LBCF Chapter 26 explained

Today we get to chapter 26, and this is the last of the long chapters, and it's probably one of the most important chapters for our purposes, because it tells you what we believe that the scriptures say about the church.

Again, since you're considering membership in the church, this is one of the chapters that will really define what is expected of the members of the church. After this one, we may have one, maybe two weeks left before we go through the actual constitution and whatnot.

So the class is coming pretty much to a close, because the last few chapters are very quick, they're very brief. This one, again, this is somewhat long. I think there's, let's see, there's 15 paragraphs to this one.

So we'll start right at the beginning, let's see if we can get through the whole thing. The Catholic universal church, with respect to the internal work of the spirit and truth of grace, may be called invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that fills all in all.

All right, I hope everybody here realizes that when we say Catholic, what that really means is universal, as opposed to Roman Catholic. We don't believe in the Roman Catholic church, but we do believe in the Catholic church, which is why that's what the Apostles Creed is.

That's why we haven't changed the wording of the Apostles Creed like some people have. All right, so all this simply means is this, all the people of God, all the elect, whoever have been, who are now, and whoever will be up until the end of time, that's consists of the universal church, right?

So when we talk about the Catholic church, that's what we're talking about. Everybody who has been will be saved from beginning of time till the end of time. And that's the bride of Christ, and which is called the fullness of him.

Any questions on that? That's pretty basic, but it just defines, it's good that it defines our terms right from the very beginning, okay? So we move to paragraph two, all right. All persons throughout the world professing the faith of the gospel and obedience unto God by Christ, according to it, not destroying their own profession by any errors, everything, averting the foundation or unholiness of conversation, are and may be called visible saints, and of such ought all particular congregations to be constituted.

Okay, what that's simply saying is, even though we're part of the universal church, the scripture teaches that we should join a visible church, that is a local congregation such as this. And even though we call ourselves Hope Reform Baptist Church, we recognize that we're just one part of the larger universal church.

And every church so-called that holds to the doctrines of scripture, we are part of that. There are places that call themselves churches, which are in fact not really churches. Just because it has the name church on it doesn't mean that it is truly a church, okay?

If the doctrine is so contrary to scripture, it's not, it cannot be considered a church. Any questions on that? Pretty self-explanatory, all right? And again, this is one of the things that we have to make judgments on.

There are churches out, and I say churches, they call themselves churches, and by the things that they teach, we can't consider them, and we would have no fellowship with them, all right? There are churches in our own area that profess Christ, and we may in fact consider them to be true churches, but yet their doctrine is so far from what we believe the scripture teaches that it's very difficult.

We don't disfellowship them, but we don't, there's a lot of things that we can't do together with them.

All right?

But there's a difference between a church that we disagree with and a church that is not in fact a church.

Certain religions would be non-churches.

Yes, like obviously any of the cults, I don't care what they call themselves, like the Mormons call themselves the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. No, as far as we're concerned, they're not the church, they're not the bride of Christ, because their doctrine is so abhorrent to scripture that we can't consider them that.

On the other hand, if you take some of the Pentecostal churches, specifically the Assemblies of God, we believe that they are true believers, all right? Even though some of their doctrine is abhorrent to us.

All right?

But nonetheless, we would not disfellowship the whole Assemblies of God, okay? Paragraph three. The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error. Some have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan.

Nevertheless, Christ always has had and ever shall have a kingdom in this world to the end thereof, such as believe in him and make profession of his name. That's kind of what we were talking about just before.

Obviously, that phrase, synagogue of Satan, comes right from Revelation, the book of the Revelation, when Jesus says that some of these churches have not, in fact, been churches, but call them synagogues of Satan.

Nevertheless, Christ has and ever shall have a kingdom in this world, all right? That, everybody remember Harold Campin going back a few years, you know, and all of a sudden saying that, you know, there is no longer any church, all right?

This part of the confession absolutely refutes what Campin had said. And obviously, the fact that he's gone and the church is still here shows kind of the error of his ways, all right? All right, so, and that's exactly what we believe.

