August 24, 2023 Show with Jeff Noblit on “How We Are Having Our Best Days as a Church”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

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It's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener,

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

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We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Armisen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 24th

day of August, 2023.

Several years ago, I got contacted by a young man named Luke Baker,

and he had said that he had discovered my program and thought very highly of it, and wanted to

purchase advertising for a conference that was being held at

Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

And when he described the church to me, I was immediately excited about this opportunity,

and we ran an ad campaign, and on top of this ad campaign, Luke invited me to

be in attendance at this conference, True Church Conference, and

I attended that and met, for the very first time, my guest today, Jeff Knoblett, who is

founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries and senior pastor of Grace Life Church of the Shoals in

Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

I immediately was so impacted and blessed and edified and challenged

by Jeff Knoblett's preaching that afterward, during a break in

the conference, I approached him where he was sitting and asked him, Brother, I have

two times a year a free pastor's luncheon where somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pastors

come out and they hear the Word of God from a guest preacher, they are fed,

and they receive a heavy sack of brand new free books personally selected by me and

donated by Christian publishers, all of the United States and United Kingdom, and I told him this was all

absolutely free, it was the brainchild of my precious late wife, Julie, in the 1990s, and

I've been continuing to hold these biannual luncheons every

year in memory of her and in honor and tribute to her

since she has gone home to glory with Christ, and I said, Jeff, will you please be a speaker at

one of my luncheons?

And he immediately said, I would love to do that, and I was thrilled to not long after that

receive a phone call from one of his assistants there at Grace Life Church of the Apostles who

organized Jeff's speaking engagement at my next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio

Free Pastors Luncheon at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania, which is a church

in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and the next luncheon that we'll be discussing

in a little bit is going to be held Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m., absolutely free of charge

for men and ministry leadership.

This is exclusively a men's luncheon.

I have a conviction, a very strong conviction, that the Bible is clear, that only men are qualified

to be leaders in the church, and they are to be leaders in their own home as well, and so therefore,

since it is a pastor's luncheon, only men are invited, and I hope that you will

attend if you are a man in ministry leadership and can get to Loisville, Pennsylvania this October 5th.

Today, we have Jeff Ond talk about how Grace Life Church of the Shoals

is having their best days as a church 40 years into Pastor Jeff

Noblitt's pastorate there, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jeff

Noblitt.

Thank you, Chris.

It's a joy to be with you today.

I look forward to, what, a couple of hours.

You and I get to throw around the things of God and the truths of Scripture that pertain to a healthy or true local

church.

Amen.

Well, why don't you first start off with a description of Grace Life Church of the Shoals in

beautiful Muscle Shoals, Alabama?

Well, our church is only about 46 years old.

Ha!

Only.

And actually, there was a split with another Baptist church.

I don't know how familiar most of your listeners would be with Baptists in the Southeast,

but there's a Baptist church.

No, there's two Baptist churches on every corner.

I guess the best church growth that we've experienced is one congregation splitting and starting a new

church.

So there's a lot of that that's gone on, unfortunately.

But this was actually a split off, but honestly, it was

something of a godly remnant that split off of a more liberal church.

And bless their hearts, some really good and godly people, but they needed to be taught.

They needed to have a shepherd.

And they ended up starting a church here in Muscle Shoals just from the remnant of

people that says, can we get back to the Bible?

Can we be Christ -centered and glory of God focused and just do what our evangelical or maybe

Baptist ancestors did as a church?

And I happened to walk in the door about three years after that, and just

as a college guy, but I was called to preach.

And they asked me would I come on staff, and I've been here 43 years.

Praise God.

And I love the fact that the Grace Life Church of the Shoals

supports pastors all over, not only the United States, but all over the world.

And I had the great honor and privilege to meet a number of them when I was at your True

Church Conference and even shared fellowship over lunch and dinner with some of them.

And let's not forget breakfast.

First time I ever had chocolate sauce on a biscuit.

No, you didn't have chocolate sauce, you had chocolate gravy.

That's right.

That's right.

That's right.

It was chocolate gravy.

And it was delicious.

And I just enjoyed so much meeting these men.

In fact, you have to, or you must not, I should say, let me forget to get contact

information for one of those precious Polish brethren in Poland

who I had an opportunity to meet.

And I told him I wanted to get him on the program, and he seemed excited about it.

And then I lost his contact information.

So perhaps he could give that to me later.

And perhaps you know who I'm talking about.

He was there at the conference.

There may have been more than one pastor from Poland, but there was certainly one at least.

Yes, yes.

Forgive me, his name slips my mind, but I know exactly who you're talking about.

Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Grace Life Church of the Shoals

in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, go to gracelifeshoals

.org.

Gracelifeshoals .org.

And nearby of that church are two landmarks that

you might want to pay a visit to, as I did, Fame Recording Studios

and Muscle Shoals Music, which were both places that launched the careers of

quite a number of world -renowned R &B singers and performing artists

and musicians and people from other genres of music.

Perhaps I will be disfellowshipped after some of my pastor friends hear me say

that I took great joy in visiting those studios, but they are indeed fascinating.

And so you will have something else to do during spare time there if you pay a visit to

this fine city, Muscle Shoals.

And there's even a documentary, by the way, called Muscle Shoals, about the recording industry in that

town.

But I am also thrilled to repeat that you have

accepted my request to be my speaker at the next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio pastors'

luncheon, free pastors' luncheon, on Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the

Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

And I just urge everybody who is listening, if you are a man in ministry leadership, if you want to

register for this, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, and

put pastors' luncheon in the subject line.

Well, our theme today, as I've already said at the outset of the program,

has to do with the very congregation that you've been pastoring for over 40 years, how you are

having your best days as a church 40 years into your pastorate.

So why don't you tell us about some of the early years at

Grace Life Church and how, after all these decades, you actually believe that you're

having your best days now, which is a very good sign for a church that's been in existence that long and

with one pastor at least for 40 years.

So if you could.

Well, we are like I said, I've been here 43 years total, and the

church was somewhat unique to start with in that we had an

expositional pulpit, expository Bible preaching from the pulpit.

But it was a mixture.

There was a mixture of what I would call reformed, biblically healthy

convictions and some very man -centered, pragmatic methodologies, if

you will.

And I begin to be troubled in my heart about that we were,

well, the two were incompatible, that we needed to either be thoroughly biblical or not at all.

And so I began the long, long journey, lost about

600 active members during this early.

Year.

Wow.

We have, well, God's replaced them, but it wasn't easy.

But we decided that we were going to be like the churches

of early America or maybe the Puritan fathers or maybe our Baptist forefathers, all in the vein

of genuine conversion, a true gospel, thorough, Holy Spirit empowered biblical

preaching, a healthy membership, not just packing our roles with people.

Baptists in the South are notorious for having 300 on role, but 80 in attendance.

So we did an extensive cleaning up of our roles.

