Episode 59: The Beauty of the Church

Through the Ruled Church podcast.

The Church as Christ's Monarchy

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy.

It's a monarchy.

Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Got a couple numbers to throw at you, Eddie.

All right. The first is 59. What is that?

59.

It's the number before 60.

58.

Episode 59 of the Glitch Bar Spot Game. Wow, episode 59.

Yeah.

The other number I have is 61.

61?

That's what we'll be at when we get done recording.

No, that's what, no, that would be, that's when this episode comes out, that's days till Christmas.

Oh, days till Christmas, awesome, awesome.

Yeah, which actually should, should I?

Yeah, 61, okay, two months.

When this episode comes out. How you doing, Edward?

Man, I'm doing good. I was just telling you before we started recording, had visitors at church this week and a couple of friends of ours. So Randall Easter, he was up here staying on the river this last week, and so he came to our service on Sunday and worshiped with us.

It was good to see that brother. He and his wife were here. And then also Bruce Short, he was up here, he was up on Bull Shoals and they must get up early because they had packed up camp and came all the way from Bull Shoals down to Marshall and worshiped with us on Sunday morning.

But good to have both those brothers and their wives with us to worship this last Lord's Day.

Baptist Associations and Mutual Edification

Yeah, two faithful brothers. I'm grateful the Lord has put both of them in my life. So we want to transition and talk about today the practice, I guess, a couple of things. I wanna talk about the beauty of the church, but what we're gonna talk about first will lead into that.

And I wanna talk about associations, Baptist associations. I think we've probably chatted about this some before, but the reason it's fresh on my mind is we just had our local Baptist Association annual meeting last night.

Have you guys had yours yet?

No, we actually a couple of years ago changed ours. Ours is now in January, the annual meeting. But I have an executive board meeting tomorrow night.

Yeah, yeah.

So how would you describe a Baptist Association maybe to someone who's listening, who maybe they're in a Baptist church, but they don't even understand the association or some that don't even understand the concept altogether?

Right, well, I would say, and I think this is really important. I was talking with our director of missions actually just yesterday, and we were talking about how a lot of people, even in Baptist churches, don't understand how it works.

And they maybe think of it as a hierarchy like the associations in charge of the churches. And that's not the case. The association exists to serve the churches. And I would say foremost in helping the churches engage in mission endeavors and evangelism.

So the local association helps the churches engage in local evangelism and partner for mission purposes outside of their local area. And then I think it also allows the churches to have fellowship with one another and an opportunity for them to know, hey, these are other like-minded churches that believe the things we believe that we can partner with for different kinds of local ministries and just for fellowship and encouraging one another.

So I think that's pretty key to it. I think oftentimes because so many churches, or maybe I should do it the other way, so few Baptist churches in our day have any concept of a plurality of elders. The association ends up becoming the other pastors that those pastors maybe bounce things off of.

But that's probably more because of a lack of eroticlesiology in the local church, but it does function that way.

I think there's a lot of good things about associations. I will say this. I think for the most part, it's sadly just kind of become a traditional aspect of the life of, I'll say Southern Baptists, but missionary Baptists, other groups of Baptists have associations, and it's just kind of become a traditional aspect of our life.

Whereas I think really biblically, I think that it's a helpful thing to be associated with other churches for the purpose of mission and mutual edification, encouragement, those things. But now it's just kind of become a formality.

We go to association meetings because that's what we do. Let me offer this to you in chapter 26 of the 1689, the last paragraph. This is the chapter on the church, paragraph 15. Cases of difficulties or differences, doctrinal or administrative, may arise, touching on the peace, union, and edification of all churches in general or an individual church.

Other cases may occur when a member or members of a church are injured in or by disciplinary action that is not in keeping with truth and order. In such cases, it is according to the mind of Christ for many churches having fellowship together to meet through their messengers, to consider and give their advice concerning the issue in dispute and to report their advice to all the churches concerned.