Now, notice this is not an eschatological statement in the sense of, well, let me put it, it's not a millennial statement. It's just an eschatological statement stating that there will be the kingdom of God, there will be a church right through to the end of time.

All right, anybody who would believe differently from that we would, you know, separate our fellowship from, okay? Purist churches under heaven subject to mixture and error. That happens in a couple of different ways.

That's what we're talking about. We'll take our Presbyterian and our Dutch Reformed brothers and sisters. We're probably the closest in doctrine to Presbyterians and to our Dutch Reformed, Netherlands Reformed, but we have some major differences.

But we consider them obviously to be brothers and sisters in Christ because their profession of faith is genuine and the errors, even though we consider them to be serious, are not enough for even to disfellowship them.

In fact, we've, there are some, in fact, we're looking to get Gary DeMar who is a Presbyterian, all right? We're looking to get him to come here and do a conference for us, okay? That's how closely we view, you know, some of our Presbyterian friends.

So there's mixture and error. There's also mixture in that not everybody who's in the church, the visible church, is necessarily a true believer. While we try to guard the church as best we can, we can't see into the hearts of people and so some people make profession of faith who may, in fact, not be.

Case in point, take Joshua Harris, all right? We've talked about him from the pulpit. There's a guy who very well, if circumstances had worked, we very well may have had him speak here if it had worked out.

I mean, that's how convinced we were of his profession and now he is saying he's not a Christian. So that can happen, okay? All right, paragraph four. The Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church in whom by the appointment of the Father, all power for the calling, institution, order, or government of the church is invested in the supreme and sovereign manner.

Neither can the Pope of Rome in any sense behead thereof, but it is that Antichrist, that man of sin, the son of perdition, that exalts himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God, whom the Lord shall destroy with the brightness of his coming.

Okay, this is one of those interesting paragraphs. We don't necessarily hold to this paragraph exactly as it is written. This is one of those paragraphs that you have to take in for when it was written in the 1600s, when the churches were being persecuted by the Pope, people were still being put to death and various other things.

And so they viewed the Pope as being the Antichrist. That's what they would say, all right? That Antichrist, that man of sin, and son of perdition, all right? We don't hold that position and it's acceptable not to hold the position, okay?

Would we say that the Pope is an Antichrist?

Yes.

Anything that mitigates against Christ is Antichrist,.

All right?

But we would not hold to this and nor would we expect anybody else to hold to that position. Does that make sense? Does everybody understand why this would be in there? An Antichrist is someone who sets themselves up, comes and in the scripture, there's one person who would be described as the Antichrist, but the scripture also says that there are many Antichrists.

In fact, the scripture defines somebody as Antichrist who says that Jesus didn't come in the flesh. Now the Pope doesn't do that, but he has so many other doctrines that are contrary to Christ that that's why we say that.

So anybody who says that Christ is not both God and man is considered to be Antichrist. Satan is the supreme Antichrist. Everything that Christ stands for, Satan stands for the opposite. Anti means against, okay?

So that's where the phrase comes from. It is a biblical term, all right? And unfortunately, the name Antichrist and the beast and the false prophet that are mentioned in Revelation, all right, have been confused because of modern day prophecy plunders who completely misunderstand the book of the Revelation.

The beast and the Antichrist are not equated. In fact, the term Antichrist never appears in the book of the Revelation. So we need to be careful, and I don't wanna get into all of that now because that would just take as far afield.

I wanna focus on the church, all right? The main thing that we wanna learn here is the only person who is the head of the church is Christ. Christ is the head of the church. And we'll get into why do we have elders and deacons in just a few minutes?

That's in a different paragraph, okay?

All right?

Paragraph five, in the execution of this power with he so entrusted the Lord Jesus calls out of the world unto himself through the ministry of his word by his spirit, those that are given unto him by his father, that they may walk before him in all the ways of obedience, which he prescribes to them in his word.

Thus those called he commands to walk together in particular societies or churches for their mutual edification and the due performance of the public worship, which he requires of them in the world. Basically, what this paragraph is saying is that if you're a believer, you should belong to a local congregation.

