November 28, 2018 Show with Dr. Barry J. York on “Hitting the Marks: Restoring the Essential Identity of the Church”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday, I'm sorry,

Wednesday on this 28th day of November 2018 and I'm so delighted to have for the very first time ever on the program

Dr. Barry J York. He is president and professor of pastoral theology at the

Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and that seminary should not be unfamiliar to those who listen regularly to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio because we have interviewed a number of faculty members and also former students of Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

Today we're going to be addressing Dr. York's book, Hitting the Marks, Restoring the Essential Identity of the

Church and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Barry J York. Well thank you Chris, it's a pleasure and a privilege to be on your show.

Great, well it's a great honor and privilege and pleasure for me and I'm sure for my listeners as well.

Why don't you tell our listeners first of all something about Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary even though we've explained this seminary many times on the show.

We do have new listeners that seem to be joining the audience of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every day.

So please, especially for the sake of those who have not yet heard about Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, tell us our listeners about that.

Well Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary or RPTS as we like to call it is actually the fifth oldest seminary in the

United States. It was founded in 1810 but unlike our older seminary friends, our seminary has remained faithful to the

Word of God for which we give Him thanks and praise. Had a consistent witness all those years and the

Lord has blessed us. We are in the

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area and God has brought to us people from the denomination that sponsors us, the

Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. We have students from there but we also draw from lots of other places.

Our Napark brethren, Orthodox Presbyterian DCA churches send men to us to train.

We also have folks from the inner city of Pittsburgh, a lot of Baptist brothers and sisters who come and study at RPTS.

As well as a growing contingent of international students from a number of countries in Asia.

So the Lord has really blessed us in recent years. Some of the distinct things about RPTS would be that we're a seminary that really believes in training folks in biblical orthodoxy so we do have that component at RPTS.

We also want to train particularly pastors to be able to do practical ministry as the professor of pastoral theology.

That's a great deal on my heart. So we do a lot of rigorous training in preaching but also in areas such as church planting, mercy ministry, vital church leadership, discipleship, those types of things.

So that's a little bit about RPTS. And the website is rpts .edu

for those of you who want to explore further into the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

One thing that is quite a fascinating fact of history,

I know that the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, who is the primary denomination running the seminary, they were the first evangelical

Christian denomination in the south to oppose slavery. And that's something that a lot of people are unaware of.

Yes. If you look on our website and go to the resources tab, you'll see that we have our online journal listed there.

And a year ago, I think it was in the spring 2017 issue, the president of our board,

Dr. Michael Lefebvre, wrote an article about that and recounting some of that history and then also encouraging us how we might use some of that history in our modern setting.

Praise God. Well, another thing that we normally do on Iron Trip and Zion Radio when we have a first -time guest is we have that guest give a summary of the account of your salvation, what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in, and what providential circumstances our sovereign

Lord brought about in your life that drew you to himself and saved you. Well, I appreciate that opportunity to share my testimony and give

God praise for that. I grew up in the western part of North Carolina, and though I wasn't raised in a

Christian home, my parents took me to church almost every week in a

Baptist church. When I was about nine years of age, I responded to an altar call and was baptized.

However, it's pretty clear that that was just an emotional, fleshly response because the next years of my life revealed that my heart still was not right with the

Lord. My family ended up moving when I was age 11 to Michigan. We moved a couple of places there.

As I got into my high school years, I began to really reveal my true nature during that time as I was an immoral young man and getting into trouble.

I looked good on the outside in some ways. I was involved in sports. I did well in school.

I behaved when my parents' eyes were on me, but at other times

I would get into trouble. As a matter of fact, I was even in high school arrested one night because some buddies and I broke into the local high school just doing practical joking type things, but I got in trouble through that.

That happened to me too, believe it or not. Really? That's something we have in common.

Two former crooks here. So my dad did get me out of jail and tried to help me and set me on the right path, but when

I went off to college at the University of Michigan and I was away from any moral restraints, I really began to get quite wild in my behaviors.

I was a math student and trying to do my best in that subject field, but on the weekends and at nights, again,

I was running quite wild, but in God's kind providence, he put a man on my floor at the

University of Michigan in the South Quad Dormitory who befriended me and unlike all the other guys who were pressuring me to be involved in these behaviors,

Jeff just showed an interest in me, asked me to go get a meal, hung out with me, and then eventually asked me if I'd like to attend a

Bible study. So on Friday and Saturday nights, I was running wild, but then on Sunday evenings,

I started going to this Bible study and the book of John, and eventually through his influence,

God opened my eyes to my sin and I realized that if I didn't stop going in the direction

I was headed, I would end up in hell one day, and saw that God had provided a way of salvation, the person of his

Son, Jesus Christ, and as it says in Romans 6 that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our

Lord. I put my faith in Christ as a freshman at the

University of Michigan, and though there was definitely some peaks and valleys to my journey, the

Lord used the ministry of the Navigators at the University of Michigan to begin to really train me and disciple me in what it meant to be a true

Christian. I actually had a girlfriend and my high school sweetheart who was attending

Calvin College up in Grand Rapids, and unfortunately she wasn't hearing much of the gospel there, but God used his work in my life to help

Miriam come to faith in him as well, and we eventually got married in 1985, and I went down to Purdue University to continue in grad school, and that's actually when

I got involved in the Reformed Presbyterian Church that has led me into where I am today.

Well, praise God. Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address if they would like to join us on the air with questions of their own.

The email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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

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

I want to read a few of the endorsements for this book that you've written,

Hitting the Marks, Restoring the Essential Identity of the Church, because they are quite impressive.

Two of these men have been on Iron Radio as guests, and one of them is involved with one of our sponsors,

World Magazine, but Ligon Duncan, a Chancellor and CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary, says this book is clear, helpful, biblical, pastoral, and Presbyterian exposition and counsel for pastors, elders, and congregations alike on understanding and applying the marks and characteristics of the church in order to have healthy churches.

Also, Derek Thomas, Senior Minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina, and Chancellor's Professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, says a much -needed resource on the meaning and identity of the church in a compromised age.

Invaluable and timely, clear, concise, a clarion call for reformation, thoroughly recommended.

And finally, Russ Pulliam, who is with the

Indianapolis Star and World Magazine, he says, Barry York offers an experienced voice of practical application of scripture.

God has used him as a pastor, a disciple maker, and a church planner. He's not offering just theory about church.

Barry gives the real deal. Well, those are quite impressive commendations, especially because of the men who wrote those commendations.

And if you could, Dr. York, there are a number of books, as you know, that have intended or attempted to challenge

Christians in general, and especially Christians in leadership, to steer the church back to the original purpose and intention and identity that Christ had in his mind and his perfect and inerrant and holy and righteous mind when the church was established.

Why did you think that another volume was needed on a subject like this? You know, the writing of many books is always present.

When I was a pastor out in Indiana, I was a church planter, and so I did a lot of door -to -door work, evangelistic work, discipleship work.