Nevertheless, these assembled messengers are not entrusted with any church authority, strictly speaking. Neither do they have any jurisdiction over the churches themselves to exercise any discipline either over any churches or individuals or to impose their decision on the churches or officers.

So I think that's really well written, the idea of the 1689. And these churches were partnered together.

And by the way,.

They partnered together for different things. Church planning, they had a fund to help educate pastors. And so they were doing things that are kind of typical of what associations do today. But something that I think not in play today so much at times is, well, maybe I guess you could say it is like an SBC annual meeting or whatever, but they gathered together in order to deal with difficulties or differences or in order to deal with church discipline.

So let's say a member, they feel like they're unjustly disciplined in the church. Well, where do they turn to? Well, they could turn to the association. Now the association doesn't offer any authoritative response but they can say, okay, we've weighed this, we've heard the sides, we've examined this, and this is what we think about it.

And it really goes back to the power and authority of the local church. But reason we have associations is because we think so highly, not because we think less highly of the local church, but because we think so highly of the local church that at times it's helpful to hear other local churches weigh in on an issue.

So that's some historical background. What do you think about that?

Yeah, recently, and I think I can speak about this in general enough terms that I won't divulge any confidence, but I knew of a circumstance happening in another association, and it wasn't even like a Southern Baptist Association or anything, where a pastor was teaching some things that were not correct, even heretical, and there was no concern in his church about it, but other brothers in the association brought that up because they were linked, because they were in the same association, they addressed the issue.

And so I just think it's important to see that even if the association doesn't have authority in that local church, it being connected in the association at least gives those brothers the relational capital to say, hey, we've got to call a brother to repentance who maybe isn't leading the people well, pastoring the people well, or teaching the people well.

Yeah, yeah.

I think there's a natural, so let's talk about association with churches. I think there's a natural pull to be associated with geographical, churches in a geographical area, but we're not limited to that.

Like in one sense, although it's pretty loose, our churches are associated, Marshall First Baptist and Providence Baptist. I've preached at your church, you've preached at my church. It's a little harder for our people to be together because of distance, but our people know you, some of them because of the podcast, you know?

Yeah, and I've got people in my church that listen to the podcast.

So shout out to those folks. And so that's good. So one aspect is geographical, but another is just kind of organic. Like we're in affiliation with churches that we go to Mexico with from the state. So by the word, Baptist in Azle, Texas, and Trinity Baptist in Port Arthur, Texas, but then even another sense, we're kind of informally in association with churches in Mexico.

And that's the thing too, and we don't really have to get into this, but there is differences on, should we have formal or informal association? You know, so like the association here, Conway Perry Baptist Association, it's a formal association.

We have governing documents, we have bank account, we have, you know, all that kind of stuff. But I don't think a formal association is necessarily required for you to carry out the spirit of Baptist association.

Yeah, I would agree. You know, I think a part of what, a lot of it comes down to what the pastors are doing. You know, my experience in Baptist associations my whole life has been, the church is as involved as the pastor makes it or doesn't make it.

And even in a formal association, you know, if the pastor in the church, if the pastor doesn't come to the meetings and doesn't ever talk to his church about what's happening with the association, doesn't encourage his church to be involved in missions or things that the association is doing, then that church is not going to be very involved in the association.

And likewise, if a pastor, even like our churches, if a pastor is talking about things happening in other churches, even if they're not in a formal association, but he's talking about, you know, this church in Perryville or this church in Barrow or whatever church.

And he's saying, you know, this is what's happening in those churches. Let's pray for them. Then that's going to build some fellowship and some relationship between those churches, even if there's not a formal association.

So a lot of it comes down to what are we doing as the elders in the church to lead our churches to be in fellowship with other churches in that way. One of the practices that a church can do is just set aside each week, a little bit of just during your, maybe your opening prayer or something like that to pray for another local church.

You know, that'll help your people so much to just have it in their mind. We're not all by ourself. And whether it's another local church in the next town over or in the next state over, it's going to help your people to think about we're a part of the larger body of Christ.