We begin to practice compassionate biblical church discipline for unrepented

sin in the body, begin to take ownership, if you will, of missions

instead of just throwing money at a distant missions agency.

We begin to get personally involved, that is, take ownership of world missions.

And so we were radically transforming and reforming the church.

And it really ruffled a lot of feathers.

But I just had a strong conviction very early on, Chris, that if we could be decently biblical,

that God would use us as a model for others, because generally speaking, though, there are many good brothers

out there who love Christ, pastoring churches, et cetera.

Nevertheless, they were just not able to bring their churches to good spiritual,

spiritual biblical health.

And I thought, if we can just get there, then maybe God would use us to multiply ourselves or

reproduce.

And I am not saying we are the only one, absolutely not.

But there are some maybe irreducible minimums that a church imperfectly, but a church should be

functioning in convictions, they should hold methods, they should be performing.

Let's say that if you're not rolling on those tracks, you're not

true or as true as you ought to be or you're not healthy.

And so we thought if we could get to, if we could incarnationally live these things

out, two things would happen.

First of all, God would be glorified because we would be functioning on his wisdom, not man's wisdom.

And so he would get the credit, the esteem for our success, because it's not humanly

explainable when you're just thoroughly biblical.

And the second thing would be that perhaps God would use then our model to encourage so many other brothers

like myself who have this conviction that basically say, how do you get started or what does it

look like or how did you get there?

And so that's why Anchored in Truth Ministry sort of just developed on its own, because I'd say

pushing 15 to 20 years into our reformations, though we were being

rejected by the majority of Baptists in the South and many general evangelicals too,

we begin to get phone calls and contacts.

And when the internet came along, emails by people who would say, I've been listening to your sermons or reading about your

ministry.

Would you help me?

Would you talk to me about how I can be on the same journey of reforming my church to be more true to

Scripture?

And as time went on, this Anchored in Truth Missions and Anchored in

Truth Ministries developed out of requests from others to help them

develop their churches to be more biblically spiritually sound.

And a wonderful global church planting ministry has developed out of that.

You know, when you said that you had to go through the membership rolls and start cleaning house

and locating those individuals who were absentee members,

and it reminded me of a friend of mine, probably 20 years

ago, when he went through an eschatological change

from his former belief system in dispensationalism.

The leaders wanted to throw him out, and

they had a church meeting to vote on whether he should remain there or be

expelled from his position.

And my friend said that when he was sitting there, he saw more than a dozen

strangers who were members of the church.

They were still on the member roll, and had not darkened the door of the church

since he had been the pastor.

And they were there voting on his future.

But when it comes to things like this, these very uncomfortable things

where you know you're going to be inflicting pain on people,

they actually inflicted it upon themselves.

But you are an instrument that is going to bring some

kind of discomfort at some level for most of these people.

Isn't it something that men of God have to remember that you

are doing no favor, first of all, to allow people to continue on in

their lives in a merry, carefree fashion, where they can

think they have some kind of good relationship with God, even though they are not in

regular attendance with the scheduled gatherings of God's people for

worship.

And you just do nothing like many churches do.

They just let them go on their way.

They don't want to hurt their feelings.

And who knows?

Some of these absentee members of these churches might even be sending in checks or something every month,

and people are satisfied with that.

But isn't that akin to a doctor not telling someone who has cancer

that they are terminally ill, and they just say, oh, there's nothing wrong with you.

You can just go about your business.

This is actually a more serious area than that is, isn't it?

Well, it's really astounding, Chris, that we even have to stop and explain this,

because if you've been added to a church, what you're saying is,

God the Holy Spirit, through the preaching of the gospel, has powerfully

revolutionized my soul, changed me completely.

And now the driving purpose of my life is to be centered in Jesus Christ and following him and honoring him.

And the scriptures leave it absolutely clear that the centerpiece of your service for Christ is a

local church.

Now I have some empathy and sympathy with people today, because we get it all the time.

Guys will call, contact us and say, honestly, there's not a healthy church in my town.

And so I understand why they may not be as attracted to the local church as perhaps

they would be if they had a decently healthy church.

But I'm saying that to say this.

If God's added you to that church, he's changed your heart.

He's the centerpiece, the joy, the treasure of your life.

And for you not to even show up when they meet, it's just astounding when you think.

About it.

It's just, are you kidding me?

You could not get married and three or four weeks later say, I'm not going to show up anymore at home.

I'm just not doing that.

And by the way, and I think this is very biblically valid, your commitment to a local church is greater than your

commitment to your spouse, because your spouse may die one day, but the local church will be here until

Christ returns.

It is the core of your commitment in life.

And so we tried to very lovingly and patiently preach these truths.

And as you were saying, this is a compassion toward the professing believer.

Of course, what you find out is a good number of those are not true believers.

You do not have a regenerate membership usually if you take over a church.

That's a whole nother subject.

I mean, Chris, we would need 40 hours to cover everything I'd love to cover.

But saying all that to say, so you begin to find out when you begin to maybe draw a

line in the sand, always with compassion and always with patience, but to say, you know, at minimal, you should

strive to be faithful to the meetings of the church that you belong to.

Church is not somewhere you attend only as a place, a family you belong to.

And so you're trying to help them understand that, first of all, this is just a willful sin and

chastisement from the Lord will be coming.

Secondly, you've professed Christ either through baptism or coming to that church from another church.

And now you're living as if Christ hasn't done anything to you, as if Christ gospel and

Christ power is of not of any effect.

So the dishonor of God, the dishonor and discrediting of Christ and his gospel, the disservice

to the local church family you've pledged to serve, care for, love, even lay down your life for one another.

I mean, all of these things and many more are foundational reasons why you have to be striving toward.

And look, it's a many year process.

A lot of pastors forget that it takes many years to see these things become well established.

But like I was saying, we're having our best years now after four decades.

My church would run me off if I didn't do these things any longer.

I mean, they have seen the result.

They have seen the fruit of making these loving but firm stands on Christ's

reputation and on the value of the local church.

So yes, you're exactly right.

It's a wonderful service to the people who are in sin by not attending.

But it's also a great service to our Lord because he deserves a better representative than that in the

local community.

Amen.

We have to go to our first commercial break.

If anybody has a question for Pastor Jeff Knoblet, please send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

As always, 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.

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

You may have a question about something related to your own church.

You have been troubled by things in your own congregation.

You might even be the pastor, and you might even disagree with your own fellow elders or your own denomination.

We would understand that you would be compelled to remain anonymous.

In fact, we would insist that you remain anonymous when bringing up something about a specific church.

But if you're asking a general question, please give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Jeff Knoblet right after these messages from our sponsors.

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We're now back with Pastor Jeff Noblitt of Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

We are talking about how Grace Life Church of the Shoals is having their best days as a

church, 40 years into the pastorate of Jeff Noblitt.