And as you're seeing people respond to faith in Christ, or you're interacting with people who have questions about the church,

I began to notice that there's just a lot of confusion about what the church actually is.

I found that people would say things like, the

Salvation Army is a church, but that was the church that they identified with, which, in my thinking, the

Salvation Army isn't a church but a parachurch ministry. I found that people were looking for churches, and when you asked them what they were looking for, they were taking things that I really would think you should value as peripheral matters of making those core issues and taking the things that really should be at the core of what the church is and making them more incidental.

And so, as I was trying to not only interact with people in the community, but then as the church that I was planting developed and grew, and I was training the people there how to interact with others,

I found that as I looked for a resource to put into the hands of people that would answer some of these questions, there wasn't what

I felt was a real practical work in that end. Certainly the marks of the church, the traditional classical marks of the church, which we'll get into a discussion about,

I'm sure, before this is all said and done, certainly there are resources out there that contain them, but often they're large theological volumes or they're in our confessions, but they're not often explained.

People are given an understanding of why these marks are the ones the

Protestant reformers upheld versus other marks, and so I wanted to put together a volume that would be helpful toward that end.

And so that's basically why I wrote Hitting the Marks. Well, if you could give us a definition of what the church is, that may sound like a silly question to many people listening who think, oh,

I know what the church is, everybody knows what the church is, but there are different definitions.

Obviously, there's only one true definition, but there are many who have a misunderstanding of what the church is.

I know that the root word ekklesia refers to those who are called out, but if you could give us a definition to work with in the beginning of our discussion here.

Well, the church would be those who follow Jesus Christ would be the simplest definition

I could give, but of course there's a lot of people out there that would claim to follow Jesus Christ that we wouldn't recognize as a true church, such as the

Mormons. And so the confessions began to expand upon that so that people could understand who the true followers of Christ were.

And one of the distinctions that you find, for instance, in the Westminster Confession of Faith on the church is the distinction between the visible church and the invisible church.

I think that's a good place to start. The invisible church is that universal church that constitutes all of God's elect through all time.

So those who have been true believers throughout history who are in heaven now, who are on the earth, and who are yet to be born would be considered the invisible church.

But what we're really concerned about is the visible church, the local church that we often think of.

How do we know whether a local body that says that they're followers of Christ is truly a true gathering of God's people?

And so, again, the Confession of Faith would say that the visible church consists of those who profess the true religion and who have those qualities about it that really set it apart as distinctly belonging to Jesus.

And that then gets them to the marks of the church. What are those distinct qualities, the essential qualities that are needed to set the true people of God away from such as a sect or even an apostate group?

And those three marks would be the faithful preaching of God's Word, the right administration of the sacraments, and the faithful practice of church discipline.

Those have been what have been called the traditional marks of the church. Yes, and it is a tragedy that for quite a long time, the

Evangelical church at large, let alone other churches that are even more towards the realm of apostasy or even explicitly apostate, all three of those have been poorly manifested very often in even churches that would consider themselves to be

Bible -believing and even conservative. One of the things, before we go into specifically those three, that churches disagree on, even good biblically faithful churches seem to have on occasion disagreements over the offices of Christ.

If you could let our listeners know about that. The offices of Christ, we see in the scriptures that Jesus manifests himself as the

Christ, and he was identified in the Old Testament as the Christ, that he would come and be a prophet, a priest, and the king of his people.

So the offices of Jesus are, he's a prophet, a priest, and a king. He's a prophet who brings the word of God to his people.

He's a priest who gave his life on behalf of his people to purchase them for salvation, and that he's a king who has been, by virtue of his death and resurrection, has ascended on high, and God has placed all authority and power under Jesus.

Now, one of the reasons I say that some Christians disagree is that, as you may know, there are folks who we would consider our brothers in Christ, even though we strongly disagree with them on certain issues, and one of them involves the kingship of Jesus.

Some are saying that Jesus is not now king. He will be when he is reigning, and what they would call the

Millennium Period, which they typically view in a different way than most

Reformed Christians view that, and they would even dare to say that Satan is the lord or the king of this earth.

But how do you answer the person that says, how can Jesus be king when we see the majority of people on this globe acting in a wicked fashion, who were rebelling against Christ and his word, when it seems that evil is getting worse and worse and manifesting itself in all kinds of grotesque and horrific ways that many of us, for most of our lives, haven't witnessed until recently?

So how would you say, how do you respond to the folks that say, how is Jesus king? Well, first of all,

I'd say just look at Jesus in the gospel accounts. He came and he began his ministry by saying, repent and believe for the kingdom of God is at hand.

He came as a king to this world. I mean, a lot of the world's getting ready to recognize his birth here next month, and we know that the angels declared a king had been born, and wise men came to worship the king of the

Jews. So he came into this world as a king, and he manifested his kingly power in the way that he conducted his public ministry, even though he often was not in the public eye in the sense of seeking the presence of the political powers of the day.

As he went out as an itinerant evangelist throughout the cities and villages of Israel, and he preached the kingdom of God, he also showed the power that he had over all things.

Demons fled from his presence, crying out that he was the son, the very son of God, and recognized him as a king.

He was able to heal and raise the dead, so he showed his power.

He had power over the elements of the earth, even the wind and the water obey him.

So he showed that he was the king, and when he died in complete obedience and submission to the father, and the father was pleased to raise him and give him life and salvation, the scriptures say that his reward for that is that because he humbled himself in obedience even to the point of death, that therefore

God has highly exalted him and raised him to a position where every knee should bow and every tongue should confess what?

That Jesus is Lord. And so he is Lord now. He didn't say in the great commission, all authority in heaven and earth will be given to me someday.

He says, it's mine. It has been given to me. So go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.

So we're in the midst of that right now. We're right in the midst of seeing the further establishment of Christ's kingdom in this world as he is pleased to work through his church, bringing that kingdom to this world.

And yeah, there are times and seasons and places where things can look awfully dark or bleak, and it's easy to get pessimistic, but if you think about where we are now and where we were 2 ,000 years ago with just a little group of scared men huddled together,

God's done a great thing in blessing his kingdom, blessing his church, and causing it to spread over the face of the earth.

We're not done yet, and he has a lot of work to do. So he's continuing to use the church to bring that knowledge of his kingdom to this world, but that doesn't mean that he is not in authority over it all.

One of the things that we believe is in the mediatorial kingship of Christ, that he's the mediating king right now, that God has given him this power, and he's using it through history and through time to bring this rule, and he'll continue to rule and continue to bring his rule until he's put every last enemy under his foot, even death itself, the scriptures say.

And then at that time, we'll see the Lord, the consummation, and the

Lord hand all of these things over to the Father that he's conquered through the gospel. Now, we who are

Reformed also would typically say that the devil is God's devil, and that he cannot do anything without being granted permission by God himself to do it, just as we see in the book of Job, all the things that fell upon Job and his family, the devil couldn't do any of those things.

In fact, he specifically asked God for permission to do those things. So people should be reminded,

I think you would agree, that no matter what evil we see in the world around us, God has a sovereign purpose for us.