We can call them churches or whatever you wanna call it, but we are part of the universal church, but we should also be part of a local church. And one of the ways you see that is in the Bible, more often than not, probably more than half the time when the Bible uses the word church, it's talking about a local congregation.

For example, Paul writes to the church in Ephesus, to the church in Philippi. He's not writing to the universal church, he's writing to local congregations. So therefore we have biblical warrant to call ourselves a church as a local congregation, as long as we don't misunderstand that we're not unique to ourselves as the church, but we're part of the universal church.

And again, there are reasons for mutual edification, the performance of public worship, and anything else that we're required by the scriptures to do in this world. Okay, questions?

No?

Okay.

Paragraph six. The members of these churches are saints by calling, visibly manifesting in evidence in and by their profession and walking, through obedience unto the call of Christ and to willingly consent to walk together according to the appointment of Christ, giving up themselves to the Lord and to one another by the will of God in professed subjection to the ordinances of the gospel.

All right, basically that's just saying that when we gather together as a church and we commit to one another, that we start looking out for one another more than ourselves. It's one of the things you hear me pray for every single Sunday, all right?

That we would love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we would love each other more than ourselves. That's what it's saying, because that's one of the evidences of the church.

Just as Christ laid down his life for the church, we are to lay down our lives for one another and to make sure that all our needs are met. That's why we have a benevolent fund that we collect, because if somebody in the church has needs, the church has to be there to help and support them.

And so that we truly become part of a community, a community of believers, not just meeting Sunday only, but being there throughout the week for whatever needs there are, okay? Questions on that? That's, again, pretty simple.

Paragraph seven. To each of these churches thus gathered, according to his mind declared in his word, he has given all that power and authority, which is in any way needful for their carrying on that order in worship and discipline, which he has instituted for them to observe with commands and rules for the due and right exerting and executing of that power.

But let me just pause for a minute on this one. One of the things that we've seen, especially in our postmodern society today here in America, is people don't look at the church as having any kind of authority, okay?

We recognize that families have authority, you know, and we recognize that the government has authority, but it's amazing how many people don't recognize that the church has authority. Part of that is because of the poor teaching of the church.

Some churches will tell you they have no authority. They don't practice discipline, okay? They don't mandate anything, all right? They don't correct if somebody has gone astray. I had a situation when I was the headmaster of the Christian school where a family that went to a particular church, which I won't mention, didn't pay their bill.

And we kept writing letters to them. They ignored phone calls. They wouldn't return phone calls. And so finally, I called up the pastor of the church they attended, and I said, "'Listen, we just want to spread this away.

"'If they have financial problems, "'we'll work with them and everything else, "'but we just, you know, they're just not responding to us.'". And the pastor returned to me and says, "'Well, that's none of my affair.'".

I said, "'But they're in your congregation "'and they're neglecting, their testimony is being harmed, "'and they're being dishonest.'". And he says, "'Oh, I'm sorry, "'our church will never get involved in that.'".

I said, "'But don't you realize "'that you need to do it for their benefit?''. I said, "'We're willing to write it off. "'All they have to do is talk to us.'". He wouldn't even do that. And that's the shame.

That family is developing sinful habit patterns and the church is sitting there and doing absolutely nothing. That's the shame, okay? That's basically the essence of this paragraph is that the church has certain authority, but it's limited authority.

Remember, there's three covenant institutions that the Bible recognizes, the state, the church, and the family. Each are covenant institutions, okay? And each has their own sphere of influence. For example, the church can never put somebody to death.

When we excommunicate somebody, we don't kill them, okay? We have no right to. And where the church did it in the past, the church was wrong and in violation of Scripture. The government, on the other hand, the Scripture gives the power of the sword and they have the right to put people to death.

Families don't have the right. If your child misbehaves, you can't kill him. And I feel like that sometimes, but you can't kill him.

All right.

All right. All right.

So the problem comes in when one or the other of these covenant institutions fails to live up to its expectations or usurps something from the others. What's happening in our society? In our society, the government is usurping church's responsibility and it's usurping family responsibility.

The government is coming in and telling us, you know, you have to have your child inoculated, doing all kinds of other things, telling us what we must do with our children.