If you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

And, Pastor Jeff, we got to the point where you were clearing out the membership roles,

making sure that those who are on your membership roles are truly members, are people who are behaving like members,

committed members of the body of Christ.

And tell us the next phase in this development.

Well, there was an important realization that we came to

maybe 10 to 15 years into my pastorate, and that was, why do we

keep seeing such a significant percentage of our membership not

attending or living in the kind of open sin that required church discipline?

And so we begin to practice church discipline.

And as you might understand, there was a lot of people who had been here a

while who had never seen this before, who were very disgruntled, even angry that we were doing such a thing.

And I kept questioning, this can't be right.

Why would there be such a high percentage or significant percentage of

folks on the membership role either not coming or just living in wanton, open sin?

And, you know, my view of God communicating is not that he speaks

audibly or anything, but tongue in cheek.

I like to say God spoke to me.

And so I said, well, was that audible?

And I said, no, it's louder than that.

And it was just a realization that we were beginning to open the back door of

the church, if you will, and see some purging out of those, quite honestly, Brother Chris, that didn't

even act like they wanted to be Christians.

Wow.

But I became very convicted that we were very loose and shallow in our

methodologies of the front door of the church.

That is, what was our understanding of the gospel?

And what was our understanding of genuine conversion?

Now, I'm confident our on paper theology of the gospel was

sound.

But what does that look like in shoe leather?

And that's why Anchored in Truth Ministries exists, Chris.

A lot of good brothers have never seen a healthy enough version or a

long enough practice of a healthy membership process.

They're good brothers.

They mean well, but they need some kind of pattern or example that helps them understand

how can I be more assured that at least a solid percentage of my new members are genuinely

converted, regenerated the spirit, born again Christians.

And so I went on a long journey, if you will, in preaching through the book of

Ephesians and God's providence fit perfectly where we were as we begin to fine tune

what should it look like if we have experienced the new birth, if we were truly born again.

And then I begin to insatiably study church history and studied the

old Puritan pastors and others.

Spurgeon was very critical in my research because my conviction was

nothing we were going to do could be unique or unusual.

It had to be in church history because we would be most arrogant to think that we're going to find a

biblical pattern for ministry that was not lived out by our forefathers, at least

somewhere in past church history.

And I found out, for example, that, for example, the Baptist in Georgia

in the middle part of the 19th century actually disciplined 75 ,000 members that year.

Unbelievable.

And I thought this used to be a common thing in Baptist and evangelical life,

so much so that there was a time when the average Baptist church, and I'm talking about

a century ago, century and a half ago or so, but the average Baptist church, if they did not

properly discipline members who were in willful sin.

And Chris, we're not talking about it running a CIA agency or FBI agency to try

to find sin.

We're talking about this is blatant.

You cannot ignore it.

I mean, the guy's just living with a woman who's not his wife or something.

So saying all that to say, I realized in church history, a very careful and thorough process

of receiving members and disciplining members are those who profess to be Christians who are members

was very well established in Baptist history and in evangelical history.

So I promise the church as I bring these reforms about, it's going to be thoroughly biblical.

I'm going to be able to show you through the exposition of the text, and we're going to find it abundantly in church history.

And so we really cleaned up.

It probably honestly was a five, if not eight plus year process

of reforming how we received members.

And it's been probably the foundational issue to us

becoming a more healthy or spiritually, biblically healthy local church.

If that's not right, nothing else is going to work.

And so that was a huge turning point for us to, I guess what you would say, Chris, is get our

methodologies concerning the gospel conversion and adding folks to the

church to get those methodologies in tune with our theology.

And so that was a very foundational aspect of reforming the church to be healthy.

Amen.

And once again, folks, these very uncomfortable seasons of

church life, when someone is placed under discipline, the

goal is to be loving to that person in order to

rescue them from a circumstance which is making it evident that they are on the road

to hell.

And I can say firsthand, I know that people who listen to this program every day, I know some of you may be

rolling your eyes because you're hearing me tell a story I've told a number of times,

but I was under church discipline during a period of my life when after

18 years of sobriety, I plunged back into the wickedness of

drunkenness on a habitual basis, a scandalous level of drunkenness,

and I was told by the elders of my church very

compassionately and lovingly, but sternly, that if I did not make it

very clearly evident that I had repented and given up

this life and was back into regular

attendance and sobriety, that they would have to be forced to excommunicate me.

And I voluntarily went to Hebron Colony in

Boone, North Carolina, a wonderful Christian ministry that has been in

existence since World War II.

It came into existence when a Presbyterian pastor who left his

denomination because of the encroachment of liberalism into that denomination,

he left the denomination, moved down to Boone, North Carolina, and he began to witness G .I .s coming

home from the war who were drunkards.

And he started this ministry, and it's the longest continuously running ministry for men

with addictions in the United States, and it's absolutely free of charge.

I cannot pass up opportunities to sing the praises of hebroncolony .org, and I

graduated from that season of being disciplined by

them, and thanks be to God, I have never since leaving that place

even had an instance of being overcome with the temptation to drink.

I'm not saying that that is the case with everybody who has had an addiction problem, but right now, so far,

that happens to be the situation with me.

So thank God that I am even able to sit at a dinner table with people who are drinking wine, and it

doesn't even faze me.

It does not lure me into partaking with them.

So I just wanted to say that church discipline saved my life.

I really believe it.

I believe that I would very likely not be living right now if I were not

placed under discipline by my loving elders and biblically driven and Christ -honoring

elders at Grace Reformed Baptist Church on Long Island.

Just thought I'd throw that out there, Pastor Jeff.

Well, Chris, I think that's a verification of your authentication.

That means you really belong to Christ.

Those that do not respond to loving discipline from their church are not His.

I do not believe you can long -term harden your neck and refuse the formal steps

Christ laid out for us in the Gospels and refuse those formal steps of discipline and

still be one who belongs to Christ.

The practice of church discipline is a way—it's the means by which God proves and purifies

the true church.

And that's something we need—that's why I use that phrase.

True does not mean we're the only ones and we've arrived.

No, we're still repenting and growing and learning, and there's a lot of good brothers and churches out there that are striving to be true like we

are.

But my point is, if you go back to Israel, you have Israel, then you have Judah, and

in the New Testament, you know, you have the wheat among the tares, etc., etc.

They went out from us that it might be known that they never were really of us.

So there's a true church or a remnant church, and then there's the professing evangelicalism or

professing Christendom, if you want to get wider, that quite honestly, when the Antichrist arrives,

most of them are going to line up with him because that's who they truly are.

So there's a godly remnant, and I think it has a lot of denominational names on it.

The godly remnant has Presbyterians or Church of God or Baptist or whatever you want to call them.

But there's also always that need for faithful shepherds to be purifying God's

church as they follow Scripture.

They cannot do it on their own initiative or on their own wisdom, thoroughly following Scripture.

And if, like you said earlier, if you love that person, the Bible says the wages of sin is death.

It's going to kill them morally.

