Adult Sunday Scholl - Going Public Part 1 (Chapter 1)

Gracious Father in heaven, we thank you, Lord, again, for a day of life, for breath in our lungs, for the capacity to stand here before you in your presence and midst of your congregation.

We pray, Father, that you would grant us now peace and tranquility as we endeavor to lay aside earthly cares and earthly sorrows and,

Father, focus on the teaching of that word and later the preaching of that word. We pray, Father, that you would edify your church, edify your people, and grant us guidance in,

Lord, edification by means of your Spirit. And we pray, God, that you would lead us into all truth on this important and serious topic.

And we pray that it would be and result more to the glory of your name. In Jesus' name we do pray, amen.

All right. You can be seated. I don't have a song for you. So we're going to be starting chapter one of this book called

Going Public, and I want to kind of set the stage because the topic, the chapter is setting the stage.

Like why are we studying this? Like why do we as elders decide, hey, there should be something that we invest time and attention to?

What are some of your thoughts? Why do you think this is an important subject to consider as a church?

That's a great point. You know, individualism is rampant. Now, I'm a rugged individualist when it comes to, you know, system of government and self -reliance and my views on, you know, government, but when it comes to church government,

I'm not so much an individualist. I'm more of a communist when it comes to church membership.

And so I believe much more in a community -based approach or biblical community -based approach to church membership, not just a rugged individualism that we see today so prevalent in evangelicalism.

Mario? Say again? That's right.

That's right. That's right. Emmanuel, you had your hand up earlier? So it has to deal with the nature of membership, right?

Yeah. Pastor? That's right.

That's right. That's right. Hmm. Dale? So you're just salivating for this, huh?

You're just ready. Yes. Well, I mean, that's certainly a scriptural support that Pato Baptist would use.

And so, you know, what's interesting is that this book is not so much a debate between Credo and Pato Baptist.

It's more so the nature of membership. And so just to quickly answer that, you know, early in church history, you kind of see the switch towards sprinkling, and then, of course, to, you know, infant baptism pretty early in church history.

And it was born out of a couple of things. You had the didache, a document that was used, certainly amongst early

Christians, that kind of said, here's how you can baptize, okay? Ideally, perfectly, if you're baptized, you're baptized by full immersion in water, in running water, living water.

If that doesn't work, then you can do it in still, you can do it in basically bath water. If you don't have enough water, then you can, you know, dunk someone's head.

If not, you can sprinkle their head. And so you can see how the kind of practical pragmaticism started to take over.

And so, you know, what Baptists did is that they wanted just to return to the simple biblical formula of baptism, and do what the

Scripture says, and that is to baptize people upon profession of their faith in Jesus, which is the, you know, the

Acts formula that we see. But this isn't so much a topic on pedo versus credo.

This is really a discussion on the nature of church membership. It really comes down to church polity.

That is not a really fun subject, right? So most people don't really care, especially in modern evangelicalism.

Evangelicalism is a mess today. And I'm telling you, as my last church background, I came from a non -denominational church, and boy, would this book have been so helpful.

And so one of the reasons I'm excited to delve into this book is because I think that this subject matters immensely.

Partly was because some of the things that are going to be discussed here is what led to my last church actually there being a church split, was because when

I stepped into that church in 2018, it had basically been around, it was basically a church plant, it had been around for maybe four years prior to me.

And it was a pretty healthy church in some regards, but also not healthy. And the not healthy aspects was, you know, when

I came in, I was given a list of names of all the people who, and it was kind of broken into three sections, okay?

I had the members, people who were members. So they'd sign a covenant. People who were regular attenders, and then people who were called floaters, okay?

So we had three categories, and I'm trying to figure, okay, well, why aren't these people members?

Like, how long have they been coming here? Oh, they've been here since the beginning. Oh, he actually serves on the worship team.

And I'm like, why isn't he a member? Oh, he refuses to be a member anywhere, and so if we're really staunch about it, then he'll just leave, and we lose our guitar player for the church.

And I said, well, this doesn't make any sense. And then I saw, okay, we have this member here.

Okay, great. You know, these members, you know, how long have they been members? Oh, they've been members for about two years. Oh, great.

You know, were they baptized? No. Were they baptized anywhere? No. So why are they members?