The Church as the City of God in Psalm 87

Yeah, that's right. That's good. Well, I want to transition into, that's a big word today, right? Transition. But I want this episode to transition from talking about associations to talking about, so last night our church hosted the association meeting and I had the opportunity to preach.

And I preached from Psalm 87. And so I'm just going to read the three, first three verses there from Psalm 87. And we'll do a little bit of exegetical work. And I want to talk about the beauty of the church.

But the text says Psalm 87 verse one, on the Holy Mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.

Selah.

What comes to your mind when you hear the Psalm, those first two verses? I mean, initially what comes to your mind. Or if anything comes to mind, did anything come to mind, Eddie?

Well, I will say in light of current world events, you know, the thoughts of the things taking place in that part of the planet. The day did come to mind. Not necessarily that that's what this passage is talking about is current events, but it does make you think that way.

Yeah, no, I think that's good because that is something I want to talk about. But you know, the city he founded, the Lord loves the gates of Zion. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. And I think in some respects, this will separate people hermeneutically.

Like what is this really talking about?

You know, does this terminate.

In the physical city of Jerusalem, right?

Is that it?

And I think we would have some, you know, more dispensational brothers say, well, hey, look, this is just about Jerusalem, right? Whereas I think you and I would say,.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

The reason that this is about Jerusalem is because this is the presence of God. This is talking about the presence of God in this place because of the temple and those. And so it actually finds its fuller expression and fulfillment in the church.

You look this up, not crazy. You know, Luther talks about it. Calvin talks about it. And we could look at a couple passages. In fact, Eddie, would you, you got access to the Bible right there easy?

I do.

How about Matthew 5, 14?

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Isn't that interesting?

Yeah.

Jesus calls his followers, the man who knows the Bible better than any man who ever lived.

Yeah.

Do you think that he accidentally used city on a hill?

Yeah, certainly not.

You know, yeah. And then how about this one? I'm going to read from Hebrews 12. I'll begin in verse 22. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to innumerable angels and festal gathering and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God, the judge of all and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

So unequivocally, the author of Hebrews says, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God. And of course, he is talking about the assembly there of the local church.

And definitely that was the imagery that old covenant, that Old Testament imagery is what the Hebrew writer is working off of. Yeah, that's his whole point.

And so you have this metaphor here of the church as a city. And in fact, I'd say this, and who knows? I mean, because things just keep changing day after day. So by the time this comes out, who knows?

But the city that we really need to have our eyes on is not a physical city in the Middle East. I'm not saying ignore what's going on. Of course, I'm not saying that. And I understand that there, and we ought to pray.

We ought to be praying for Israel and against the wickedness of Hamas. And yes, of course, I'm not saying ignore it, but I'm saying the city really spoken about here, the city that we need to have our focus on is the church.

That's right.

And so I'll just spend a few minutes here talking about verse three, glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. What are some glorious things that we can say about the church, Mr. Ragsdale?

You know, that makes me think of what Paul wrote to the Ephesians. In Ephesians chapter five, Christ is going to wash his bride with the word and without spot or wrinkle or blemish or any such thing. You know, this glorious purity that Christ is going to present the church to himself because she's been washed with his word.

Yeah, that's good, brother. You know, the church is glorious because of what Christ has done to redeem her. Chose her in eternity past, came to rescue her. The prince came to give himself for the princess, as it were, you know, he allowed himself to be slain by the dragon in an effort and to accomplish her redemption as he was bore her sins in his body on the tree.

Glorious things are spoken of the church because of what our redeemer has done to bring her from death to life. And this is what God is doing in the world today. Eddie, you know, I know we think of we want to think about prophecy and end times and all those things, but I just want to encourage as people delve in that and think through that.

Don't lose sight here of the glorious things spoken of the church that this is God's work in the world today is in and through and about the church. You could say it this way, the blood of Christ that was shed on Calvary flowed over into Jerusalem, into all Judea, into Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth.