All right.

And that's wrong.

All right.

They're there as a safeguard. In other words, if you do abuse your child, the government has the right to step in. That's biblical.

Okay.

But not in normal discipline.

Okay.

Paragraph eight. A particular church gathering completely organized. Well, that's a misstatement right there. I don't know any church that is completely organized. Anyway, I'm sorry. I couldn't resist.

A particular church gathering completely organized according to the mind of Christ consists of officers and members and the officers appointed by Christ to be chosen and set apart by the church, so-called and gathered.

For the peculiar administration of ordinances and execution of power or duty, which he entrusts with them or calls them to be continued to the end of the world are bishops or elders and deacons.

All right.

Notice, two church officers, two only. It doesn't matter if you call them bishop or elder. That's just a question of how you translate the original language. And deacons. That's why the only officers you'll see in this church are elders and deacons.

Okay.

No such thing as cardinals and archbishops and et cetera. And a bishop and an elder is the same thing.

So you can call somebody bishop then?

You could.

Okay. I'm seeing another question.

No, well, you shouldn't. Father is not a designation that you wanna use, but bishop is definitely a biblical designation. The various officers of the pastor, pastor, shepherd, bishop, elder are used interchangeably in scripture.

And the only reason for the difference is that highlights a certain aspect of his ministry. A pastor is a shepherd, all right? But as an elder, he's a counselor, you know? As a bishop, he's an overseer, all right?

So each of the words has a specific connotation to it, but it's all referring to the same office. It doesn't. In fact, the only time that I use the title reverend, all right, is when I sign an official document for the state.

Because the state recognizes, the term reverend is rightly used for only ministers who have been ordained, all right? Once you're ordained, you're set apart, kind of it's almost like being set apart like sanctified thing.

You're set aside and they call you reverend. I don't particularly care for it, but it signifies to state officials that you are in fact a legitimate minister of the gospel.

Okay?

So, but I prefer, and that's why in any church correspondence that you see, I always sign it as pastor because I think that's the most biblical title. But if I sign, when I marry people, officiate at their wedding, and I have to sign the marriage license, I sign it reverend.

Because that lets the state officials know that I was in fact ordained. Now, unfortunately today, a lot of people just assume the title and they use it and they've never been ordained. But that's the society we live in.

Okay, paragraph nine. The way appointed by Christ for the calling of any person fitted and gifted by the Holy Spirit unto the office of bishop or elder in the church is that he be chosen unto by the comrade suffrage of the church itself, solemnly set apart by fasting and prayer with imposition of hands of the eldership of the church.

If there be any before constituted therein and of a deacon that he may be chosen by like suffrage and set apart by prayer and the like imposition of hands.

Okay.

We follow this when here, if you notice, we have a procedure. In fact, this, excuse me, this month, all the membership of HOPE will be getting a letter of listing all the male members who are in good standing.

And you have to examine them to see if there is anybody who is qualified for the office of elder or deacon. And then there's a procedure that we go through and I'll go through that when we get to the constitution.

But we do by this, we do set them apart by fasting and prayer. I don't think we emphasize enough that the congregation should be fasting as well. In fact, that's something that I'll correct, but the elders and the deacons, we do.

Well, even when I baptize somebody, I encourage the person who is being baptized to fast.

All right.

And I as well fast for a couple of meals beforehand.

All right.

To stay in line with this. But the idea is that elders and deacons are recognized by the congregation. It's our desire here that all of our office bearers come from within the congregation. It's legitimate to call a pastor from outside the church, but it's just so much better if you can do it from within, because you know.

How many times have you ever seen a pastor's called in from outside and he's not really what you thought he was? It happens a lot in churches. Do you know what the average stay for a pastor is? Yeah, it's about five years.

And that's why, because a pastor comes in, nobody knows him, you do your best you can and everything else, and next thing you know, it's not really what you thought. You raise somebody up from within the congregation, you know all about him.

There's no secrets, no surprises. And so that's why even you'll see it in our constitution. We do everything we can to foster raising them. That's why I have a mentoring group. I have a mentoring group where I'm teaching, not only teaching theology, but teaching pastoral ministry.