It's going to kill them mentally, emotionally.

It's going to kill a marriage, ultimately, possibly even their life.

So we're rescuing them.

But the primary means of exercising biblical church discipline, our primary

purpose, I should say, is that we are purifying the church and glorifying God by having a more

pure church.

And very important, though, secondarily, we are rescuing that soul from the destruction that could come

into his life.

Now, I didn't mean to get on here and talk so much about church discipline.

But it is a foundational element of healthy church life.

And Chris, what I want to get across is to these brothers, I'm 43 years in this thing and we are

prospering because of these things.

So I exist.

I live and breathe to prove God's word works.

We don't have to cut short.

We don't have to bring the clever ingenuities of this fallen world into the church to be

successful.

And not only does it work and not only are we prospering 40 years in this thing, it's

easier now.

It's so easy now to pastor a church that's functioning biblically.

It's an uphill climb to get there.

That's why I say always early on in these interviews that we lost 600 people over three different

splits because there are difficult days.

But hang in there, brothers.

Stay with it.

You're never going to be perfect.

You're going to fail some.

You're going to stumble some.

Get back up.

Repent.

Dust yourself off and say, I want to be God's tool to build a true church for his glory in this

world.

Amen.

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who has a question.

He said, I was wondering if over those 43 years, any of the members who left

because they were angry about some of your changes came back with remorseful and repentant

hearts requesting to be reinstated into membership.

Absolutely.

We have many come back and gloriously come back.

I'll give you this brief testimony.

One of the first formal cases of discipline that we had.

And by the way, Chris, if you and I are in the church together and you see me and I had sort of a short

attitude to the waitress in the restaurant and you said, brother, you shouldn't have been short to her.

That's church discipline.

That's an element of discipline.

So discipline covers a lot of things.

But typically when we use the word, we're talking about excommunication.

So we had this excommunication.

This man left his wife, was shacked up with another woman, put his furniture in the

house and the men of his small group were very, very committed to small groups here at our

church.

They came to me and said, this is what's going on.

We're trying and we're trying.

Well, eventually he would not repent.

He was removed.

Two years later, he contacts me.

He makes an appointment.

And he's been out of the church for two years, haven't heard from him.

And I thought, oh, no, he's going to come in here with a gun.

He's going to shoot me.

And he walks into my office and very sheepishly and humbly says, Pastor, I ruined

my marriage.

But the woman I'm with now, we both repented.

We've come to faith in Christ.

We're actively serving the church, trying to rebuild my relationship with my children.

But I would have never repented and come back to God had you not disciplined me as you did.

And I stand before the church and thank the church for this discipline.

And Chris, really, that was early on.

And from that moment onward, my church said, this is right.

We must love people biblically and not just according to our emotions.

But, yes, we've had a lot of people restored through these years.

Praise God for that.

And we have, let's see, Carl in Lexington, Kentucky.

And Carl asks, what do you think needs to be done when other

churches in the community that claim to be Bible -believing churches welcome in

people who have left your own church, who were under -disciplined and chose not to

continue the process and start afresh at other churches?

I know of specific churches who have welcomed such people into their membership, even

though they know full well that they were under -disciplined at other congregations.

So what would you do, for instance, Pastor Jeff, if you knew that that was happening at

Grace Life Church of the Shoals?

Somebody's under -disciplined, and then they just say, well, I've had enough of this.

And they go over to some other church that you're familiar with, the Evangelical Church.

And you know that the elders, in fact, you may even contact the elders and say, just want to let you know that so -and -so

has been in the midst of church discipline for a serious matter.

And I understand that you've actually welcomed them into membership, et cetera.

What would you do?

Well, I can tell you what we do, and I can tell you what we did.

Wow.

We've had a lot of that.

Wow.

Now, Chris, I'm talking about hundreds.

Wow.

Hundreds that have been welcomed into membership in our area after we discipline them.

In fact, one church that's about four, five blocks from us put

on their marquee out front after we had disciplined a group from our church.

And they put these words on their marquee, as your church thrown you out, we will take you in.

Wow.

So I thought, well, there's a new method of church growth.

You go after the people that a godly church has disciplined.

That's actually a method of suicide for a church to be welcoming in people like that.

Yes.

Well, I agree with John MacArthur when he says churches that would do those things are actually non -churches.

Right.

And thus my phrase, true church.

And true church means you're striving toward the truth.

Never arrive, but you can strive toward it and get on a plateau.

So what we did was we tried to inform our people graciously, but clearly this is

totally unacceptable.

This is compromise on their part.

And we've just got to keep being what we are and doing what we do.

And here's what began to happen for this dear brother in Kentucky.

God began to make us attractive to the true sheep who wanted a strong

expositional pulpit.

He wanted a church with healthy membership.

He wanted a church with a healthy process of discerning true conversion.

God began to send us gospel humbled people who desired a healthy church life.

And he continually led from us those who just wanted their names on a membership role.

And maybe the cultural Southern Baptist Christian experience, let's say.

So and that's what's so key, Chris.

Pastor brothers out there, you've got to know that God will begin to attract to you the right

people.

If you are willing to give up on the wrong people.

Amen.

Now, just to give a caveat here to make the situation

even more complicated.

Obviously, there are churches that exist.

Some of our brothers who may be in extreme forms of fundamentalism,

who may have put a member under church discipline for an unbiblical reason.

You have heard perhaps that a member of the

church has been put under discipline because he

was caught listening to opera on his car radio.

Or his wife, although they are very feminine, wears slacks.

Or he has hair that goes over the collar of his shirt.

You could go on and on and on with some pretty insane

legalistic things that somebody might be put under discipline over.

And therefore they say, wait a minute, this is not biblical.

This is really tyrannical.

I'm leaving.

They go to Grace Life Church of the Shoals.

Now, I'm assuming that you believe you would still need to communicate with the elders and explain to them

your actions, wouldn't you?

Oh, absolutely.

We constantly are contacting the leadership of the churches that the people come to us

from.

And if we find out it's something that ludicrous, then we just dismiss it and let them

in.

That's the worst of the worst.

That's the Phariseeism that our Lord so condemned in the New Testament, where they're creating

rules that come from man and not from God.

For example, Chris, before we excommunicate somebody, we've got to have very thorough biblical

foundation.

And if we don't, we're going to show grace even if we think we're probably being too liberal or lenient.

We're just not quick on this thing.

We have had to discipline a lot of people.

But unfortunately, in the early decades, a lot of people made it very easy.

I mean, when you're brazenly drunk every weekend and dozens of church members have seen it and

watched it, that's easy.

And so even but even then, if you're trying to repent and grow through it, our

arms are around you.

We'll help you through it.

You have to be hard necked and brazen and completely disregard the counsel of the elders and

continue to live in open, clearly biblical violations before we would make it

a matter of public excommunication.

So that would be a terrible and gross perversion of the true biblical doctrine of

discipline for these little trivial things that the Scripture is not clear on.