And what sprang out from this precious fountain are local churches. Yeah, that's right. There's an unbreakable connection, right? Between the work of Christ and the church.

Well, you know, you think about the way that the Lord wins the battle against his enemies is by transforming them.

Yeah.

Converting them.

Yeah, some of them. And he'll vanquish others, you know, but yeah.

Certainly, certainly. But, you know, we look victoriously at what God's doing in the world. And we say, there's not going to be a people group that God doesn't win people from. There's not going to be a language group in the world from which God does not have praise in those that are worshiping him.

Yeah.

The church is expanding into all the world with this message of good news. These glorious things, nothing more glorious than the gospel. And the church is carrying that good news into the world.

Amen.

Think about how the church is adorned as a bride for her husband.

Yeah, yeah. Well, here's just a few. And these are all things we've touched on before. But let me just walk through four points here of things that we want to get right in the church. Because these are glorious things spoken of the church.

The first is we want to get right the church's message. And here's a little bit of exegetical work. But the text says, glorious things of you are spoken. In Hebrew, the preposition there of, it can also mean in.

So not only are glorious things of the church spoken, but there is a sense that we speak glorious things in the church. And one of the most glorious things that we speak in the church is the church's message.

That is, it's not your works. It's not your good deeds. It's not your service even in the church that reconciles you to a holy and righteous God. It is the gospel. We want to get the message of the church right.

Because the church, as you mentioned, Eddie, has a glorious message. We ought to know words like, and I know we do, but our people ought to know words like propitiation, justification, reconciliation, redemption, atonement, regeneration.

We ought to know the words of the faith because the church has a glorious message. Thoughts on that?

You know, that is so right. Just yesterday, I was talking with a young woman, and she was sharing how the Lord has really done an amazing work in her life in the last two months, really. But how just before that, she had been in a service, high pressure, you know, pray this prayer kind of a thing.

And she was just relating how, you know, she'd been told, read this Bible verse. Do you believe that? You're a Christian now. That was what they told her. Do you believe that? You're a Christian now. And so she was just lamenting, you know, she doesn't think that she was converted then, that she was really saved.

And so we were talking about that. And, you know, if somebody said, oh, regeneration, that's too big a word. You know, you don't need to know that. No, she needed to know that. She needed to understand that doctrine of what it meant to be born again.

That's what she needed. Not just read this verse. Do you believe that? You're a Christian now.

Yeah.

She needed to be told this is what the gospel is, and this is what it means to repent and believe. You need to look to Jesus, not to what some preacher told you, but you need to trust in Jesus. So, yeah, it's so important that our people are taught these things because the Lord is glorified in that message of the church.

We're not careful. We could do an episode on each one of these. I'll go to the next point. That is, glorious things are spoken of you, are spoken, oh city of God. And by the way, it has that word there, Selah, the pause there to pause and reflect back and think what was just said.

But another thing that we should think about is the church's membership. Not only the church's message, but the church's membership. Of course, we're Baptists. We believe in regenerate church membership.

If we love the church, we should love the church's membership. Again, we could do a whole episode on that, but we should care about regenerate church membership. We should care about church discipline.

We should care about, this comes across maybe unloving, but it's really not. We should care about making it hard to get in and easy to get out in the sense that we wanna do our due diligence up front.

And then we want to take church discipline necessary. We don't desire to remove people from the church, but if it becomes necessary, then we do, because we love the membership of the church. And we think that the church is a glorious, the most glorious institution on earth.

Anything else you would add? I know we could do a whole episode on that.

Yeah, all I wanna say is yes, we need to be people who care enough about both people and the church that we're willing to call out sin even when it might cause somebody to not come. I think sometimes there are pastors in churches that they would never wanna do.

Listen, if you do something that would cause somebody to not come, they would think you've done wrong. And no, there are times when it's okay for somebody to not come. I mean, not okay, they should repent, but you haven't done anything wrong when you've pointed out sin that they need to repent of.