Oh, because, you know, they came to membership class, and they signed the paper, and they're members. And I said, oh, and I was like, this is a mess.

It is an absolute mess. And in the two years that I was at that church, the leadership told me basically not to even push membership, because it was too pushy.

And they had the impression very quickly that I was a very pushy guy, which I don't think

I am, but they got the impression I was a very pushy guy, and they were afraid that if I pushed it too hard, people would leave.

And the opposite began to happen. We became so loose with church membership that people started to leave.

You know why? Because they weren't committed. They weren't committed. And so to them, it was just, okay, this works for me now, and then when it doesn't work for me, then

I'll just leave. You know, and they were not committed to the church. And so people would just leave, and they would treat the church, you know, like a buffet table.

They like this. They like that. They find something better elsewhere, so they go. There was no commitment to the local church.

And so those things really began to divide the church, and I tried in my last two years to reemphasize, repush the concept of membership.

And even then, just kept running into walls with the church leadership there, where they really didn't see, they would say, oh, this is divisive.

This is not a gospel issue. All these pretexts in order not to get, you know, their way.

And it eventually led to a church split, where people felt like, okay, no, there is a difference in polity.

There's a difference in governments that's so important, that's so big, it requires us to go our separate ways.

And actually, I agree with the sentiment of those who split because, yeah, the church structure and environment just wasn't biblical, and it wasn't conducive to church life and polity.

Yeah. Just basically means, like, church government. Yeah, church structure, church government.

Yeah. Say again? Yeah, so like, we have, every church has a constitution.

You know, every legal body in the United States has to have some type of legal structure.

And so, you know, the church I came from is what's called an elder -ruled church.

So, kind of similar to Presbyterians in some regard. The word Presbyterian coming from the

Greek presbyter, which means elder or overseer. And so, that's their distinctive mark is their church polity, is their church structure, which is why they're

Presbyterians. We're Baptists, and Baptists are historically congregationalists in our church polity, in our church structure.

And so, yeah, it just means, you know, the church structure, church politics.

So, any other thoughts or questions before we go into the material of the first chapter? Yes, Pastor?

Right. Exactly. Exactly. And you'll see this a lot, too. And again, evangelicalism, you know, you'll hear this term used a lot, seeker -sensitive.

And even some solid evangelical churches who would not consider themselves seeker -sensitive.

Seeker -sensitive is kind of a derogatory term on our end, right? We would say, oh, that's, they're seeker -sensitive. Meaning that they are too, they make the gospel and they make church life too palatable beyond the scope that Scripture allows.

So, they tear down the barriers. And so, basically, it's easy entry. And a lot of churches are like this, especially megachurches, right, where you can attend a megachurch, you know, for years and people will not even know you exist because it's so easy to slip in, slip out, and, you know, you don't have really, you know, you're attending a service, you're not part of a church, right?

And that's so common today. You know, people are watching services and even talk to people today, you know, they'll say, oh,

I go to church every Sunday. I say, great, where do you go to church? My couch. I watch my favorite preacher on YouTube every

Sunday, live stream. I say, that's not church. You know, that's fine if you're sick, that's fine if you have issues for a season, but that's not church life.

So, yeah, we need to move away from that. I think this book is going to help us to get a pretty solid understanding of the implications of baptism, the implications of church membership, church life, and I think it's going to help us reinforce kind of the things that we're already doing.

We are a church that is, in the eyes of the seeker -sensitive folks, divisive, and we're divisive because we hold firm to some pretty basic biblical principles on baptism and on church polity, and particularly the

Lord's Table. I've had many, I've had at least a few instances so far where, after service, people would say, loved the service, loved the message, but I've got a problem.

I don't like the way you guys do communion because I felt excluded. I didn't feel like I could, you know, freely partake.

And I said, well, that's okay. There's a reason for that, right? And trying to explain to them graciously and lovingly, you know, ours is not, you know, we don't close the table or we don't have a closed communion table because we want to be, you know, have this cool exclusive club.

We do it to safeguard integrity of the Lord's Table, and we do it to safeguard the integrity of church polity, right?

Emmanuel? Yes. Yes.

They didn't like the fact that we have what's a semi -closed communion, right? And we'll have people who, you know, they'll come for the message and then they'll just leave right before, you know, communion because they feel a certain way about it.