Well, we have to go to our midway break, folks.

Race Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a

longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize Iron Sharpens

Iron and all of their programming geographically to Lake City, Florida.

And they do so with their own public service announcements and other local things, while simultaneously we on our

end are airing our globally heard commercials.

Please use this time wisely.

Try to contact as much of our advertisers as you can to let them know you appreciate their

sponsorship of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

But also send in your questions to Jeff Knoblet.

Go away.

We'll be right back with Pastor Jeff Knoblet after these messages.

The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents the future of Christendom 2023.

The Gospel at War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian,

a personal journey of faith and sexual identity.

The debate topic, is gay Christian a biblically acceptable identity for a member of Christ's church?

So come join us for the sixth future of Christendom conference.

The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday,

with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reformed Bible Church.

This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching, with a theme of the Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including

government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

Head to futureofchristendom .org.

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend, Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I

are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd, on a theme that I've been preaching, teaching,

writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott

Anuel, and Josh Bice, founder of G3 Ministries.

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Chris Arnzen, I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd at the G3

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Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Exhibitor Booth and say hi to Chris Arnzen while

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Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church.

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Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use

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Please tell Dr. Morecraft and the Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr. Joseph

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the New American

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Hello, my name is Anthony Uvino, and I'm one of the pastors at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Quorum, New York,

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I want you to know that if you enjoy listening to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio show like I do, you can now find it on the

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Truth is so hard to come by these days, so don't waste your time with fluff or fake news.

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We are dedicated to teaching Christian theology from a Reformed Baptist perspective to beginners in the faith as

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Invinio, and thanks for listening.

If you love Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, one of the best ways you can help keep the show on the air is

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air.

This is Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens

Iron Radio financially.

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives

to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in Scripture through the person and work

of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And of course the end for which we strive is the glory of God.

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes,

or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will

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Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org.

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our Sovereign

Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading.

The man who never reads will never be read.

He who never quotes will never be quoted.

He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

You need to read.

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Before I return to Jeff Noblitt and our discussion on how the Lord has continued

to bless Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama for

over 40 years, I just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

First of all, if you love this show, folks, you do not want it to disappear.

You look forward to the guests and topics that we have on the program daily sometimes even guests and

topics that you'll never hear anywhere else.

You look forward to receiving free books when I interview authors and give their books away

to listeners who submit questions.

You look forward to receiving free brand -new Bibles when you're a first -time questioner.

And I could go on and on and on.

Well, if you really want this show to continue, we need your help.

Go to IronTripandZionRadio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now.

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Simultaneously, the giving to IronTripandZionRadio plummeted deeply and we

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So we need your help more than ever, please.

And I want to also remind you, as much as we urgently need your help financially,

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Please never do that.

And also, if you're really struggling to survive and make ends meet, please wait until you are more financially stable and back

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As much as I really need your money and really would love to receive it, you must obey God and these are clear

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Providing for my radio show is obviously not a command.

But if you do love the show and you are blessed financially above and beyond your ability to provide for

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advertising dollars as we are in your donations.

So send me an email to chrisorenson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

And please don't forget about the free Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon featuring my

guest today, Jeff Noblitt, Senior Pastor of Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and founder

and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries.

This is Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania,

which is Perry County, Pennsylvania.

Everything is free of charge.

Your admission, your meal, and everyone who is attending will leave with one or

possibly even two heavy sacks of brand -new free books that have been donated to me

from Christian publishers all over the United States and United Kingdom, books I've personally selected

for the pastors who are attending my luncheon.

And you can't pass that up, especially if you live within traveling distance to

Perry County, Pennsylvania.

We hope to see you there if you're a man in ministry leadership.

Send me an email to chrisorenson at gmail .com and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.

I also want to mention that the ministry that is live -streaming this program

right now, First Love Radio, which is a ministry of First Love Ministries,

they are having a free conference on Saturday and Sunday, August 26th and 27th at the

Reformed Baptist Church of Tama, Iowa.

The conference is featuring Joe Jackowitz, president of First Love Ministries and pastor

of Christ Bible Church of Pleasanton, California, and Austin Huggins, who is pastor of the

First Baptist Church of Baghdad, Florida.

The theme is Sanctification, How to Grow in Holiness.

That's August 26th and 27th, Saturday and Sunday at the Reformed Baptist Church of

Tama, Iowa.

To register for this free event, go to firstloveministries .org, firstloveministries .org.

Last but not least, if you are not a member of a biblically faithful, theologically sound church, no matter where you live

on the planet Earth, I have extensive lists spanning the globe of churches that are

biblically faithful, including Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

So, I've also helped many people all over the world find churches, sometimes even just a few minutes from

where they live.

And that may be you too, no matter where on the planet Earth you live, if you are without a biblically faithful church home.

Just send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line.

That's also the email address where you can send in a question to Jeff Knoblett, and we are

discussing how the Lord has blessed Grace Life Church of the Shoals in Muscle Shoals,

Alabama.

Even after 40 years of the pastor of my guest, Jeff Knoblett, send your email

to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com gives his first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.

Pastor Jeff, we have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

And Susan Margaret says, isn't it very wise counsel to pastors, elders,

deacons, and church members to be very prepared when they are in a season where

everything appears to be going wonderfully, even as is happening at Grace Life Church

of the Shoals, to be prepared for Satan's attack on such a ministry?

Isn't that the time when Satan wants to attack a faithful church the most, when everything is going well?

I think that's a pretty good question.

I'm sorry.

I accidentally had you on mute.

Are you there?

I'm here.

Great.

And I'm assuming you heard the question.

Yes, I'm assuming you heard the question.

Yes, I heard the question.

That's an excellent point.

What I would like to add as an addendum, that's a wonderful word and a great word of

caution, if you will.

Spurgeon once said that if a minister will keep his nose to the grindstone in the first half or so

of his ministry, he'll find the last half or third is not so difficult.

And I think there's something to that.

There's a sense of a bell curve in reforming a church where certain

irreducible minimums, we might say, are foundational things are established and you're functioning

on them.

Never perfectly, but you're functioning on them.

It does get a lot easier.

And I want to say that because, Chris, a lot of brothers have gone through warfare after

warfare and they need to hear, will it ever get better?

And I'm telling you, overwhelmingly, yes, it will.

And I'm not saying that Grace Life of the Shoals or any other long term healthy church cannot face

difficulties toward the latter end.

That could happen.

But generally, I think as a rule, as things are established, the

primary reason is because the church membership has matured to where

Satan doesn't easily get an inroad.

He needs unregenerate church members or he needs very carnally acting true

Christians.

And I don't think you can stay there long, but it can happen to get a footing, let's say, and get a

hearing.

Give you a brief illustration.

We had a man join our church several years ago and he came from a large city

up north.

That's all I'll say.

And he oversaw a large company and was very wealthy.

And he moved down here.