I mean, we need to love the beauty of Christ's church and the souls of those people enough to be willing to point out sin.

Because this is a glorious body.

Right.

All right.

Thirdly, the methodology of the church, and I have two points here. I'll go ahead and just lay them out. I alliterated those. What do you think about that? Sunday worship and soul winning. So we should have a biblical regulation for our Sunday worship and for our soul winning because the church is a glorious institution.

And again, we could do episodes on both of those, but the way that the church worships is glorious. And we have to worship because of who we worship. And the one that we worship, we ought to worship him according to the way that he has instructed us in his word.

And then the similar with soul winning, I would just say evangelism is not a come and see event. It is a go and tell. And so the church is obligated, but should do so joyfully to preach the gospel in the way.

And I'll say this evangelism is one of the hardest things for churches. And at the same time, it is really, I'm not trying to oversimplify. It's one of the easiest things. What is evangelism? It is you going to tell someone about Christ.

That's evangelism. Is your church doing evangelism?

Well, we have this or that. It's like, no, no.

Are you just going out? Are your members like going out? Are you passing out tracks? Are you having conversations? Are you just going and standing somewhere and proclaiming the truth? So the church's methodology should be in line with scripture because glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God.

Thoughts on Sunday worship or soul winning in the church's methodology.

The only thing I'll say, because we need to cut the time down a little bit on this, but the only thing I'll say is it is kind of crazy that the two hardest things maybe in the Christian life are exactly like you said.

They're actually easy, but they're so difficult because of how important they are. And that is prayer and evangelism. Both prayer and evangelism, I think, are things that almost every Christian would say, oh, man, I don't pray like I should.

And I don't witness like I should. And at the same time, they're the simplest.

Yeah.

They're just talking to God and talking to people. And we tend to struggle with both of them.

Yeah.

Make excuses. But our worship and our evangelism ought to be in line with the scriptures. And the last one. So the church is a glorious institution, and we should desire to have the right message and the right membership, the right methodology.

And then lastly, I'll just mention the right management. And again, we could spend a whole lesson here or a whole lesson, a whole episode here. But the idea is, again, it's simple. The leadership of the church is elders and deacons and the congregation, and that's it.

That's right.

So it's not an outside, you know, back to association. It's not an association.

Right.

It's not committees. No, it's qualified men serving as elders, pastors, bishops, overseers, all the same office. It's qualified men serving in the role of deacon, which deacons are. Really, I really like Jim Elliff's article on this, but they're really like assistants to the pastors.

Right.

They're not a board over the pastors or even equal authority with the pastors. They are servants of the church.

Right.

And this is from the wise and holy mind of our great and glorious God. Now, Eddie, you may be wiser than me. I'll grant you that. But you're not.

I don't think so.

You're not wiser than God.

That is right.

So why would we desire to have the management of the church in any different way?

That's right. No, you're exactly right. And I think it's, you know, the Lord in that wisdom that you're speaking of, what he's done is he's fixed the leadership of the church so that it is it is protective of the church.

When the leadership of the church is operating biblically, it is protective of everyone. You know, because even take, for example, plurality of elders, it protects the churches from the weakness of any one man.

Yeah.

And it protects that one man from the burden of everything in the church.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, we see the wisdom of God in the structure that he put into his local church.

The Beauty of the Local Church

Yeah.

The church is a glorious institution. She is beautiful. She should be treated rightly and well. And we should remember that the church is the resplendent bride of Christ. And I know someone might say, yeah, well, that's the universal church.

But the universal church is manifest on the earth today in visible local congregations that must be treated rightly because this is what God is doing in the world today. This is the glorious institution of the local church.

What do you think, Ed? Is that good? You got anything else?

Nope, that's it.

Well, thank you guys for joining us on this episode of the Rural Church Podcast. Sign us off.

See you guys next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemos, the masterpiece of God.

How are you going to respond?