And so, I don't think that's a healthy view of looking at communion.

And part of this going public book, which is, you know, why baptism is required for church membership, has a lot to do with the communion table.

And they're interlocked or interconnected. Why? Because these are both ordinances that the

Lord gave the church, and there's a connection between the two that we're going to uncover over the next several weeks.

Yes. I think, yeah, we would be more of a closed communion.

It's not closed, but close communion. And so, we'll actually go into a little bit in that first chapter as it kind of gives us that distinguishing markers for those.

And so, let's go into the first chapter, chapter 1. I think, again, we're just setting the stage for it.

And one of the things that he brings up early in the book is a lot of people would say, well, this is not a gospel issue.

So, why even talk about this? If it's not a gospel issue, then it's just divisive.

What say you to that? Go ahead,

Pastor. What I think people probably mean by that when they say it's not a gospel issue is they're saying it's not a salvific issue.

Right? So, they're saying, well, our eternal salvation doesn't hinge on whether you have the right polypsy or the right baptism.

And so, as a result of that, we should just leave it alone. We should just shelve it and focus on more important things.

That's typically the evangelical response to some of these things. Pastor? That's a great quote.

That's right. That's right. That's right.

Well, that's a great point. That's a good point. Anyone else? Dale, did you have something?

Dale? I think I saw his hand up earlier. Are you talking about eschatology?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people get more excited about, certainly, eschatological debates.

And I think those are people, you know, people get, when it comes to emotional discussions of eschatology, people get far more invested in it versus something that's kind of boring like church polity.

But I would say that this has far more importance than eschatology.

And so even though eschatology might be more fun, this is far more important, this discussion on church polity and baptism and church membership, because it has far more implications.

Whether Jesus comes back tomorrow in a thousand years, you know, this doctrine on church membership has actually more implications for us today.

And so I think it's really important for us to examine that. So a lot of folks will say, hey, you know what, just walk away from this conversation.

Just, you know, it's not the gospel. You know, it's not at stake. You know, it's not the trinity. You know, it's not essential to salvation.

So why even bother having this conversation? And again, I think we've all laid out some pretty good reasons why that shouldn't be the mindset that we have as we approach this subject, that this is an important subject and it does merit our studying in close consideration.

What's interesting is that this is a one -issue book. You know, he's not going to go into the differences between as much credo -pedo -baptism.

He's not going to debate about much of other things other than this issue of baptism and church membership.

And in particular, it's connection and consequences for the

Lord's table. And so let's… I want to… I think I want to define some terms here.

And we start seeing some of those terms and conditions in about page 13. And we have these terminologies that are used.

Open and closed communion. What is an open communion? What is an open communion?

Yeah, so typically in a church setting, in our church in Wisconsin, not because I wanted to, but because it was the church polity, you know, we had what's called open communion.

So I would say, you know, if you've repented of your sins, you believe in Christ, you know, you're welcome to partake of this table, you know.

And so everyone would partake now. And we also didn't have weekly communions. We had very irregular communion, you know, where there was no set calendar schedule.

You know, a lot of evangelical churches probably do it on the first Sunday of the month, sometimes the last

Sunday of the month. You know, we would do something like that or kind of whenever someone would remind us we would, you know, break out the crackers and the grape juice.

But there wasn't a seriousness to the table. And I didn't like that.

And part of it, again, was this laid back mentality. You know, I lived in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.

You probably never heard of that place. But Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin is kind of a sleepy town. And it's a really laid back town.

Sturgeon Bay is technically an island right on Lake Michigan. And so have you ever seen a map of Wisconsin?

Wisconsin kind of has like a little thumb. On the middle of the thumb it actually breaks and it's an island.

And so I lived on the island of Sturgeon Bay essentially in Door County. And so everyone has kind of an island mentality, you know.

Everyone's kind of super slow, super laid back. Nobody wants to – it's very hippie.

And, oh man, it drove me crazy. Because, yeah, people just didn't take things as seriously as they should, you know.

And it was very upsetting to me. And so it manifests itself in church polity and communion, baptism.

And so that's why when I came here I was happy to be amongst the people who took these things far more serious than most other churches and Christians do.

But certainly, you know, open communion is very, very common.

And especially the larger the church, the more likely you're going to have open communion.