I teach them how to preach, how to find sermon illustrations. We do all of these, how to do research. That's what we're doing. That's why we have a mentoring ministry to try to raise up young people in the church to take over the positions.

And that's something that we have to think seriously about. I just turned 74. How much longer am I going to be able to do this?

Not a lot of retirement discussion.

Not a lot of retirement?

I have no intention of retiring. But I mean, seriously, I have no idea how long I can continue to do this. Right now I feel fine. I mean, I feel like I could go on forever. But we know that's not going to happen, all right?

I know sometimes people think I preach forever, but that's the end of that. Okay, so this is just basically showing that what we're doing is according to our confession, which we believe is the scripture, and that we call out and set aside people by prayer, fasting, and then we lay on hands.

Has everybody been here when we've dedicated a deacon or an elder? So you know that we've called them up, the rest of the office bearers lay hands on them, pray for them, et cetera. That's just in line with this part of the confession.

Paragraph 10, the work of pastors being constantly to attend the service of church in his churches, in the ministry of the word and prayer, and watching for their souls, as they must give an account to him.

It is incumbent on the churches to whom they minister, not only to give them all to respect, but also to communicate to them of all their good things according to their ability. So as they may have a company, and by the express order of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has ordained that they preach the gospel, should live of the gospel.

Okay, basically, that's just saying, you gotta pay your pastor a decent wage. That's really what it says. And we are not opposed to pastors having part-time elders and whatnot, but the best situation is if the congregation takes care of the pastor.

That's all that simply means. And I can say this without hesitation, this congregation, ever since I was called as a pastor, has always done whatever they could to take care of me. I have no complaints whatsoever.

Okay, paragraph 11, although it be incumbent on the bishops or pastors of the church to be instant in preaching the word by way of office, yet the work of preaching the word is not so peculiarly confined to them, but that others also gifted and fitted by the Holy Spirit for it and approved and called by the church may and ought to perform it.

Basically, this is just saying that we can have gifted men in the church who are not specifically elders, all right, we can have them preach. And that's why you've noticed I do give periodically some of the men of the church opportunity to preach.

And again, there's a lot of reasons for that. This is one reason. Most of them have been elders or deacons, but we're not relegated to that because we do have some men who are very gifted in both preaching and teaching who for one reason or another are not office bearers and may not wanna be an office bearer, okay, but yet we can utilize their services and we'll continue to do that.

This is very uniquely Baptist. Presbyterians, you won't find that. Presbyterians, if you're not an ordained Presbyterian minister, there's a lot of Presbyterian churches that would not have me preach even though I'm unordained because I'm not a Presbyterian ordained minister.

But that's kind of unique to them because I've preached in Dutch Reformed churches, I've preached in all kinds of different churches, but I don't think I've ever preached in a Presbyterian. So, I actually preached in an Assemblies of God once.

Yes, I did.

I thought it was interesting that.

Jason let Robbie preach in his pulpit once. Knowing how Reformed we are, it's like, we'll stick away from the stuff.

That you totally don't agree about.

I thought it was very interesting that Robbie.

Well, I had Al Stein preach for me here once. Al Stein was an Assemblies of God preacher, but he was a Calvinist.

Yep.

Oh yeah, he was a good man. And again, I had him preach because we were very good friends and he understood he would never go near any of those things, but he's a very strong Calvinist. He's deceased now.

He was actually the area representative. As all believers are bound to join themselves to particular churches, when and where they have opportunity. So to do. So all that are admitted unto the privilege of the church are also under the centuries in government throughout according to the rule of Christ.

Okay, this is an important, everybody who's looking for membership, pay close attention to what I'm gonna say now. What you're doing here, if you're gonna become a member of the church, you're submitting yourself to the governance of the church and any discipline that the church would handle out.

This is especially for young people who are gonna be baptized, become members of the church. What you're saying, once a young person is baptized into membership in the church, they not only are accountable to their parents, but they are also accountable to the elders of the church.

