Biblical Motivation for Believing Prayer by H .B.

Charles Jr. So if you would like to receive that free book, compliments of the publishers and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

just email me your full name and address and I assure you you're not going to be exposed on the air, or should

I say we're not going to reveal your identity is a better way of putting it, on the air. You will remain anonymous, but this will just be for the purposes of mailing you the free book if you would like to receive it, and thank you for joining us on the air.

I have another anonymous questioner, and this anonymous questioner says, my question has to do with proper church discipline.

I attend a church that will find out about a member sinning in adultery.

They ask them to either stop or leave the church. After they leave the church and start attending another church, the pastor that asked them to leave calls the new church and speaks to the pastor about their excommunication.

Along with that, there is not a way back into the fellowship. They were asked to leave.

Another lady who didn't get along with a deaconess was told to leave and not return ever.

Another family was told they might want to find another church more to their liking because they wanted more hymns sung rather than praise songs, that they also wouldn't sing along with the praise songs.

Please explain how these should have been handled biblically, especially about ministering to reconcile an excommunicated member.

And I'll have you answer that when we return from our final break. And our email address, if anybody else would like to join us, we are running out of time, but our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And Pastor Josh, I am cutting and pasting this question onto an email to send to you.

Because the person wanted to remain anonymous, I'm not going to forward you the question, but just cut and paste the content of it onto a new email, and you'll have that in front of you when we come back from the break.

So this is our final break of the day. Don't go away. God willing, we will be right back after these messages.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzin. If you just tuned us in for the last 90 minutes, we have been discussing the theme of the

G3 Conference that is coming up. G3 Conference 2018 being held

January 18th through the 20th. And that theme being Knowing God, a

Biblical Understanding of Discipleship. And if you'd like to join us in the brief amount of time that we have left, now would be the time to fire off an email with a question because we're running out of time very rapidly.

ChrisArnzin at gmail .com. ChrisArnzin at gmail .com. And we had another anonymous listener, as you know,

Pastor Josh, who has submitted a question. I attend a church that will find out about a member sinning in adultery, and they ask them to either stop or leave the church.

After they leave the church and start attending another church, the pastor that asked them to leave calls the new church and speaks to the pastor about their excommunication.

Along with that, there is not a way back into the fellowship they were asked to leave. Another lady who didn't get along with a deaconess was told to leave and not return ever.

Another family was told they might want to find another church more to their liking because they wanted more hymns sung rather than praise songs.

They also wouldn't sing along with the praise songs. Please explain how these should have been handled biblically, especially about ministering to reconcile an excommunicated member.

Right. Well, first, you know, when it comes to church discipline, I think we need to be careful that we approach it in the spirit in which

Christ has intended it to be carried forth. And that's with a spirit of humility and with a desire of reconciliation.

So the ultimate goal in church discipline is twofold. It is that the person who's persisting in sin would be brought back onto or brought back into the fold, so to speak, as to use the imagery of a sheep that's wandering off from the shepherd or from the rest of the flock.

So it's to bring that particular individual back into a right fellowship with God, first of all.

And then second of all, to have unity and reconciliation among the rest of the church.

And so church discipline should never be carried out in a spirit of arrogance or for revenge or for any other particular goal other than reconciliation.

The ultimate goal must be reconciliation, that you only get to the place of excommunication with tears and with a broken heart because you don't want to see that person turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

You want to see the individual brought into a place of submission to God and reconciliation to the church.

So church discipline, unfortunately, is something that's not practiced, and it's not practiced by many churches today, especially across the broader spectrum of the evangelical church today.

But when it comes to church discipline, if you do practice it, you need to make sure that you're practicing it in the way that Christ has intended, and He's made it explicitly clear what that looks like in Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew chapter 18, if there's someone sitting against you or someone who's living in open rebellion, you go to that individual alone.

And then if that person repents, you have gained your brother. If you see this person continuing to persist in sin, then you go back to that individual with two or three witnesses so that the testimony would be established in the presence of two or three witnesses.

We see that dating back to, again, the historic law where the nation of Israel, before they could have someone stoned to death, before the death penalty, so to speak, could be used, the particular sin of that individual had to be established in the presence of two or three witnesses.

Again, you see the goal is reconciliation. If that person repents, you have gained your brother or your sister in Christ.

But again, if that person continues in sin, according to Jesus' own words in Matthew 18, at that point you would tell it to the church.

But then you don't just tell it to the church and then excommunicate all in one setting. No, what you do is you actually tell it to the church and then allow the church to do the work of the church, which is to bring that person to a place, reason with that individual, and to bring them to a place of repentance.

If they choose not to listen to the church, and again, we don't know.

It depends on what particular sin we're talking about here. Then and only then would you move on to the final step, which would be excommunication.

If you're talking about someone who is, say, abusing alcohol versus someone who's committing open adultery on their wife, you're going to want to move to the final stage of excommunication and the different steps in between these different steps.

You're going to want to move at a faster pace. So there has to be a measure of, you might say, a measure of discernment that's exercised by the elders in such cases to determine how fast you need to move in between here.