You know why? It's easier and it's harder to enforce a closed communion.

Because the more people you have, the less of them the pastors actually know. And so they can't – they don't know who's who and they can't keep tabs on people.

And so it's just easier to have an open communion. Yeah, Pastor? And as pastors,

I mean, we both can attest that we've spoken to people who we've noticed who partake and probably shouldn't.

And we'll talk to them and we'll help them understand the arrangements of the table.

Either they'll respect it or we won't see them again is just typically what happens. Right? And so, again, people feel kind of emotional towards being able to have access to the table rightly or wrongly.

So those are always things that can be a turnoff. And we recognize that. Our position is an unpopular position in Christendom today.

It's an unpopular position, but we think it's the right position. What's a closed communion? Members only.

And how does that typically look in a church service?

Yes, Dale? So that's a super closed communion.

Yeah, that's good. And we hear – yeah, we're hearing that.

Maybe some of us may feel a little uncomfortable. Like, man, okay, ugh. Just the optics of it and saying, okay, you guys can go now and we'll meet you up later.

There is – again, there's an optic challenge with this closed communion.

And I think it's something that we have to actually like wrestle with and say, okay, there's a way in which this doesn't really look that inviting, right?

I mean, would you feel invited? Would you feel like, oh, this is the place for me if you saw that? Now, again, should that be the reason not to follow through with a biblical mandate?

You know, the scriptures should always be our first consideration. Emmanuel? That we accepted people, members of other churches as long as they were baptized.

Yes, which is – we're going to define that in a few moments. Because there's closed communion, then there's close communion.

And closed communion is basically what? What's the difference between close and closed communion?

Yes. So that's an important distinction. If you are baptized by full immersion, so receiving a believer's baptism, and you're a member of a church of good sense, so another church has affirmed your testimony, affirmed that you're a

Christian, then you're welcome to partake with us at our table if you're visiting. Yes.

I thought that the hinge on which these terms – these two terms are dependent was baptism, not membership.

Yes, but because it's one and the same. That's our position, right? So if you are – like, if you're baptized here, you're a member here.

Correct. Correct, which is why we make sure that it's both, right? So you've been baptized upon a profession of faith, and that you are a member of a church in good standing that holds to the same gospel.

Right? So it's both. Because we understand that that is certainly the case in a lot of churches where they can be a member and not be baptized.

I had a guy at our previous church that had been a Christian for 20 years. He was a youth pastor at some point as well, somewhere in there, and he had never been baptized.

Never been baptized. And he was a member at our church, and I was like, so why are you not baptized?

And he's like, well, no one ever did it. And he was a big guy. He was like super tall, huge, wide guy, and when

I baptized him, it was the funniest picture ever. I had to actually get him on his knees in the lake, because he was just so big.

And even on his knees, he was taller than I was. And so then just getting the guy in the water and out. Actually, I think we had two guys help me.

He was a big guy. And so yeah, it's common. A lot of churches don't follow the same practices that we do, which is why we protect the table in that way when we do allow for visitors to partake.

Yes, Emmanuel? No, go for it. Yeah, and again, part of it is just that I think that people have expectations of what a good church is.

And a good church is inviting, warm, good worship, good preaching.

We have this kind of notion of what a good church is. And if one of those legs or peers are taken out, then we start to consider, okay, maybe this isn't a good church.

And so I've had a lot of folks say, not a lot of folks, but I've had several folks say to me that I like your church,

I just don't like that. You guys seem a little bit too strict and stuff.

And I don't deny that there is a level of strictness that we have that's unique, but it's not beyond what the

Scripture says. And it's not a strictness out of legalism.

It's a strictness out of wanting to preserve the Scriptures and wanting to obey the

Scriptures. And so maybe we are strict compared to other churches.

But if you compared us to a New Testament church, I think we're probably behind the pail.

We're not as strict. We're not as obedient as we can be or should be.

And so there's areas for us to grow in as a church family. And certainly, again, compared to other mainline evangelical churches, we might have the appearance of being strict.

But again, I think it's called obedience. And obedience, the Bible says, is better than sacrifice.

So it's better to be obedient than to sacrifice all these hosts of things. Any other thoughts or questions?

Now this is, again, we've got these terminologies that's used here. So we've got closed communion, closed communion, open communion.