He does not bless evil and those who are guilty of evil acts, who do not repent before they depart from this earth, they will be punished in hell.

But at the same time, God has a sovereign purpose for all of this, and the devil is on a leash that God is holding tightly onto.

Am I right? Amen. Yes, yes. Even the legion of demons had to ask permission to go into a herd of pigs that got cast into the sea and drowned.

So yes, the demons are under his dominion. Well, going back to those three main things that identify the true church,

I'm going to ask you about the faithful preaching of the

Word of God, and I'm going to have you answer it when we return from our first break, because we're going to our first break right now.

But if you could, tell us what you think, or ways that you think the modern church, even the church that professes to be biblically faithful, has in many ways failed at that mission for its ministers to be faithful preachers of the

Word, and how they have drifted from the gospel and focused on the things that are not the gospel, or even have twisted the gospel itself.

But if anybody would like to join us on the air, you can email us at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

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

If you're going to be criticizing a particular church or congregation, we would obviously prefer that you remain anonymous and keep that church anonymous, so we could understand if you are going to be saying something critical of perhaps even the church where you are a member, we would insist that you remain anonymous.

But other than that, if it's just a general question, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. And don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages with Dr.

Barry J. York and more on Hitting the Marks. Chris Arnsen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, announcing a new website with an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

Dr. Barry J. York. He has written a book, Hitting the Marks, Restoring the

Essential Identity of the Church. The foreword was written by one of my favorite preachers,

Edward Donnelly, or as many people call him, Ted Donnelly. What a phenomenal preacher.

If anybody listening wants to discover the preaching of Ted Donnelly, you can find it at Sermon Audio and other places on the internet,

I'm sure. But what a remarkable preacher and gifted man of God. How is

Brother Donnelly doing these days, Dr. York? Well, he was just with us.

He and Lorna just a few weeks ago spent some time here with us in our home, and he's doing well.

He actually ended up preaching for us in our congregation, sort of a last -minute decision, but it was a wonderful morning as he opened the

Word of God to us. So all in all, he's doing well, so we're thankful for that. Well, praise God.

That's very good to hear. Yes, I can still remember vividly when I first heard him preach at the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, Long Island, New York, probably back in the 1980s, maybe the 1990s, when my dear friend of many years,

Pastor Bill Shishko, was still pastoring there. So I can heartily recommend

Ted Donnelly's preaching. So as you remember, before the break,

I asked you to highlight some of the ways that you think, perhaps, the evangelical church at large may have departed in some areas in regarding to the faithful preaching of the

Word of God. Mm -hmm. Well, one of the things that I point out in the book is that, and we were talking about this before the break, is we have these offices of Jesus.

He is a prophet, a priest, and a king, as we established. Well, one of the things that I think we don't often see is that the church's identity is directly connected to Jesus.

He is the head, we're the body. So if he's a prophet, and a priest, and a king, then his body should be reflecting that.

And I think that's exactly where the marks come in. In 1 Peter 2, verse 9,

Peter addresses the church, and he says, but you're a chosen race. He calls them a royal priesthood.

So the church is a priesthood, it's royal, it's also to be a place of a kingly living.

And then he goes on to say, you're a chosen possession, you are to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

And we see in that that we're also given a prophetic role. So just as Jesus is a prophet, a priest, and a king, in union with Christ, the church is to reflect those offices in its life as well, as we live before the

Lord as prophet, priest, and king, as we would say with little p's and little k's.

He's the true prophet, the true priest, the true king. And those offices are reflected in the marks.

He's a prophet, so we are to be preaching the word of God. He's a priest, so we are to be showing and demonstrating to the world that it's only through his death and life that we are given salvation.

And that's represented in the signs of the sacraments the church has, the baptism of the

Lord's Supper. And he's a king, he rules over his people. And so the church should be a place where his holy rule is seen, and that's why we have the mark of discipline.

So to get to the heart of your question, Chris, and talk about preaching, I think we have to see that the reason that preaching is so vital is because the church is to be faithfully representing

Christ to this world. And to be true disciples of Jesus Christ means that we are following his word, that we're obeying his word.

And that should thoroughly mark any congregation that claims to be one of God's true gatherings of his people.

And I think today, in particularly evangelical America, the church has become comfortable, rich, self -satisfied, and because of that, so many places are more concerned about marketing the church than really preaching the gospel.

So they want people to come and be comfortable. I was actually teaching a class today at RPTS, and I was telling the students as we were talking about worship, where in the

Bible do we really get the idea that when people are to come to worship that they're to necessarily feel comfortable?

Coming before a holy God in worship is not very comfortable at times, because we're sinners, and he's holy, and he wants his people's lives to be brought into conformity to his

Son. And the way that that primarily happens is through the faithful preaching of his word, where we're telling the people of God what it really means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ.

At the heart of that is the gospel. He died, and he lives. You must die so that you can live.

You must die to self and live unto Christ and show the world that you're really one of his disciples as you obey and follow his commands.

And so I think true faithful biblical preaching, although I'm very encouraged by the movement in Reformed theology and Reformed circles that we're seeing here in this last couple of decades,

I'm really encouraged that many of God's people are returning and starting to hunger for that.

Still, in a large -scale way, as we look across the Christian landscape, there are far too many people who say that they're

Christians, and yet they're not satisfied with the preaching of God's word, that they're looking for other things to please them, to tickle their ears, to make them feel comfortable, to make them feel good, rather than coming under the preaching of God's word.

Now, do you think that that is a direct result of preachers or pastors failing to preach and teach the whole counsel of God?

I have said before, when I've seen Joel Osteen preaching on television, where he has this permanent beaming smile on his face,

I've never seen him preach or teach with a frown or with a look of urgency and seriousness.

Now, I'm not somebody who has watched every moment of his preaching, but I have said that you cannot remain with a smile on your face all the time if you're preaching the whole counsel of God.

Do you think that that's at root? Yes. You know, when a man says that our church's sin is not on the menu, when you're not really going to address directly sin, then he's already told you that he's an unfaithful preacher, because how can you preach truly the blood of Jesus Christ and not address the people regarding their sin and their need for Jesus?

The Apostle Paul, in one of the chapters of my book, I really address

Acts chapter 20, where we get that phrase, the whole counsel of God. As Paul is speaking to the

Ephesian elders that have gathered there before him on the beach, he's instructing them.

He tells them that they really need to take heed of themselves and also the church, which

Christ purchased with his own blood, and the Holy Spirit had made them overseers.

He says there's going to be these, he called them wolves, these men who will rise up in your own midst and who will pervert the truth of God.

And so what our problem is, is we have a lot of false prophets in the land, a lot of people going around using the name of Jesus for their own self benefit and not being very faithful to preach what the whole counsel, what the full body of God's Word has to say to God's people.

Great. We do have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who has a question.

I often hear Reformed people using different phrases for the

Lord's Supper and Baptism. Some interchangeably use ordinances and sacraments, some refuse to use the phrase sacraments and solely use the word ordinances because they think sacraments is an improper way of defining what those elements are in the worship of Christ.