But again, ultimately the goal is reconciliation. So if you have someone, if you have a single pastor or a group of pastors who are just throwing around church discipline and throwing people out of the church in a very casual manner, that's not a pastor, and that's not exemplifying the heart of a shepherd.

That's exemplifying the heart of a bully. And so we need to make sure that we understand what church discipline was actually intended for in the first place, and Jesus has made it explicitly clear in the

Scriptures. Amen. And I can speak from personal experience that church discipline need not be the end of the road.

People need not view it as something horrifying that will destroy their lives if they respond with humility and obedience to those in authority over them.

I myself, years ago, was under church discipline after 18 years of sobriety.

After coming to Christ, I began to dabble and then went far beyond dabbling in alcohol consumption but became a very scandalously addicted drunkard.

And if it were not for the loving approach of church discipline that was performed upon me by humble brethren in Christ that were my elders,

I might be dead right now. And I just thank

God for the Christ -like way that they were involved in this process with me.

And so I urge people, if your elders are seeking to be involved in church discipline with you, your first reaction should not be just to go to another church.

That will be easy on you. In fact, that is a part of his question, I believe, because it is very sad.

I have witnessed even biblically solid churches, churches that are in lockstep with me theologically or some are paedo -baptists as well, but are

Reformed, who have welcomed into the membership of their congregations people that were excommunicated for unrepentant, scandalous sin.

And it breaks my heart when I see that happen. Yeah, I agree with that. In fact, back to the former question about the

Lord's Table. When we fence the table, when we observe the Lord's Supper, we make it explicitly clear that if you're not in good standing within your church, if you're visiting with us, we do allow for those who are baptized followers of Christ who have faith and doctrine to actually take part in the

Lord's Table with us. However, we do not allow anyone to take part in the

Lord's Table if they are under church discipline within their own church. And so we bar them from the table in such occasions.

But another problem with church discipline, again, it's like you've stated, is that people will just allow others to come into the life of their church and just welcome them in.

Again, this is what we call the pragmatic fruit or the fruit of pragmatic church growth methodology.

And just trying to get another number, another family, not taking into consideration the fact that they're under church discipline because of scandalous sin, which might be an indicator that they're not genuinely saved.

Again, that's the whole purpose of church discipline. It's for reconciliation, but it's also to purify the church, to make sure that the church is not full of ghosts.

Yes. In fact, I know of a church where there were two couples that were close to each other, and tragically the husband of one couple and the wife of another couple carried on an adulterous affair and then filed for divorce against their respective spouses.

They left that church without submitting to any discipline, joined another church, perhaps what could be described as a moderately fundamentalist church, fundamentalist

Baptist church. And the woman involved in the sin, within months, was leading a

Sunday school for children. Just absolutely mind -blowing to me.

You could readily believe that that would happen with a liberal church or something to that effect, even perhaps a mushy, gushy, modern evangelical church, but a conservative church that bordered on being a fundamentalist church.

Sometimes I think that they use the excuse, these churches, well, it's because of that other church's doctrine that led them into this sin, so we're going to just excuse that.

That's also ridiculous, isn't it? It really is. Again, I think that people say, well, church discipline doesn't work today.

We want to see our churches grow and that type of thing. Look, I've seen church discipline work the way that God intended it to on a couple of different occasions in my own ministry.

What would happen within the past couple of years here in the church I serve where a man was committing adultery on his wife, and after being reproved of that sin privately on two occasions, again, in step with Matthew 18, he eventually had to be excommunicated from our church.

But after a period of almost a year and a half to two years, there were times where he would allow me to meet with him and have coffee with him, and he would ask good questions, and eventually he and his wife reconciled, and then he eventually was reconciled within the church here and so is now back as a member of this church.

And so church discipline does work, and I think that children, I think that the entire church as a whole needs to see functional church discipline work in the way that God intended it to.

And what do you think about those churches? And this is another scenario

I am aware of. Those churches that welcome excommunicants into their doors, and these excommunicant people are still doing things unrepentantly, and when the pastors of the church welcoming this person challenge the pastors and say, hey, what are you doing allowing this person just to have a comfortable existence within your fellowship there?

This person is unrepentant in their sin, and the pastor of that church will say, they have not become members, therefore

I cannot do anything. How does that excuse slide by with you?

Well, it doesn't hold water, for one. Again, if you're a shepherd, your business is to care for people's souls, and so you're giving people a free pass who very well might be on their way to hell thinking that they're safe when they're indeed lost church members.

So you need to evaluate the scenario in an appropriate way.

Within the Southern Baptist Convention, I've talked about some good things today, but just let me revisit something that's not so good, and it's this idea of writing for memberships.

Within the SBC, we have just an unwritten rule of agreement that if someone comes to my church from another church, we always write to the other church or call.

I even do this with other denominations. So if someone's coming from, say, a

Presbyterian church down the road that has a good doctrinal position and we're in good fellowship with that particular church,

I will do the same thing. I will call and try to make sure that this family is leaving on good reasoning and that they're healthy church members, they're not under discipline, and that type of thing.

So historically, SBC churches have written for membership to make sure that there's no problem there.

Today, if I write to or if someone leaves this church and goes to another church and I say

I object to them coming on this particular reason, I've actually had another

Southern Baptist church and the pastor of that church harbor someone in that left this church because we were exposing the doctrinal errors of Roman Catholicism.

This has been a couple of years back now. I went to and sat in the office of that particular church and looked at that pastor and said, now listen, you can't allow these people to come into your church because they're leaving on doctrinal, gospel -oriented issues.

And so I'm very much concerned about the state of their soul. They had only been members of our church for a short period of time and they went through our membership process.

They went through the eldership interview. They did everything. They answered all of the questions appropriately.

We believe that they were just young, immature Christians. That's the way that everything had been articulated.

So anyway, long story short, they accepted them in as members. They went against the recommendation of the pastors of this church and welcomed them in as members.

Today that family is in massive turmoil. The father has been arrested for drug trafficking.

The mother has been involved in grotesque sin. And it's just a tragic situation.

Once again, could be avoided potentially if pastors would just care for people's souls in an appropriate way.

Amen. And the other part of the question, very quickly, because we have a listener in Kinross, Scotland I want to address, as far as I'm assuming you would never want to bring discipline against a family that chose not to sing praise music along with the congregation if they were traditionalists, because it would be causing them to violate their conscience, wouldn't it?

I mean, obviously there's a difference between that and somebody who's wreaking havoc over that and sowing seeds of discord and disunity.

That's one thing. But for instance, I know of certain circumstances where exclusive psalm -singing

Christians, because of the lack of a congregation that agreed with them, have joined churches that use extra -biblical hymnody, and they will not sing the hymns while they are in worship.

They will sing the psalms along with the congregation, though. Can that be something that we can live in harmony with without reaching discipline?

I think so, but again, I think it's up to the person, the family that holds that conviction.

If they're joining a church that doesn't just sing out of the psalter, they need to know that up front.

And so it would be wise for them to say, okay, if I'm going to join this church, then I'm not going to get all mad about the fact that they're singing songs that are not explicitly in the psalter.

And then if they're not trying to sow discord and create a massive divide in the church over these issues, and I think that everybody can just live in harmony together, this is a nonessential issue.

But again, if you have a family that's trying to divide the church over it and cause a church split over singing hymns versus extra -biblical songs,

I think that that's a different issue altogether. I think the actual meaning of the word heretic is one that sows discord, isn't it?

Correct, yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Anonymous. If you would like a free copy of the

H .B. Charles book that we mentioned, It Happens After Prayer, Biblical Motivation for Believing Prayer, email me your full name and mailing address.

It will not be revealed on the air. It will just be for the purposes of mailing you that free book, compliments of the publishers, and it will be shipped to you compliments of cbbbs .com.

And now we have our last question from Kinross Scotland, Murray. With regard to discipleship and church discipline, haven't you both just emphasized the key to handling these things?

Josh Bice just stated, we must do things as Christ meant them to be done. Chris Arnzen just spoke of the

Christ -like way that elders acted. Isn't acting like Christ the key answer, or the answer?

Yeah, so the question is, should we act like Christ in all of this? Is that the question? Yeah, he's basically saying that we, in our answers, he summarized it as behaving like Christ.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Again, Christ is the good shepherd. And so if you read the imagery of a shepherd in Scripture, you see all of this pointing to the fact that we as pastors are to be behaving ourselves and our leadership practices like the good shepherd himself were caring for sheep.

And so to do so in a flippant way, just not caring for people's souls appropriately would not be the way that Christ would have us as pastors, or as Christians, for that matter, to behave ourselves.

So I think that Christ is the ultimate example of how we should treat the church.

I care for the flock. Amen. Well, Pastor Josh, I want to make sure that everybody has all the information that they need.

If they want to register for the G3 Conference in January of 2018, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, and then click on G3 2018 and do so as soon as possible so you can take advantage of the discount on the price.

And as far as those visiting Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, praisemill .com,

p -r -a -y -s -mill .com. And, of course, the blog is deliveredbygrace .com,

deliveredbygrace .com. I want to let everybody know that if you would like to hear my interview with my own former pastor from Long Island before I moved to Pennsylvania, the very pastor who was one of the elders who actually enacted church discipline upon me, we actually conducted an interview together on the subject of church discipline, and that included a little bit of the content of my own discipline.

It may have been the first time in history that has ever happened. I don't know if a person who was under church discipline later after being restored did an interview on that.

But you could go to ironsharpensironradio .com, ironsharpensironradio .com, and type in Grimaldi in the search engine,

G -R -I -M as in Michael, A -L -D as in David, I, Grimaldi. That was my pastor,

Mark Grimaldi, who I interviewed on that subject. And mark your calendars for next

Tuesday because Josh Bice, Pastor Josh Bice, returns to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to continue to promote the

G3 Conference and to talk about other things. And, Pastor Josh, if you could remain on the line so we could just discuss our topic for next week a little bit.

Very good. And I want everybody that listened, first of all, I want to thank you for those of you who wrote in questions and took the time to write in very good questions.

I want to thank everybody who listened today. I want to thank, as always, my sponsors who enabled this program to remain on the air.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.