He was impressed with our ministry, met a profession here that he was a genuine Christian and moved his

membership to our church.

It was within a few months he began to think that we should change the church to

function the way that he thought was best.

We always want to hear what people have to say.

But I have about a thousand active people here.

And so I can't listen to a thousand different voices, obviously.

But we have a thoroughly biblical system that we've developed here.

That's nothing new.

It's well established in scripture and in church history.

But so he would say it and he would say it in a way to other leaders of

the church.

Not to me, but to other leaders like, well, does Brother Jeff know that you think he's really right here, right there?

And they would stop him immediately and say, we don't do that here.

If you've got a question, you can contact the senior pastor and talk to them.

But I can't talk to you about your criticism of your corrections.

Well, when you have a body that's that mature, it's much harder for Satan to get

in road.

So I want to encourage pastors out there.

Stay the course.

Be thoroughly biblical.

Find out the foundational elements of biblically healthy church life.

Do those well.

And as the seasons and the years roll by, God will build the kind of strength and

fortitude.

Not that it can't happen, but it's far less likely to happen that Satan can get a foothold and cause the kind of

troubles and divisions like we experienced in the first 15 or 20 years of our ministry.

Thank you very much, Susan Margaret, for the excellent question.

We have Brewer, B -R -E -W -E -R in Biloxi, Mississippi.

And Brewer asks, what are the primary things

that you are using as a litmus test for the blessing of God upon your church at this point

where you are celebrating how wonderful things are going in the midst of your ministry?

Well, I don't know that I would use the term litmus test.

I know what the brother means.

But I would say the overwhelming thing is a permeating spirit of gospel

humility.

Very, very often, hundreds of times, at least, over these last two to three decades,

when people come to our True Church Conference, where we kind of preach on to an overview of all the

things we believe and practice.

And we bring in our partners and our mission associates from all over the world.

It's a glorious family reunion is what it is.

Well, we often have a lot of guests and people who come and everyone's welcome.

And here's what I hear, Chris, all the time.

I hear things like, man, the music was wonderful.

And the preaching was expositional and sound.

The theology was true.

And then they'll say this.

But I was really impressed when I met your people.

And that's what blesses me the most.

Jesus did not say all men will know you're my disciples because you can articulate theology correctly.

That's important.

But he did say they would know by the love you have one for another.

And the devotion and the love and the service element of this church is so special.

And it's not me.

It's God.

But it's so special.

It vindicates my doctrine.

And so that's that's what I would say is the litmus test is an ongoing gospel

humility where no one cares who gets the credit, who's in charge.

They're just glad to get in on serving Christ in their local church.

And I have an army of servants.

I'm just super blessed.

I stand on the shoulders of a gospel laity.

So the church is indeed, as Paul said about the Corinthians, our letter known and read of

all men.

And if I might just say this and throw this in.

We have wonderful, gifted men who are great preachers and writers who help us to keep the

theological parameters, the theological foundations firm.

We need those brothers.

But what we don't have enough of is long term proven pastors who

can help brothers and mentor brothers in the actual outworking of that theology in the life of the

local church.

The scriptures not primarily written to increase our knowledge, but to guide our footsteps

and primarily our footsteps as we are serving and working in a healthy local church.

Great.

And let's see here.

We have another listener.

I just had it in front of me and it just escaped me.

Oh, here it is.

I don't know if he pronounces it Stephen or Stefan because it's with a PH.

But Stefan in Mastic Beach, Long Island, New York has to say,

do you believe in the importance of a plurality of elders?

And I'm assuming a church that is as large as yours must have that.

Yes, we do function under the oversight of elders here.

That's another reform that we had to put in place.

Traditionally in the southeast, Baptist churches have one pastor.

And as a dear, dear man of God that I respect a lot, who's in heaven, Dr. W .A. Criswell,

who pastored First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, used to say that the senior pastor is a benevolent dictator.

Well, I'm not going to argue with Dr. Criswell, but I would say that in addition to that, there needs to be a

body of men who function equally with the preaching pastor.

I do believe there's a leader among equals.

That's John MacArthur's view.

That's my view based on gifts and calling.

And he is the primary preaching pastor of the church.

But yes, we have 12 other men who serve alongside me, at least 12 at this time.

We don't have a definite number, but that's how many we have at this time who serve in the overseeing of the church

with me.

And then we have deacons who work primarily through our small groups to minister to the body and service

needs.

Well, I don't want to take any more listener questions right now until you have more time to

be more detailed with your praise reports about how and why a Grace Life Church

of the Shoals is having its best days over 40 years into your pastorate there.

Well, Chris, one of the first things I would say is you have to make sure that you are

relying on the things that are effectual and important today,

and they were also effectual and important 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 700

years ago, whatever it may be.

And also, they are effectual and foundational for the future.

In other words, some things don't change.

And we have to make sure we're not just giving a wink and a nod to sound doctrine, and

we put that in a file somewhere, and it gathers dust.

But we really are striving to find the main, if I would say categories, or the main

tracks that a local church is to be functioning on, because the Scripture makes it so clear that it should be

functioning on those.

And then do those well.

And then add the other things that a church may or may not do, because Scripture doesn't say

they're wrong, but Scripture doesn't teach they're essential.

And so if I might elaborate, I use the illustration of a wheel,

and you have to be careful with even systematic theology and illustrations, because all of

our attempts to organize God's truth has weakness.

Yes, especially when we're trying to describe the Trinity.

Well, are the five points of Calvinism, Reformed theology, that's very helpful, but there's challenging

elements to the exposition of each book to make them squeeze into that perfectly.

So I'm saying all that as a preface to my wheel illustration.

So there are weaknesses, but I do think it's helpful.

I'll run through it real quickly.

The hub of the wheel is the most important, because all the driving power comes from the hub of the wheel.

And the hub of the wheel of the local church is the preaching of the Word and the power of the Spirit.

That's it.

That's where God, through His Holy Spirit, transforms people, radically

humbling them under the weight of their sin, but at the same time giving them a great joy and

contentment and rest in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ.

And when you have people who are wrought upon by strong, faithful, Spirit -empowered preaching of the Word,

you have people who will follow you anywhere, if you're biblical.

So that's the hub of the wheel.

Then there's an inner hub around that hub, or I might say an outside hub around the hub, or not out to the

rim of the wheel, just an element around the inner hub that I call competent leadership.

As you're preaching the Word and the power of the Spirit, you may not have a formal elder body yet.

You may be like Paul in Corinth, where he just had the household of Stephanus and others who were giving leadership,

but the church just hadn't come along far enough to identify and install elders at this

point.

So I don't care what you call them, but you need to be looking for the men that God seems

to be working on, humbling, calling them aside to be your core team.

So you have the hub of the wheel, preaching the Word and the power of the Spirit, and then around that inner hub you have

competent leadership.

Then you have three spokes that come out.