Why does your guest use the word sacraments and does he differentiate that word from the way

Rome has misused it? That's a good question, and I think at the heart of it he's revealed part of the answer.

I think it's typically our Baptist brothers who are uncomfortable with the word sacraments and prefer the word ordinances because of its historic association with the

Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church said that there were seven sacraments, seven ways that God had given to his people to be blessed and beyond the

Lord's Supper and Baptism they had such things as ordination and marriage and other sacraments that they held to, and part of the

Protestant Reformation was standing against not only the wrong number of the sacraments but the wrong teaching regarding the sacraments where Rome was seeing the sacraments as a way that God dispensed his salvific grace to his people, and of course we're completely opposed to that idea that we receive a saving grace through participation in the sacraments.

However, I don't think that because of the improper Roman view that we have to shy away from that word.

It simply means sacred or holy, and so we look at the

Lord's Supper and we look at Baptism, you know, Baptism a sign of God's washing away our sins, a sign of us coming into the

Church, a sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life, all of those are holy truths, and so to call

Baptism a holy ordinance or in other words a sacrament, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, or looking at the

Lord's Supper and it representing his pure blood and broken body, again to call that a sacrament or a sacred thing, a precious thing to the

Church, I don't think that that's a wrong use of that word, and in my mind we're really reclaiming the true sense of what a sacrament would be by using that word.

And ultimately I use the word because it's found in our confessions, and I'm a confessional theologian,

I love our confessions, and so when they use terms and phrases I like to use them as well. Yes, and not all

Baptists, especially Reformed Baptists, are leery of using the phrase, in fact one of the greatest heroes, earthly heroes, of the majority of Reformed Baptists, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, he used the term sacraments.

By the way, thank you Christopher, and if you give us your mailing address in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, you're going to be receiving absolutely free of charge the book

Hitting the Marks, Restoring the Essential Identity of the Church by our guest Dr.

Barry J. York, and that is compliments of our friends at Crown and Covenant Publications, who are always faithful to provide us with wonderful books when we interview their authors.

Also compliments of our friends at CVBBS .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will actually be shipping the book out to you at no charge to you or to RN Trippin's Iron Radio.

So please look out for that in the mail, and please make sure we have your mailing address so we can have that shipped out as soon as possible.

Now, if the administration, the proper administration of the sacraments or ordinances is a hallmark of a true church, do you think that some churches, perhaps far more than we care to mention who are even within the

Reformed faith, seem to not want to highlight them too frequently in the gathering of the body of Christ and in the worship of Christ?

You may have some churches that have the Lord's Supper once a year, twice a year, and prolong baptisms for many months, perhaps a year or more.

There are some churches that only baptize people on Easter Sunday, for instance, and things like that, or when it's warm enough to go to the beach and do it.

Do you think that kind of detracts from the sacraments or ordinances being such a major element within a true church's identity?

Yes, I think those things are signs that perhaps they're not valuing deeply enough these precious symbols of God's grace to us, and so a church should be thinking through carefully and examining issues such as the frequency of communion or how long they wait until they bring someone into the communion of the local body through baptism.

I do think those are matters of importance. This is where I really believe that God has entrusted what are known as the keys of the kingdom in these marks of the church.

He's really entrusted that to the elders of the church, and so that's part of the reason, again, why

I wrote the book. I was hoping that the leadership of the local church would really re -examine itself.

So often when I consult with churches, maybe it's an older congregation that's dying and wondering if it has any life left in it and any future ahead of it, or maybe a congregation going through a real low period, what

I often find that congregations that are struggling, what they tend to do is they tend to look around the block, so to speak, see what the latest

Christian fad is, maybe where they think God's blessing someone using some tool, some study, and they go out and purchase the books and try to copy what they see others doing.

And I think before we go out and try to do those types of things, I think what we need to do first and foremost of all is take a good, healthy look in the mirror.

We really need to go back and look at what the essential identity of the church is, and are we being faithful in who

God has called us to be first and foremost? And I have found that it's very easy for something like the word supper to begin to really lose its value to people.

I was telling my students today that when I was an unbeliever, I sat in a church as a teenager, and it was a liberal church, and when the elements were passing me by,

I was making jokes while I was partaking of the Lord's body and blood, and I shudder to think about it now.

And sometimes churches really need to be reawakened to the value and the preciousness of the sacraments.

I have a chapter in the book on that, really, why the sacraments are precious, and I just treat the blood of Jesus Christ, because that's what the sacraments are really representing to us, is

Jesus' blood. The Heidelberg Catechism asks in question 69, how does holy baptism remind and assure you that Christ's one sacrifice on the cross benefits you personally?

And then the answer is, in this way, Christ instituted this outward washing, and with it promised that as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly

His blood and His Spirit wash away my souls of purity that is all my sins.

And we need to just reflect on what the blood of Jesus Christ does for us, and that should never cease to astonish us.

Horatius Bonar wrote in his short work, The Blood of the Cross, he asked this question, and I think it's a wonderful question to ask ourselves, how far have

I learned to prize that blood, which though once my accuser, is now my advocate?

That's really the question. How much do we prize the blood of Jesus Christ?

And if we prize that blood, it's going to be seen in the way that we celebrate and rejoice when someone's professed their faith in Jesus Christ and is baptized, or you know in Presbyterian circles when we baptize an infant, that should never be a rote thing.

All the promises of God and what that represents and the hope that we have for that child should be clearly seen and understood.

When we come before the Lord's Supper, I think we do this far too casually in some circles, and far too severely in others.

So we have some brethren that I know that they are so scared of going to the sacraments of communion that some of them will wait for years before they go, and I think that's wrong.

Yeah. And then we have some people who just go so very casually to the table with no self -reflection or self -examination whatsoever, and the key is really to find that proper biblical balance where we're really valuing what

God has done, and we come with fear and trembling, as well as with the joy and gladness to the table of the

Lord, and eat that meal in communion with our Savior. And I think the elders of churches, ministers of the

Church, need to be really thinking about how can we reinvigorate our people to appreciate what

Christ has done for us and saving us. You know, churches used to have services that were preparing the people to take communion, and I know in some

Reformed circles they still do that. I think it's a wonderful, wonderful practice to just take one service or several services just to prepare people to come before the

Lord's table so that they can come with the right attitude and the right appreciation for what Christ has done for them.

Well, we are going to our midway break right now, and I just forwarded you an email,

Dr. York, from someone that you may know. He has been a guest on this program at least twice, my new friend

Mitch Tepper, who is the new missionary for a Christian witness to Israel.

He is a graduate of Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Yes, I know

Mitch very well. Yeah, and he sent in a question, and I'm going to read it to you now, and then you can answer it when we return, and you can also look over the question during the break because of the fact that it's an elongated break, because of the fact that Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a long break because they localize

Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida with their own commercials and public service announcements. But Mitch Tepper, who is, as I said, the missionary for a

Christian witness to Israel's North American Division, he says, without mentioning names, I have heard many feel -good messages, self -help messages, messages even as Lloyd -Jones was quoted in your book as messages about the gospel.