What this is presupposing, what it's assuming, is that historically the

Christian church, mostly on all three sides, so Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, agrees that in order to partake of the

Lord's table, you need to be baptized. Now the Paedo -Baptists have it easy because they baptize babies.

Then you just have to go through confirmation, and then after confirmation, they can partake of the Lord's table, or of the

Eucharist. Versus a Protestant church, and the historical Protestant position also has been that only if you are baptized can you partake of the

Lord's table. With a few exceptions, some of them surprising, such as modern times

John Piper, John Bunyan. You've got some big names out there that said the opposite, who advocated for an open communion, which means that even if you were not baptized, you could partake of the elements.

But that's not the way we view this. Rather, we understand that these are two ordinances that are interconnected.

The reason why baptism should come before the Lord's table is why.

Give me an argument for it. Christ commanded what, in particular?

Baptism. And baptism serves as what? His death and resurrection.

That we've been baptized into his death and raised in life.

Yes, that's true. Emmanuel? Okay, I like that.

Anyone else? Mario? That's true.

That's a great point. That's a great point. Anyone else? So here's,

I think, something that we should consider. As was just mentioned, baptism is a sign.

It's a sign of the new covenant. In the Old Testament, there's a sign of the covenant, which was what?

Circumcision. Circumcision was a sign, blood oath. It was a blood oath that says,

I'm part of the covenant community of Yahweh. I'm under his lordship. I'm under his tutelage.

I'm under his law. And his law commands that we ought to be circumcised. Baptism, which is so abundantly clear in Scripture, I mean, no one even argues this, is the new covenant oath.

It is the sign of the new covenant oath. Just as circumcision was the old covenant oath, now baptism serves as the new covenant oath.

It is an initiatory oath, meaning that it is the first oath that initiates us into the new covenant community.

Which means that the Lord's table, which Jesus also says is a sign of the new covenant, when he institutes it in Luke 22, he says, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

Do this in remembrance of me. The difference between the new covenant baptism and new covenant

Lord's Supper is that, as it's said in page 15, in the middle it says, he says,

I'll argue baptism is the new covenant's initiating oath sign, and the Lord's Supper is its renewing oath sign.

So the Lord's Supper, it's a renewing of the oath, right? And it's a weekly renewing of the oath.

Man, this is so important that we understand this, because now we get a better picture of what the

Lord's table means, and what we're doing, what we're accomplishing there. It's like you get married, and sometimes on the 10 -year, 15 -year mark, 20 -year mark, 30 -year mark, 40 -year mark, you might do what's called the renewing of vows.

It's not necessary. You've made a vow. But I like it.

And again, actually the same couple, the same guy I was telling you about earlier, the big guy that I baptized, who was a member of the church in Wisconsin, they recently celebrated their 20 -year anniversary, and they renewed their vows.

And I thought, you know, that's beautiful, especially because I know their story, I know what they've gone through, I know the struggles, and that they can come together, mark this momentous anniversary, and renew it, and say, you know what?

We're still here. We still love each other. We're still committed to each other. We're still gonna do life together. We're still gonna go all the way to the end.

And that's essentially what we're doing at the Lord's table, in some respect. We are recommitting, we're making that oath over and over again, and saying,

I belong to Jesus, and I'm with Christ, Christ is with me. I'm taking spiritually in the life of Jesus through the communion.

It is a beautiful thing. It is truly a beautiful thing. So it's not just taking some dry crackers and some water juice.

There is a spiritual power and presence that comes of the communion table. And if we deny the first oath, and if we don't do the first oath, we cannot truly participate in the second oath, in the renewing oath.

It's like trying to renew vows of not even being married. It would make no sense, would it?

And so, does that help understand the difference between the ordinances of baptism in the

Lord's Supper, and why they're interconnected, and why baptism needs to come first?

I think so, right? Any thoughts? Any questions? Jesus? For the

Lord's table and the renewal of the covenant, would that be a single, like, the same way as in the

Lord's Supper is whoever drinks or eats in a worthy manner by a person of God.

Would it be like something, like, if we break a vow, like, would it be in the same part of, like, the severity of being or drinking in a worthy manner?

That's a good question. I'd have to think about, ponder that for a moment. You know, what distinguishes the Lord's Supper is that it is a vow of remembrance, right?