So if we have a child who's been baptized as a member and they start to go astray, obviously the first, and it comes to the attention of the elders, obviously the first thing we would do is we go to the parents.

Okay, but if the child refuses to listen to the parents and the elders, they too are subject to church discipline. Doesn't matter how old they are. If they're baptized, they're members of the church. So I just highlight that because I just wanna make sure that everybody understands that and parents in particular.

Now, again, it's not up to the elders to supersede or to conflict with the role of the parents in raising their children, but if the child is rebellious and not paying attention to the parents, then the elders can step in and exercise church discipline.

Let me give you an example. Suppose we know a child is behaving in an ungodly way, let's say stealing or something like that. And it came to our attention. I wouldn't go directly to the child if the child's a minor.

I would go to the parents first and let the parents deal with it.

Okay?

But if it doesn't stop or the child doesn't listen to the parents, then we would have to step in and exercise church discipline. But we in this church very strongly recommend the, and support the position of the parents having first priority over the children, not the church.

Okay?

Does that make sense? But kids just want to make sure you're aware that not only gonna, if you get baptized, not only you have parents watching over you, now you got elders watching over you too.

And they have eyes everywhere.

Okay.

No church members upon any offense taken by them having performed their duty required of them towards the person that they offended ought to disturb any church order or absent themselves from the assemblies of the church or administration of any ordinances upon the account of such offense at any of their fellow members, but to wait upon Christ in the further proceeding of the church.

This is a crucial one. What happens when there's a dispute between two families or two people in the church? Somebody gets mad and they walk away. This confession says, you can't do that. That's contrary, the Bible gives, the Bible gives procedures for how to deal with conflicts within the church.

Okay?

You see this a lot, especially if somebody comes at odds with the pastors.

Okay.

What do they do? They stop coming to church. And that is just absolutely contrary to keeping order in the church. There's a way, there's always a way to handle it. What, let's say, let's say that the offense is with the pastors and you can't resolve it.

Okay.

That's where paragraph 14 comes in. As each church and all the members of it are bound to pray continually for the good and prosperity of all the church of Christ in all places and upon occasions of further everyone within the bounds of place and calling in the exercise of the gifts and graces.

So churches, when planted by the providence of God, so as they may enjoy opportunity and advantage for it, ought to hold communion themselves for their peace, increase of love and mutual edification. This means you can join an association of churches and then in that association, you can assist a church that is having a particular problem.

Okay.

In fact, let me go right to 15 because I think it expands on it if I remember correctly.

Here it is, yes.

In case of difficulties or differences, either in point of doctrine or administration, wherein either the churches in general are concerned or any one church in their peace and union and edification or any member or members of any church are injured in or by any proceedings and censures not agreeable to truth and order.

It is according to the mind of Christ that many churches holding community together do by their messengers meet to consider and give their advice in or about the matter in deference to be reported to all the churches concerned.

How be it these messengers assembled are not entrusted with any church power properly so called or with any jurisdiction over the churches themselves to exercise any censures either over any churches or persons or to impose their determination on the churches or officers.

What this means is let's say, let's say we have a problem in our church. And usually if it would be something, let's say it's a problem with the elders. Okay, and it can't be resolved. We can go to other like-minded churches and call them to have messengers sent and to sit down in an arbitration or a mediation panel.

Okay, so in other words, if you have an offense with the elders, you always have recourse. You can go to another like-minded church like for here, for example, and this has happened in the past here on Long Island.

Where Grace Reformed Baptist Church who is also a 1689 church. Let's say you came into agreement and let's say just for the sake of argument that discipline was meted out upon you and you think it's unfair.

You could go to the other church and say, listen, I need some help here. Can you help me out? And then they would be able to come here and we can try to work things out. So in other words, yeah, there's a way.

You know what that avoids? Heavy-handed eldership. Sometimes the elders can, my word is it's my way or the highway. It's not the way it should be. You notice the wisdom in this confession? All right, and this is in fact the last paragraph.

These last three paragraphs are the ones that allows us to have associations such as ARCA, such as Reformed Baptist Network, such as FIRE. There's a number of associations out there. Any final thoughts or questions?