I think he wanted to emphasize about the gospel. But I have heard very few pastors preach gospel messages on a weekly basis.

I appreciate you taught us well in homiletics classes. Well, obviously, he's revealed he knows you.

That we must preach the gospel to our congregations every week. So many preachers

I know do not see seeker -friendly churches as being a bad thing. I learned from you that preaching should cut to the quick with that being said, is the politically correct seeker -friendly preaching hurting the true growth and revival of the church?

So we'll have you answer that when we come back. And thank you very much, Mitch. And if anybody else would like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Don't go away. We'll be back after this elongated break with our guest Dr. Barry J.

York and our subject at hand hitting the marks. Don't go away. Tired of box store

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Well, there's good news. Wedding River Baptist Church exists to provide believers with a meaningful and reverent worship experience featuring the systematic exposition of God's word.

And this loving congregation looks forward to meeting you. Call them at 631 -929 -3512 for service times 631 -929 -3512 or check out their website at wrbc .us.

That's wrbc .us. I'm James White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

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Hello, my name is James Renahan and I'm the president of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

The word of God says, if a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing.

Do you have the desire to serve Jesus Christ in pastoral ministry? Twenty years ago, the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary, California was born. For those two decades, these institutions worked together to train men for ministry in Reformed Baptist churches.

It has been a wonderful partnership. Now we have advanced our school into an independent seminary offering a full program of courses leading to the degree.

This is IRBS Theological Seminary. We believe that the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired and inerrant word of God.

That Jesus Christ is God in the flesh who came to save sinners by his life, death, and resurrection. And that the task of the church is to honor and serve the triune

God in all things. IRBS Theological Seminary is dedicated by God's grace to preparing godly ministers who will be committed to these doctrines.

Do you sense a call to serve Jesus Christ in his church as a pastor? Why not consider

IRBS Theological Seminary? You'll find more information at irbsseminary .org.

That's irbsseminary .org, two S's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon.

God bless you. One sure way all

Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers. I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use

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Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. James White here, co -founder of Alpha Omega Ministries and occasional guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I'm so delighted that my friend Chris Arnson will be heading down to Atlanta for the next G3 conference from January 17th to the 19th, 2019, where I'll be joining a very impressive lineup of speakers on the theme,

A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Speakers include John Piper, Steve Lawson, Vodie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Phil Johnson, Josh Bice, yours truly, and many more.

I hope you all join Chris and me for this phenomenal event. For more details, go to G3conference .com.

That's G3conference .com. My name is

Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in Midtown Manhattan.

You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc .nyc.

They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

New Covenant Church, NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

.nyc. Have a great day. Consider the evidence for the

Bible. Ravi Zacharias wrote the foreword. Dan also has a master's degree in theology.

Dan handles serious injury and medical malpractice cases in all 50 states. He represents many

Christians in serious injury matters all over the country. Dan is an exceptional trial lawyer.

He wrote the test for the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and currently his firm has over 100 cases that have settled for $1 million or more, and in approximately 10 different states.

In Illinois, his lawyers had the fourth largest settlement in the state's history. In New York, his case involving a paralyzed police officer made the front page of the

Law Journal. If you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state,

I recommend that you call Dan. Consultations are free. There is no fee unless you win.

Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878. 1 -800 -669 -4878.

Or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. 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. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered,

Christ -exalting books for all ages. We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

That's solid -ground -books .com and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnson on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

I would like to introduce you to my good friends, Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Todd and Patty specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.

Since 1987, the family -owned and operated book service has sought to bring you the best available

Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices. Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available because, frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

Their website is CVBBS .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patty work in service to you, the church, and to Christ.

That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com. That's CVBBS .com.

Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And you can also call

CVBBS .com at toll -free number 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

And remember that you can only call that phone line, or at least you can only call it and have somebody answer it,

Monday through Friday from 10 a .m. Eastern time to 4 30 p .m. Eastern time.

And if you mention Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and you purchase a minimum of $50 worth of merchandise, you will receive absolutely free of charge the book

Always Reforming by David Engelsma. And also CVBBS .com

is having their Christmas sale where they are taking 10 % off everything in their inventory.

So that's CVBBS .com, CVBBS .com. And I just have a few special announcements to make about special events coming up that I hope that everybody who is capable of traveling to these events will take advantage of.

And I hope to see you there because I will be personally there at all of these events manning an Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth.

First of all, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is having their annual, actually we've increased it to at least a bi -annual event, but we're having our

Winter Pastors Luncheon coming up on Thursday, January 3rd from 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. My guest speaker once again is

Dr. Tony Costa who is Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

He is quite a brilliant man of God and quite a powerful speaker and preacher.

And this is an open invitation to all men in leadership, whether you are a pastor, an elder, a deacon, or a leader in a parachurch organization.

You are welcome to attend and we are only opening this invitation, as I said, to men who are in ministry leadership.

And it is absolutely free of charge. Nothing is for sale there. In fact, every man that attends will be leaving with one and perhaps even two heavy sacks of brand new books every year.

The majority of Christian publishers, of major Christian publishers in the

United States and the United Kingdom, each donate 100 copies of a book that I select, of a title

I select from each of those publishers, so that every man who attends can get that book.

And Crown and Covenant Publications has been one of those faithful publishers who year after year has been generous to all who attend the

Iron Trip and Zion Pastors Luncheon. And you'll also eat for free. There is no gimmick.

There is no ulterior motive. It's just intended to bless all those who attend.

And this annual or biannual Pastors Luncheon started with my late wife

Julie having a dream. I don't mean literally a dream, but she requested that since I have so many pastors who are friends, that we have an annual luncheon near Christmas time to bless these men.

And it grew so huge that I had to get corporate sponsors involved after a number of years.

So this will be once again an honor of my late wife Julie, whose vision this

Pastors Luncheon was. And I'm thankful that she knew that it came to fruition for quite a number of years while she was still with us.

And if you have interest in attending my Pastors Luncheon, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Also, immediately following that, from Friday January 4th through Sunday January 6th,

Dr. Tony Costa, who I just mentioned from Toronto Baptist Seminary, he will be preaching at a three -day conference that I have organized at the

Enola First Church of God in Enola, Pennsylvania. This is also a free conference, and Dr.

Costa will be speaking on the most dangerous threats to the Christian church in North America in the 21st century.

If you would like to attend this event at the Enola First Church of God, you can call the

Enola First Church of God at 717 -732 -4253, 717 -732 -4253.

And you can also go to enolacog .com. That's E -N -O -L -A -C -O -G, which stands for churchofgod .com.

enolacog .com. Or you could also email me, chrisarnson at chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

And I want to thank my dear friend Pastor George Jensen of the Enola First Church of God for cooperating with me on this event.

Then, coming up later on in January, I am returning once again to the

G3 Conference in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. The G3 Conference stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory, and the theme this

January is The Mission of God, a Biblical Understanding of Missions. And as always, they have an enormous, impressive lineup of speakers that I hope that you will take advantage of and come to hear speak.