The first spoke would be every member of ministry through small groups, where the ministry

the Scripture requires has the biblical environment to flourish and prosper.

People ministering one to another, caring for one another.

And our strategy statement for that spoke of small group ministry is that

we provide fellowship for evangelism, discipleship, and meeting individual needs.

And God's blessed us with an army of people through small groups who care for people, so that it's

become more and more rare that the elders even get involved in body life because they're caring one for another.

Now, a second spoke coming out from the hub would be local church -centered missions.

Sometimes we use the phrase personalized strategic world missions, and what we mean by that is

where your local church takes ownership and personal responsibility to be involved in

spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth and planting or revitalizing biblically, spiritually healthy

local New Testament churches.

Then the third spoke in the wheel coming out from the hub would be what I call home life

discipleship.

And all we mean there, we don't mean a real structured, organized home family

devotional system.

That's fine if you do that.

But the point we mean by home life discipleship is you take what you learn from church home with you.

And the head of the household is talking about it during the week, sharing the Scripture he's memorizing, making

application to daily family life from the Word of God as he's brought it home from his church

elders.

So there you have the hub of the wheel, three spokes, and then the outer rim says spiritual empowerment.

If the Holy Spirit is not empowering this, it's just another system.

It might make a good book, but it's worthless.

The Spirit of God has got to be empowering this.

And Chris, I'm confident that comes from the leading pastors desperately and

wholly relying on the Spirit of God, not their ingenuity, not their cleverness.

God, your spirit has to empower these biblical truths and methods or nothing good's going to happen.

And if and when he does, the outside of the realm, I have these words, that's a God

glorifying local church.

In other words, when people look at your church, visit your church, meet your people, analyze what you're doing, they have

to be there.

They're wrought upon to say man's not doing this.

God must be doing this.

A God glorifying local church.

And then also around the outside of the wheel, the words, a church God will use as a pattern

for others, because we desperately need more healthy or true churches to be

mentoring and encouraging, especially our young pastors to stay on a thoroughly biblical course.

God will bless it.

Amen.

We have a listener in Cooperstown, New York, the home of the

Baseball Hall of Fame.

Her name is Gertie, and I'm assuming that may be a nickname for Gertrude.

Don't know that for a fact.

But Gertie asks, I happen to be a complementarian in my

understanding of exclusively male headship in the church.

But sometimes churches who have this very biblical view abuse it, and they do not

offer any opportunities for women to use their gifts in the church.

I was wondering how Grace Life Church of the Shoals takes advantage of the fact that there are

gifted women, and how do you use their gifts in ministry in the congregation?

Well, that's an interesting question, because we are experiencing, as I speak, somewhat

of an awakening among our ladies.

Following the biblical teaching of Titus 2 -4, that the older ladies are to teach

the younger ladies, actually women's translation, I should say, to teach them to love their

husbands, love their children, and in effect be good keepers of their home.

That's a paraphrase, but that's where he's going.

Now, that's an interesting thing, because that's not the happening thing in the

culture at all.

Yet we've seen here that God is stirring among a lot of our ladies who've been

with us for decades that we've got to do better here at being very intentional of the older

ladies mentoring the younger ladies in these specific areas.

Now, in addition to this awakening we have right now, for example, we have about 300 women signed up

already for a Sunday night fellowship around the principle of mentoring.

Wow.

That's a congregation in and of itself.

It's received very little promotion.

Just as I preach through the word, my wife's kind of heading it up, and God's just moving, that's all I can tell you.

Now, but in addition to that, week in and week out, we have about 35 women

small groups who are all led by two to four typically older ladies.

So there's vast, exhaustive caring, serving, discipling,

evangelizing going on in those small groups.

And not just in the hour they meet on Sunday morning for Bible study, but it's really a 24 -hour day, seven -day week

ministry as those small group ladies or the men, whichever it may be, are contacting,

caring, holding each other accountable, serving, helping the hurting, whatever the ministry need might be.

So that would be a primary or a foundational element of our lay ministry or what I call

every member ministry is the ladies in their small groups and the men in their small groups.

Now, we do not allow women to exercise authority over men, and particularly in the area of preaching or

establishing of doctrine.

But there are exhaustive, matter of fact, I think most of our ladies would say, we have enough.

They're not looking for something else, but they're very satisfied and very

thankful for the vitality and encouragement and strengthening they get, particularly through the ladies small

groups.

Great.

And we have Maxine in Ocean City, New Jersey, who

asks, I am not a believer in denominations, but I believe in the

importance of like -minded churches being closely connected in many ways so

that they can have iron sharpening iron, just like the name of this program

suggests.

I think that it can be dangerous for a church to be an island unto itself, and it

can have a tendency to grow more cult -like when they don't have enough healthy relationships with

other like -minded churches.

Would you be on the same page with me on that?

Yeah, exactly.

Absolutely, I would.

We formally separated from the Southern Baptist Convention or the Southern Baptist Denomination

just a few years ago.

But even before that formal break, we were very, very loosely connected.

And our purpose in breaking was really missions.

The purpose of the Southern Baptist Denomination or convention is to pool our monies and resources and

manpower and help plant churches and do missions around the world.

However, though there are so many good and godly brothers who are pastors of Southern Baptist churches

and many members of Southern Baptist churches who love Christ, and I'm always grateful to all of them.

But in the huge, big tent that has become Southern Baptist, there is a lot of false

doctrine and a lot of mildly biblical methods, you might say.

And so we found that we just could not with a clear conscience before our Lord join hands and resources when

we didn't really know whose doctrine is being taught and whose structures and methods are being

established as we do missions.

So to do missions together, you got to agree on some things, primarily, of course, your

doctrine.

But there has to be some agreement on methodologies within the local church, obviously, the ordinances, etc.

So we had already been experiencing this growing family of churches and pastors

who would contact us and say, can we connect with you guys at Grace Life Church of the Shoals

and do missions together, be mentored together, hold each other accountable?

And again, Chris, I didn't have a vision for this to happen.

It simply happened from people contacting us and asking if they could connect with us.

And so we've at one level or another.

Last time I checked, we had 400 and something, I think, of churches that were affiliated loosely

and probably more like 50 or so that are more seriously in a long term commitment

of fellowshipping together, sharpening one another.

And I love your name, your program, Iron Sharpens Iron, because that's what we're doing at Anchored in Truth.

And so we're fellowshipping together, sharpening each other and doing missions together.

Well, praise God.

Thank you, Maxine.

And we're going to our final break.

If you have any intention to submit a question to Jeff Noblitt, please do it very soon, because we're rapidly running out of

time.

Our email address again is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We'll be right back with Jeff Noblitt.

Don't go away.

The Mid -Atlantic Reformation Society presents The Future of Christendom 2023, The Gospel at

War, September 15th to the 16th in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, featuring Dr. James

White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

We are excited to be including a formal debate in this year's conference.