So, do this in remembrance of me, and we do this until the Lord returns, right? So, we do this in remembrance of Christ.

And so, it's not exactly the renewing of vows. It's not totally appropriate to go too far with that analogy.

But it is an act of remembrance. And what is a renewing of a vow, but, again, kind of an act of remembrance, starting where you began and saying, okay, this is the mission vows that we took, and we are recommitting ourselves, in some respect, to those things.

And so, I think it's appropriate to consider it in that light, but not to go too far with the imagery as it probably falls short.

And so, I'd have to give that a little bit more thought, but I'll get back to you. Pastor, it looks like you're cooking something.

It becomes a distinction without a difference if we take it too far. More than making a vow, it's a reaffirmation of a vow we took.

That's right. I think that's a good way of looking at it. I think this is all very helpful, and there's key terms at a glance.

There's a kind of a, in page 15, you kind of see those terminologies kind of hashed out pretty simply for us.

So, closed membership, open membership, just that discussion centered on whether baptism is or is not required for church membership.

So, closed communion, open communion, whether baptism is or is not required for participation in the

Lord's Supper. So, again, baptism, membership, communion, these are all three connected.

You can't divorce them from each other because they all have implications for the life of the church and church polity.

Closed communion, closed communion, whether baptized members of other churches may participate in the

Lord's Supper, closed, or only the members of that local church, which is closed.

And then occasional or visiting communion, that is participating in the Lord's Supper in one church when one is a member of another, so that's for the person who is visiting and going to another church.

Here's an interesting question for you. Would you feel comfortable partaking communion at another church where you are visiting?

Okay? Okay, good. To me, there's no right or wrong answer. It's an interesting question to pose.

Pastor? Yeah, that's a good answer. What would it depend on? Yeah, go ahead.

Jesus? I also like the part that you have said. Like, I noticed it's a gospel believing church.

Well, I would go to the third seating through the preaching, of course.

Oh, yes, I would feel comfortable. Yeah. Very good. Go for it.

Chris? Well, no, I know this isn't a thing against people, but when they're talking about non -baptized people taking communion, would the reason be probably that they were sprinkled?

Yeah, so that would be our position. That's our position as a church, and it's the position that's taken by this book, the author.

Yeah, so we're assuming baptism by immersion, believer's baptism. Yeah, yeah.

Tim? I can't hear you,

Tim. Oh, sorry. We share a similar understanding.

That's right. That's right.

Right. Yeah. What became kind of popular during the pandemic season was

Zoom communion. And yeah, I feel a certain kind of way about that.

I remember it was brought up at our church in Wisconsin. Like, hey, we should do this thing.

We should just do communion through Zoom. And I said, no, I'm not doing that. I draw the line there.

I'm not doing that. And so yeah, it's true.

We have to consider what is and is not communion, just as similarly as we'd have to consider what is and is not baptism. Right?

And so would you partake at communion at a Mormon church? No. No.

I mean, I've gone to Mormon churches. I've gone to Mormon services and sat through it. If some people think we're boring, man, that's a snooze fest.

But they serve literally wonder bread, so not unleavened bread.

And they serve water, not juice, not even wine. It's just, yeah, wonder bread. And I saw the bishop in the back with a loaf of wonder bread, just cutting it up.

And so is that communion? No, we're talking about something totally different.

It's not communion. They're not even trying. It's not even at least grape juice. So yeah, they're not even trying.

So to me, that's not communion. That's something else entirely. That's something else entirely. Just as I would say patal baptism is not baptism.

It is something other than what is prescribed in Scripture. It's getting wet.

It's getting sprinkled. That's fine. But it's not biblical baptism. It's something else.

Yeah. Right. That's right. Yeah, it's not a profession of belief.

Yeah. Wafers to carry with you in your purse.

And so you could take communion between you and the Lord, almost like an individual communion type of thing, and it became more popular.

Yeah. I mean, we use kind of like those, kind of a similar where you have the wafer, and you open that.

You get the wafer, and then you get the cup. And we felt that that was better because of the circumstances in the pandemic where people didn't want to reach into a common, you know, thing.

And I didn't like the wafer because wafer really isn't unleavened bread either. But, you know, sometimes you do the best you can.