These speakers include Votie Baucom, Stephen Lawson, James R.

White, John Piper, Mark Dever, Stephen J. Nichols, Conrad Mbewe, who is the pastor of Cobatta Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, Phil Johnson of John MacArthur's Grace to You Ministries.

We have many more on this lineup, a list too long to mention.

And the conference will be held from Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th.

There is an exclusively Spanish -speaking edition on Wednesday, January 16th as well, if you want to tell your

Spanish -speaking and bilingual friends about that. For more details, go to g3conference .com,

g3conference .com, and I would strongly urge you to register also for an exhibitor's booth, just like I will be manning there,

God willing, because they are expecting 4 ,000 to 5 ,000 people there. So if you have a business, a professional practice, a parachurch organization, a church, or a special event that you want to promote to a crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people, register for your exhibitor's booth at g3conference .com,

g3conference .com. Then finally, later on in that same month,

January from the 24th through the 26th, I will be, for the very first time, in the state of Mississippi.

I've never been in Mississippi before. And I'll be manning a booth for Iron Trip and Zion Radio at the

Deep South Founders Conference at the Bethlehem Baptist Church of Laurel, Mississippi. The theme this

January at the Deep South Founders Conference is sanctification, and the speakers include

Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, Bobby Crenshaw, and the keynote speaker again is

Dr. Conrad Mbewe of Kabwata Baptist Church in Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and Chancellor of African Christian University.

So delighted that I have those two opportunities to hear my dear friend Conrad Mbewe preach, my friend that I've known since 1995, and he is,

I think, the most powerful preacher alive on the planet Earth. For more details on the Deep South Founders Conference, go to DeepSouthFounders .com,

DeepSouthFounders .com. Last but not least, if you love Iron Trip and Zion Radio, you don't want it to disappear, you benefit greatly from the guests and topics that we have featured on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, often guests and topics that are never heard anywhere else, please go to IronTripandZionRadio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card, and you can also mail in a check the old -fashioned way to the address that you will see appearing on the screen when you click support at IronTripandZionRadio .com.

As I try to remember to warn you every day, never siphon money away from your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church where you are a member, in order to give to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Never do that. Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Those two things are commands of God.

Supporting my radio show, obviously, is not a command of God. But if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, and you love the show, and you don't want it to disappear, please consider going to IronTripandZionRadio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now, and donate as heavily as you can and as frequently as you can if you love the show.

If you want to advertise with us, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line, because we could surely use your advertising dollars.

And if you do not have a church home, I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world, so please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put in the subject line, I need a church home or something similar. I've already helped a number of Iron Trip and Zion Radio listeners find good, solid, biblically faithful church homes near them in all parts of the world in the

United States. So please don't hesitate to send me an email. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to our guest today,

Dr. Barry J. York on hitting the marks, restoring the essential identity of the church.

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

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

And as you have in front of you, Dr. York, we had our listener, our friend

Mitch Tepper, who has written in a question and Mitch's question again is, and I have to enlarge it again because he has written in a microscopic font that my 56 -year -old eyes have difficulty reading.

And while I'm enlarging this font, our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

And here is the question again. Without mentioning names, I have heard many feel -good messages, self -help messages, messages even as Dr.

Lloyd -Jones was quoted in your book as messages about the gospel, but I have heard very few pastors preach gospel messages on a weekly basis.

I appreciate you taught us well in homiletics classes that we must preach the gospel to our congregations every week.

So many preachers I know do not see seeker -friendly churches as being a bad thing.

I learned from you that preaching should cut to the quick. With that being said, is the politically correct seeker -friendly preaching hurting the true church growth and revival of the church?

Well, I've had some time to think about it and the basic answer to that is yes. Yes, the politically correct seeker -friendly preaching hurts the true growth and revival of the church.

I think one of the places where this is expressed most clearly in our modern era is the, and I'm sure your listeners,

Chris, would be familiar with the document produced by the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals called the Cambridge Declaration.

Yes. And in that declaration, it starts off talking about how evangelical churches today are increasingly dominated by the spirit of this age rather than the spirit of Christ.

They go on to just highlight how marketing strategies, therapeutic technique, the beat, as they say, the beat of the entertainment world has far more to do with what the church wants and is what it's offering than does

God's Word. And they really call the church back to proclaiming the law of God as the only measure of true righteousness and the gospel as the only means of saving grace.

And so we've got to be very careful. You know, we want people, obviously, we want people to come to the church and we,

Reformed churches should welcome all who enter into their doors, but we can welcome people to come into church, come into the worship of God without catering to their flesh.

We have to remember what the church is assembling for. You mentioned earlier that the church is the ekklesia, it's the called out ones.

Worship, when we gather together, we're gathering together as the very temple of God. The Holy Spirit of God is residing in the church at that moment of worship.

And so we're really, in a sense, being called out of the world to come together for that time that we're setting apart to worship

God through Jesus Christ as the true temple of God. And instead of our strategy as a church trying to bring the world into the church, all that's going to give you is a worldly church.

What we should be doing, if you want a strategy, it's God's plan, it's God's way, is that we're to come and worship

Him in holiness and in truth and be strengthened and then sent out into the world where we should be reaching the world as the salt and light of the kingdom of God.

So I think at the heart of Mitch's question is, yeah, we should be preaching the gospel because God's people need the gospel every week.

If someone who's an unbeliever comes to church, they should always be able to hear the gospel. By the gospel, we don't mean just a little package, three -minute gospel presentation, but we're talking about revealing who

Jesus Christ is and how He can meet the very needs of any human soul.

And as we preach that gospel faithfully, if unbelievers come in, we can pray that they're converted.

But ultimately, the church is gathered together, particularly on Sunday morning worship services, the Lord's Day worship services, so that they can come in and be sanctified and strengthened and sent back out to serve

God in this world. And Mitch added in a follow -up email,

I also believe it dilutes the gospel even though many of my pastor friends think not.

I'm assuming he means the seeker -sensitive approach dilutes the gospel. Yeah, because if you're trying to appeal to, you know, quote the seekers, we know men really don't seek

God. That's what the scriptures say. Our sin is so deep that men really don't seek God.

But what churches try to do is cater to the flesh so that people will come in and then they can give them what they think is the gospel.

But to get them to come in that way, I heard Robert Godfrey once explain it this way, what you win them with is what you will win them to.

Amen. So if you're trying to win them with entertainment and techniques and comfort, that's why they're there.

And you've won them to those things. But if you want to win them to Christ, you've got to uphold Jesus Christ faithfully and purely.

And then if he's working, if the Spirit of God's working in the person's heart, he will.

If Christ, as Jesus says, if the Son of Man be lifted up, I will draw men to myself.

Amen. And I've also heard it said that you cannot lure sheep into the house of God with goat food.

Yes, yes. And our friend Mitch Tippers says, by the way, I love the book.

In fact, I'm studying it in Sunday school class starting after the new year.