Dr. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries will be debating Dr. Gregory Coles, author of Single Gay Christian,

A Personal Journey of Faith and Sexual Identity, the debate topic, Is Gay Christian a Biblically

Acceptable Identity for a Member of Christ's Church?

So come join us for the sixth Future of Christendom conference.

The event will take place at Spooky Nook Sports in Mannheim, Pennsylvania, and will run from Friday evening through all day Saturday,

with an invitation to the Sunday morning worship service of the Independence Reformed Bible Church.

This will be a weekend packed with practical teaching, with a theme of the Gospel at War in many areas of our culture, including

government schools, the Supreme Court, missions, feminism, and even the church pulpits.

Head to futureofchristendom .org.

James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here.

I'm very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I

are heading down to Atlanta, Georgia again for the G3 National Conference.

That's Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd, on a theme that I've been preaching,

teaching, writing about, and defending in live public debates for most of my life, the sovereignty of God.

I'll be joined on the speaking roster by Steve Lawson, Voti Baucom, Paul Washer, Virgil Walker, Scott

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And there's more great news.

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Chris Arnzen and I look forward to seeing you all Thursday, September 21st through Saturday the 23rd for the G3

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Joining Chris Armstrong's family of advertisers to keep Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on the air.

It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show

he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005.

One of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming,

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love, Hope

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church

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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona, taking a moment of your

day to talk about Chris Arnson and the Iron Sharpens Iron podcast.

I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity.

He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions, while always defending the key

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I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

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Make sure you mention Chris Orenson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We're now back with Pastor Jeff Noblitt of Grace Life Church of the Shoals,

who is also the founder and president of Anchored in Truth Ministries.

And my next keynote speaker at the next biannual Iron Sharpens Iron

Radio free pastor's luncheon on Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church

of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

And I am so thrilled and so grateful to God and so grateful to Pastor Jeff

that he has accepted this invitation to speak this October.

And I know that everyone in attendance will be blessed richly.

And I'd like to give our e -mail address again.

If you want to squeeze in an e -mail before we run out of time, our e -mail address is ChrisOrenson at gmail .com.

And we do have Gasper in Laurel, Mississippi.

Wow, that's the only city in Mississippi that I've actually been to.

I wonder if you, Gasper, are aware of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi, a

very fine, biblically faithful congregation pastored by Carrie Kimbrell.

And I also wonder if you know about Mimmo's Italian Restaurant.

I'm a New Yorker by origin, even though I live in Pennsylvania now, and I'm very

fussy about Italian food.

Mimmo's in Laurel, Mississippi, is one of the best Italian restaurants I've ever been to because it

happens to be owned by an Italian immigrant.

But anyway, Gasper says, How do you

balance yourself when you compare your own congregation to others and prevent

yourself from being lifted up into a sinful area of pride?

Please don't think I'm accusing you of doing that now, but I was just wondering how not only pastors but even church

members should also not only be grateful to the wonderful things going on in their church,

but be careful not to exalt themselves above other churches.

And again, I had you on mute again, brother.

Sorry about that.

Well, no, I got the question.

Are we going now?

Yes.

Okay.

That is a great question.

You would have to understand, how shall I say it, the

torturous suffering of reforming a church and losing

600 faithful members over about a 20 -year span in a town of 8 ,000 people,

which means you saw people who left your church angry, mad at you.

You saw them when you went to Walmart.

You saw them when you went out to eat.

And it was just difficult.

Here's what I'm saying.

The core of my church that has been with me a long time have suffered for the truth.

They really have.

They've been antagonistic things from fellow workers in the plants or the

offices, etc., for going to church here, for staying here when we were trying to

stand on things that were not typical in our southern culture.

So God humbled us a lot and often in those early years.

And he still does.

Are we exempt from pride?

No.

Could we get arrogant?

Sure, we could.

But we strive toward repentance because we say the things we say

in the same vein that Paul would say when he says, follow my example.

Paul didn't mean he was perfect or to achieve.

He just saying we're walking on a pattern that we fail

some, but we stay on that pattern.

And we see, Chris, so many churches, so many pastors who say these things won't

work.

They won't work.

The only reason I try to give this testimony that 43 years in God's blessing, not

to puff us up, not to be braggadocious, but to say, yes, it does work.

You can survive it.

God will bless.

So don't be afraid of staying through the fire and through the storms and

through the desertions, through the church splits, whatever might come from standing on the truth, that

there's life at the end that is glorious.

There's nothing like a imperfect, needing to repent a lot, but

biblically healthy local church family.

So we exist to show that with all of our warts and failures and need for continual repentance,

because when we get saved, we become repenters.

We didn't just repent.

We became repenters.

Amen.

In view of all of our weaknesses and struggles, you can follow the path and God can and

will bless his church if we strive to be biblically obedient.

Amen.

I can't remember who was the author of a booklet I saw years ago, but the title of the booklet was The

Unrepenting Repenter.

And I remember it was an excellent book.

I just can't remember who wrote it.

Well, I'd like you to summarize before we run out of time, what you most want etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners

today, Pastor Jeff, before we go off the air.

Well.

Everything.

Is the glory of God or the glory of God is everything.

We must have an intentional glory of God focus.

And God is most glorified in his son, Jesus Christ, and in the son's preeminent work of

building his church.

So we must be cooperative with Christ in building that church his way

by his power for his glory.

Everything in time.

Now listen to me.

And for eternity is going to be around the church.

Now don't misunderstand me.

Christ is the preeminent one, but his church is his preeminent work.

So he brings us together with him in the eternal state, his church with him, the

exalted Christ in glory forever.

So we need to give the church our very best to make sure we are thoroughly biblical.

Glory of God focus.

Christ honoring.

Preaching the word based.

Every member of ministry and function and world missions in passion.

That would be my final word, Chris.

Well, I want to make sure once again that everybody listening knows in case they are

living in an area near Muscle Shoals, Alabama, or if you are visiting that area or if you

have family, friends and loved ones in or near that area, go to Grace Life Shoals.

Grace Life Shoals and that's spelled S -H -O -A -L -S dot org.

Grace Life Shoals dot org.

And if you pay them a visit, mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnsen of Iron, Sharpens Iron Radio.

I want to thank you so much, Pastor Jeff, for once again doing such a remarkable job as my guest

today.

And I eagerly look forward to you coming back to the program many times in the future.

My studio door is always open to you, brother.

Thank you, Brother Chris.

Look forward to coming to the Northland and fellowshipping with some good brothers up there.

Amen.

And don't forget, folks, that's Thursday, October 5th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville,

Pennsylvania, which is Perry County.

Pastor Jeff Knoblet will be my keynote speaker at the next biannual Iron, Sharpens Iron Radio

free pastor's luncheon.

Everything's for free.

If you're a man in ministry leadership, send me an e -mail to ChrisArnsen at gmail .com and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line.

Once again, I want to thank Pastor Jeff for being my guest.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

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.