But, yeah, individual communion, that's a whole different discussion. But, yeah, again, that's something other than what's prescribed in Scripture because every time

Lord's Supper is referred to in Scripture, it's not an individual thing. It is a church communal ordinance.

So that's why it's important. So we won't partake in a Mormon church. We won't partake.

I would admit that I did partake at a Jehovah's Witness communion service. Jehovah's Witnesses observe communion once a year, and they call it the memorial.

And they believe that only the anointed 144 ,000 remnant can partake of the elements of the

Lord's Supper. And so the bread at least is unleavened, and the wine, which is actual wine, they pass the cup around, and no one partakes.

No one partakes. So they take the cup, and everyone grabs it, and it just goes to the next person.

And the reason is because theologically they believe that there are two classes of Christians. There's the other sheep, which they refer to from John 10 -16, and they're part of what's called the great crowd from Revelation 7 -9 that are going to inherit the earth.

So there's going to be a class of Christians who are going to inherit the earth. These are not members of the new covenant, so they're not going to die and go reign with Jesus.

They're going to die and wait to be resurrected upon a paradise earth. That's the great crowd, the other sheep, not new covenant members.

The 144 ,000 who go to heaven, these are the new covenant members, and they will go to heaven and reign with Jesus, and only they can rightly partake of the

Lord's Supper. So if you're lucky, you might have one person in your congregation who is anointed and is of the 144 ,000 class, and they'll be the only ones who can partake.

And so one day, I think this is probably the year after I became a believer, and I was already like ousted out of the

Jehovah Witnesses. I visited a kingdom hall that no one knew me at, and I went, and just to kind of make a statement,

I partook. And so when the elements came by, I drank the wine, I ate the bread, just to kind of say,

I'm part of the new covenant, and I think that was wrong. Now that would not be my position. I would not do that again because that is something entirely different.

It's not the Lord's Supper. It's a mockery of the Lord's Supper. It's actually satanic. The fact that if you ever research, the

Satanists do what's called a mock communion, and when they do a mock communion, they do the same thing the

Jehovah Witnesses do. They take the elements, and they pass it around. No one partakes of it. It's like a willful, gleeful rejection of Christ's body and of Christ's blood, and they willfully just reject it.

That's exactly what the Jehovah Witnesses are doing. As the cup and as the plate goes by, mind you, this is the only thing on their calendar that they celebrate.

They don't celebrate birthdays. They don't celebrate holidays. They don't celebrate Christmas. Nothing. This is the only thing on their calendar.

And what do they do with it? They reject Christ, all of them, by wholesale. And so it's a pretty scary thing.

It's not communion, and so I wouldn't do it again. But my reasoning back then was

I wanted to make a demonstration that I was part of the new covenant community now.

And so, yeah, interesting, huh? Any other thoughts or questions? Yeah.

Well, they say those will be the angels, and then the 144 ,000 from Revelation 14, one that this is the anointed brothers of Christ.

These are the spiritual Jews, and these are the ones who are going to reign with Christ. The great crowd is going to be on the earth.

That's the majority of mankind, and so, yeah, that's their interesting view. Sebastian?

How does someone know? How does someone know? Similar to kind of they teach kind of like a born -again experience.

Now, they don't believe that the average Jehovah's Witness can be born again, only the 144 ,000. So if you have kind of like a born -again experience as a

Jehovah's Witness, then you're assumed to be part of the anointed class. And typically, like if you're like two years in, like yeah, even if you have like a born -again experience, they don't believe you.

They're like, okay, you probably have some mental illness, or you need help understanding the Bible. Better.

But usually, it's people who have been in the organization for like 40, 50 years, and they have this credible testimony, and they've been, you know, faithful witnesses for that whole period of time.

Then they'll say, okay, this is probably an anointed. And even then, they're not fully sure because they'll look at you very suspiciously if you claim to be part of the 144 ,000.

Yeah. So it's very discouraged, essentially. They don't encourage people to think of themselves as part of the 144 ,000.

If you read the literature, it really discourages people from even considering it. And so, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think they –

I was in the very back, so I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself. And so when they saw me take the first time, the next time, the people passing, like the ushers, they were telling other people to kind of look at me because they thought

I didn't know any better, but I knew exactly what I was doing. And then it did prompt some good conversations after the fact.