And he says, also miss you, Barry and Chris. Well, miss you too, brother. And looking forward to having you come back on the program.

One thing that you said, in fact, that Mitch quoted you as saying from your book, is that Christians should hear the gospel every week.

Now, it's interesting, amazingly. And of course, I know that you are Presbyterian, and you're obviously not in this certain camp of Presbyterianism, judging by what you said.

But I have known Presbyterians who will say things like, I don't need to preach the gospel to covenant children, or that preaching the gospel in the confines of the gathered body is not the essential thing.

It's instructing the saints and so on. Because of the, perhaps even a hyper -covenantal view of the covenant.

How do you respond to people who say things like that? Well, anytime you begin to instruct without a gospel basis, then you're going to be going over into legalism, and really starting to burden the people of God.

Every time that Paul, in his epistles, is encouraging the church of holiness, he's always doing that based upon the preaching of the gospel.

So, you know, as Murray taught us, the indicative must precede the imperative.

If we've got to lay down the gospel to God's people, and based on that, then they should respond in faith and holiness to the commands that they're hearing.

I was just looking at Ephesians chapter 5, the first couple of verses there today, and the

Apostle Paul's telling the church to walk in love. Well, stated in the wrong way, you could even take a command like walk in love, and burden people with it.

But one of the ways, but what Paul does there is he says, walk in love, just as you see

Christ walked in love and gave himself up for us. So we've got to keep our eyes constantly on Christ.

So we need to be preaching as Christ. And as we preach Christ, that will give us the heart, the motivation, the persuasion that sinful hearts need in order to gladly and voluntarily then, because of the grace of God, obey him.

Amen. In fact, another thing about the need to regularly, weekly preach the gospel to even

Christians in attendance is that we don't know the hearts of men, and there may be false believers in our midst.

That's right. That's right. Yeah, we never know who's there. You know, for a while,

I remember there was a season in my church planting where we just weren't seeing a lot of visitors.

It wasn't that we weren't trying, but there were just not a lot of visitors there. And I remember one day when a few people came in that I did not know, and all of a sudden as I'm up there leading worship,

I started really thinking, why was the gospel in my message? Is it clear in it?

And it convicted me, not just at that moment, but that my preaching always has to have the gospel clear in it, or I'm really not being a faithful minister of the word.

Amen. Well, we're going to our final break right now. It's briefer than the last one. If you'd like to send in a question, we do have a couple of people still waiting, and we hope that you're waiting patiently.

But if you'd like to join us, do so now or forever hold your peace, because we're rapidly running out of time. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence.

If you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous, if your question involves a personal and private matter, don't go away.

God willing, we will be right back with Dr. Barry J. York after this final station break today.

God bless you. And we hope to hear from you with your questions. Gotta tell you, for my money,

Chris Arnzen's radio program is just the best. Iron.

Criticizing. Iron. I think that's what it's called. This is Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and TV with Phil Johnson of Grace to You, inviting everybody to come to the

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We are now in our last 20 minutes of the interview today with Dr. Barry J. York. Of Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

We are discussing hitting the marks, restoring the essential identity of the church. If you want to ask a question, please do so quickly as we are rapidly running out of time.

chrisorensen at gmail .com, chrisorensen at gmail .com. We have an anonymous listener who says,

I have been disappointed in the church where I am a member because of the fact that they only have the

Lord's Supper once a month. I think it should be more frequently practiced, in fact, every week.

The excuse that is often given has something to do with what you said earlier.

They will claim that to have it frequently or weekly makes it lose its specialness.

I don't buy that argument because if we were truly going to carry that argument through logically, we would only go to church once a month and only have once a month worship services.

How do you respond to this? Well, frequency of communion is a well -debated subject in the church.

When I reflect on it, Jesus did tell us,

He didn't mention frequency when He gave the command regarding it. He said, as often as you do this, do this in remembrance of me.

He could have been more specific, but He chose not to be. I tend to the position that this is where there is some freedom in the church.

I know I have brothers who believe that the scriptures teach weekly communion.

I don't quite see that in scripture, but I don't think that that's wrong to practice weekly communion.

If the Lord leads the local session to do so, I think that's what's most beneficial for the congregation that's gathered there.

If I was in a setting where I wasn't happy with the frequency of communion, I would go to prayer and ask the

Lord to help me to see and understand why the leadership has chosen the position they have.

I would study it some more. I would make sure I was talking with the elders rather than complaining against them and see if the

Lord doesn't work in hearts to bring a greater consensus. I definitely don't think we should be practicing it infrequently where it really doesn't have any...

I think you could devalue it by infrequency probably much more than you can devalue it by a more frequent practice of it.

Right. And even though you said that it is best not to complain about your elders,

I guess that would all depend upon the manner with which you are disagreeing. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with approaching your elders and with a spirit of humility and sharing your grievances with them, recognizing that they are ordained over the members of the congregation.

And of course, they shouldn't be just gossiping or stabbing their elders in the back in nasty conversation with others.

That would be sin. But there's nothing wrong with bringing these things to the elders, right? Oh, yes.

Yeah, that's where it should go. So the heart should be to come to the elders and have loving discussions, expressing your desire for why you want to have it more frequently, and also being sure that you're listening to why they've chosen to do what they've done, and then praying and seeing how the

Lord would lead in that situation. And of course, I'm assuming you didn't find fault with our listener because he did remain anonymous.

Yes, it seems that that's what he's trying to do or she's trying to do in raising the question this way.

Well, Anonymous, if you give me obviously off the air and in private your full name and your mailing address, you have also won a free copy of the book

Hitting the Marks by Dr. Barry J. York, Restoring the Essential Identity of the

Church. And cvbbs .com will ship that out to you. And once again, we thank our dear friends at Crown and Covenant Publications for their generosity in providing copies of this book.

Well, let's move on to one of the least popular topics within discussions on the church, especially since it is a main element in restoring the essential identity of the church.

It's church discipline, which is something that I have heard many people whose opinions

I respect have said that it is vanishing and in many areas has vanished completely from the practice of even churches that claim to believe in biblical inerrancy and are even conservative in many ways.

There is such a fear of losing people, a fear of numerically shrinking, that people do not practice church discipline.

But this is not loving to do that. And by the way, Dr. York, you may not be aware of this, but I owe my life,

I believe, to church discipline. I, before I was a Christian, was a very serious drunk, drunkard.

And after 18 years of sobriety, I fell back into that sinful practice of over -imbibing, to put it mildly, drinking extremely heavily to a very life -threatening level.

And if it were not for gracious and loving undershepherds in the congregation where I was a member, my pastors, who enacted church discipline upon me,

I believe I might not be sitting here with a beating heart and oxygen in my lungs.

So tell us about church discipline, what exactly it is, and why Christians should not be so terrified of it that they flee from association with the local body of Christ.

Church discipline, often when we just hear that phrase, our minds immediately run to things like excommunication, being removed from the church.