And what's funny is I had my Seventh -day Adventist language teacher came with me to that event.

And if you know anything about Seventh -day Adventists, they don't drink alcohol. And so he was shocked when he took a chug of the wine that it was actually alcohol.

He almost spit it out because they don't drink alcohol. And so it was, you know, a born -again

Christian, a Seventh -day Adventist, went to Kingdom Hall of Jehovah's Witnesses on the memorial. It was a pretty fun experience.

It was unique. So, yeah. All right.

So now we kind of get an understanding of what the stage is being set for in the discussion of this book.

I think that this matters. Again, why does this matter? Because church polity will structure church life, right?

So if we have a loose church polity, which is, again, kind of a loose view on church membership, on church baptism, on the

Lord's table, then don't be surprised when everything else in your Christian life is loose as well, right?

And everything else is on shaking ground. And everything else is just kind of optional. And it's just there to serve you, and you're not there to serve it, you know?

And if you have a strong biblical church polity, a strong doctrine on church membership, that will also reflect in your

Christian life, in your Christian walk. It will produce strong Christians. Why?

Because we understand that this life is complicated. We understand this life is difficult. The Christian life is not an easy life.

It is the most difficult life you can choose to partake in because it's one of self -denial. And so what do we need?

We need each other. We need each other. And when you come into a church that's loosely organized and loosely connected, then you'll be loosely connected.

When you have a church that's strongly connected, take seriously the Lord's ordinances, you'll have far more likelihood of success in your

Christian walk because we need each other. We're dependent upon each other. Again, I don't believe in individualism when it comes to the

Christian. I believe in terms of my personal politics in the world, yes, leave me alone.

I don't want the government telling me what to do. I don't want the government telling the church what to do. But when it comes to church life, that's a whole different set of circumstances.

We are called to do life together. We are called to hold all things in common. We are called to, you know, follow

Christ corporately together. And so this book will help us set this framework for those discussions as we go forward.

And so I said that we'd end a little bit early because this is kind of an introductory chapter.

This is just the first chapter. Anything else that stood out to you that maybe you have any thoughts or questions about? Yes.

That's right. Go for it. Say that again.

They may be admitted to membership. Maybe is the key word. I would not deserve that.

Like, well, it depends on how they do the maybe. They could be or they should be depending on how that would be read.

Well, I'm assuming we have members, so they don't count. So someone else?

Well, it's not an automatic yes just because you took part in communion here.

You know, again, when we allow someone to participate in the communion, which is one of the one could say this is one of the weaknesses of a closed communion.

Is that is that argument right there and saying, you know, well, you allowed me into the standard is that then, you know,

I should be allowed membership here. But we have a membership process for a reason. It's because we do have, again, unique views and strong views, and we want people to be well aligned with those views before we bring into life the church.

And then, of course, you have to share a credible testimony. So I wouldn't say that that that would be an automatic ticket into church membership.

No. He's laying out somebody else's position, as I recall.

Yeah. Correct. Correct.

I agree with that. Yeah. Any other thoughts or questions on the subject of the hand?

Well, good first study. Let's do chapter two next week. So read up to chapter two. We'll be doing about a chapter a week.

I think Pastor Josh will be taking this class with you guys next week. And then

I'll be back to continue it with you as I go visit my family. Yeah.

That's right. That brings back bad memories. When we were Jehovah's Witnesses, you had to read the

Watchtower every week. And on Sunday, you know, everyone comes with their Watchtower. And a good

Jehovah's Witness would have it all underlined and marred. My mom, she has all these, you know, marks on it. You know you're spiritual if you have enough marks on the

Watchtower magazine. But, yeah. But I won't put that burden on you. Only Pastor Sheldon will.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you, Lord, that you've given us this time set apart unto you so that we can study, so that we can worship you in a way that would be agreeable to you.

Father, we pray that you would, by your Spirit, lead us and guide us and guide these discussions,

Father, so that just as we did the Roman Catholic controversy, we can grow in our most precious faith.

And, Father, now as we turn our attention to baptism, church polity, we pray, Father, that you'd help us to rightly divide the word of truth so that we may end up on the right side of this conversation.

And so, Father, may you continue to use us and mold us in the way that you would find fit. We pray this in Jesus' name.