And certainly that's a part of church discipline, but it's really not the whole package. When the

Reformers were looking at what the true church is, Rome identified the true church using the qualities of Nicene Creed, oneness, holiness, apostolicity, catholicity, and they were tracing all of those things to the

Pope. When the Reformers looked at what marks the church, no, it's those who are following not the

Pope, but Jesus Christ as their head. Well, to follow Christ, it takes a life of discipline.

And so they very carefully showed how the life of true believers should be marked by a true holiness seen in a disciplined lifestyle.

And when they used the word disciplined, then it had more, not just the corrective aspect to it, but also the formative side of discipline.

In other words, if the word of God is a mark of the church, and the people of God respond to that word of God, then that should be seen in their lifestyles.

And so discipline became one of the real marks of who God's people are.

So when we talk about church discipline, we're talking about a commitment by that body to live, not only to just listen to the word of God, but to obey the word of God and live our lives in conformity to it.

And the way that gets worked out in the life of a local congregation is God has put shepherds over that church, or elders, and the people who are coming into the church are to be submitting to that leadership that God has ordained and installed over that congregation.

And if a believer is faithful to that, he's going to be living a faithful lifestyle that is in conformity to how the elders are shepherding and leading the congregation with God's word.

And so he will be under church discipline in the sense that he's following Jesus Christ in that local congregation.

Now if a believer begins to stray, if he begins to fall away into sin, then the church isn't to just watch him go on his own way, but because we are the body of Christ and we're bound together in fellowship and holiness, the church is to seek that person out and try to seek to restore them and return them away, turn them away from their sin and back to following Christ.

And there's, this is taught throughout the scriptures, that perhaps the preeminent passage on this, and again when

I spend a couple chapters in the book treating is Matthew chapter 18, where Jesus lays out very clearly for us the steps that we should take in restoring sinners who are straying.

Amen. We have another anonymous listener who says, when we speak of the true church, how do you deal with differences amongst brothers in Christ that, although would not separate them from the body of Christ, are still serious?

For instance, the host of this show, Chris Arnzen is a Reformed Baptist, his guest is a

Reformed Presbyterian, and they do disagree on issues like baptism. Does that make one a member of a false church and one a true church, etc.?

How do we deal with these kinds of issues when trying to discuss the true church? That's a great question.

Al Mohler has a way of addressing this, where he talks about primary, secondary, tertiary issues.

And for our listeners who don't know Al Mohler, he is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, so he is a

Calvinistic Baptist. That's right. That's right. And he talks about how, for instance,

Baptists and Presbyterians like you and I, Chris, we're in agreement about the central things of the

Gospel, and the marks of the Church are central to what the

Church really is, and we would agree in essence that these are the marks that God has given us, although we might differ somewhat in our practices of them.

For instance, often the mode of baptism, whether you're sprinkled or you're immersed, can be a difference between certain believers, but we don't believe that those are primary.

We would see those as more secondary or tertiary. Probably that one's secondary to our fellowship with one another.

So though we wouldn't, for instance, it would be difficult to be gathered together in the denomination where you had both those who believe in infant baptism versus those who believe in only believers' baptism, that doesn't mean that we can't still have a great deal of fellowship and consider one another as fellow brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.

It would only be something that's heretical or wrong teaching about Christ that would separate someone from another person with respect to—we're really talking about the

Gospel at that point, so that's when you have to separate and say, well, that person's not a believer if they're not even getting the message of the

Gospel correct. Right, amen. And there is at least one denomination

I know of that does have both paedo -baptists and credo -baptists in leadership.

That's the Free Presbyterian Church of North America, Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, the mother church, if you will, in Northern Ireland.

They have both men who are credo -baptists or believer -only baptists in leadership and paedo -baptists.

And if somebody in the congregation, for instance, wants to baptize their baby, if they are convicted that that is a biblically faithful practice, the baptistic pastor would be required to call in one of his colleagues that believes in infant baptism to perform the sacrament.

But that is an interesting congregation that seems to manage with both. Well, I'd like you now to at least have three minutes where you can summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today in regarding to hitting the marks.

Well, when Jesus asked his disciples, who do people say that I am, and they were given a variety of answers to that survey, he turns to them and he says, well, who do you say that I am?

Peter confesses that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And if you recall, in Matthew 16,

Jesus praises God that the Lord had revealed to Peter who

Jesus truly was. And then he gives to Peter and the apostles, he says,

I'm going to give you the keys of the kingdom of God. And what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and what you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.

So in this moment where the disciples are identifying who

Jesus is, he says, there, my father is at work, and I'm going to give you the keys of the kingdom of God.

And these keys that he gave the church are what we know as the marks.

He is entrusted to the church, the proclamation of his gospel, the representation of that visibly through the sacraments, and the ability to bind or to loose, to close the door of the church to those who remain unrepentant and will not turn from their sins and believe in the gospel, or those who have been in the church but then stray so severely and won't listen to the church's overtures that the church has to put them outside the church, the doors remain closed.

But he's also given the church the wonderful privilege of opening wide the doors to those who repent of their sins and put their faith in Christ and seek to follow him.

So that's an incredible entrustment of privilege and responsibility to the church are these keys of the kingdom.

And we should know how to handle those keys. We should know how to take care of them. We should know how to use them.

And that's really why I wrote the book is so that the church would be further educated and instructed on how to use those kingdoms and really restore the central identity of who the church is in relationship to Jesus Christ.

Amen. We have time for one more listener, Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says,

How do we maintain harmony with brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree on how to interpret the regulative principle?

Can a person such as yourself who believes in exclusive psalmody and a cappella worship actually worship with a congregation that uses hymns and also musical instruments?

How do we settle these kinds of issues? I don't know if I can answer that in a couple of minutes.

Well, let me just put it this way. I teach worship at our

PTS and I try to instruct the students to hold our positions graciously toward others.

You get into a lot of trouble when you begin to get proud about a particular distinctive. So yes,

I represent a branch of the church that loves to sing God's word that are found in the psalms, and we do that without musical accompaniments, and that's because of our biblical convictions regarding that.

However, I recognize that many of my brothers and sisters in the Lord don't see that the same way, and so if I'm in one of their assemblies,

I'm there as their guest, and I want to do whatever I can to show the peace and love of Christ while I'm there with them.

So when I'm worshiping with them, I engage as fully as my heart and my conscience will allow me to do so, and I guess that's how

I would answer that question. Well, I want to thank you so much, Dr. York, for being my guest today. I really thoroughly enjoyed it.

I look forward to your frequent return as a guest to Iron Trip and Zion Radio if you also share that opinion of your experience.

Well, I'd be glad to come back sometime, Chris. Great. Well, I very much would enjoy that, and I want to let our listeners know,

I want to remind our listeners that if you want to learn more about the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you can go to rpts .edu,

rp for Reformed Presbyterian, ts for Theological Seminary, dot edu, and if you want to learn more about Crown and Covenant publications, you can go to crownandcovenant .com,

crownandcovenant .com, and of course all of Crown and Covenant's titles are available at cvbbs .com,

cvbbs .com, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who wrote in questions, and I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater