November 25, 2022 Show with Marq Ortiz on “Trusting the Lord to Build His Church”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

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 Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 25th day of November, 2022.

I hope you all had a very refreshing and enjoyable Thanksgiving with family, friends, and loved ones, and that you not only enjoyed yourself and feasted on delicious food, but that you also were a witness for Jesus Christ to anyone with whom you ate and relaxed and enjoyed.

The day.

We have a first-time guest today. Once in a while, I am approached by a listener, and this listener was a woman named Chris Pope, who said, you really have got to get my pastor, Mark Ortiz, pastor at Grace Reform Fellowship of Burnville, Pennsylvania, on your program.

And I very often take up my listeners' suggestions, recommendations, especially when they're so passionate and enthusiastic, and that is what I have done today. And I also love meeting new pastors who embraced and believe in and passionately proclaim and teach and preach the doctrines of sovereign grace, and so especially even on top of that when they're in my new home state of Pennsylvania.

So I am thrilled to have on the program for the very first time Mark Ortiz, and he is the pastor of Grace Reform Fellowship of Burnville, Pennsylvania. And today we're going to be trusting, today we're going to be trusting, today we're going to be discussing trusting the Lord to build his church.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Mark Ortiz. Yes, so before we get into your testimony, because whenever we have a first-time guest on the program, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, and that would be you.

But before we do that, tell our listeners something about Grace Reform Fellowship of Burnville, Pennsylvania. Now I know it is called Grace Reform Fellowship, and there are many different kinds of reformed congregations out there, and the main or primary division amongst us is that there are Baptist or Baptistic congregations that are also confessional and reformed, and there are also Pado-Baptist and Presbyterian congregations.

Where does Grace Reform Fellowship fall? Well, technically, reformed Baptists are independent churches. They just have fellowship, or the most closely connected fellowship, I should say, with those that are also reformed Baptists and confessional, adhering to the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and although there are other confessions, the Philadelphia Confession, the New Hampshire Confession, and others.

But if anybody wants to find out more about Grace Reform Fellowship of Burnville, Pennsylvania, go to GraceReformedBurnville .com, and that's spelled B-R-N-V-I-L .com, that's B-E-R-N-V-I-L .com, and God willing, we'll be repeating that website throughout the broadcast.

And so now we come to the point, since you are a first-time guest, we'd love to hear your salvation story, your testimony, in summary form, and that would include the kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

Yes, my friend, Pastor Fred Zaspel, used to be a pastor there. He's now one of the pastors at the Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia, Pennsylvania, but there was a time when he pastored in Pottsville.

In 1976, I had dropped out of college, I was attending, and I dropped out of college, and a friend of mine stopped by the house to pick me up, driving around, and happened to go past that I hadn't seen for a number of years, and he was on that walk.

I didn't explain it, but I ran up to my room, and I fell on my knees, and I cried out for mercy. Actually, I went downstairs to the family Bible, and I opened it up, because I remember my friend telling me, you know, like we always do, read John or read the Bible.

So I started reading it, and it was like a lost...it was thrilling. My mom happened to walk downstairs as they were reading the Bible, and the look on her face... I don't know if she thought I was going to get ready to pawn the Bible or what, but she said, What are you doing?

And I said, Mom, I think I just got saved. I didn't even know how to express it, but she started rejoicing. So that week, just to show you the providence of God, a friend of mine, we were invited to play at...they had a bicentennial.

They invited me and my buddy to come and do some... The sound system came up, and he had a cross around his neck, and it was really nice. I saw my mom out in the audience talking to some people, and they were pointing up at me.

And what I was talking to were part of this church, and they were out there praying for me. When I walked into the church that Sunday, I thought they were going to fall off their chairs, because it turns out they were out there praying for me.

Now, it turns out they were part of a four-square gospel church. I'm not sure how four-square... I didn't know anything about anything. I didn't know the Bible. All I knew was something...I met Jesus, if you will.

That was a denomination that...

Yeah.

Not exactly known as a giant of theological knowledge.

At our community, had all the funerals growing up in, you know, and she walked in, and two couples met her at the door, and she said she needed prayer. And they just took her in, prayed for her, took her home.

So she had gotten saved the same time, basically, I did. We just didn't know it. And she told me later, you know, she grew up thinking she was a Christian, but she knew better when she did get saved. So I'm saying all this to say how my journey to reform doctrine actually started that day I got saved, because while I didn't know anything, I didn't know doctrine, I didn't know the Bible, I knew something happened to me that I wasn't seeking, I didn't cause to happen, I didn't make happen, but it transformed me.

It began this journey of changing my life. Now, it was over a period of time, things started changing. I started coming to the church, went down to the bookstore, got a Bible. I didn't understand a lot, but I had this hunger for the Bible.

I just wanted to study it, wanted to read. And I knew, again, just something found me. So my buddy, then I remember him giving me a copy, whom I had never heard of.

Sovereignty of God?

I got another book by Pink. Sovereignty of God was one that reading the Bible began my journey. I wasn't actually being taught, and I don't want to be misunderstood, like I'm being critical of others or other, even the pastor at the time.

I owe him so much, my first pastor. I'm no longer Pentecostal. I know that was going to shock some of my friends. I don't know Jesus and rejoicing, worshiping in grace. But the more I started, I don't know how to express it, Chris.

I'm losing sense that there was so much more that I wanted. So I started reading. I felt a call, and I couldn't even put it into words, that I wanted to serve the Lord. I didn't know what I wanted to do except I was going to play music.

I was writing music, playing music. I didn't know anything. I ended up going. I got married first. I met my wife. All of those Pink books paid off because I was going down to the local Christian. And it was run by a Mennonite couple, and they were so nice to me and so good.

I got to know them as I was going in there buying a book. Pink would mention one of his books. He mentioned Owen, John Owen. I don't know who these people are. So anything I could get, I tried to order.

That's where I ended up meeting Mary.

A whole bunch of good stuff happening.

I shocked my mom. I shocked some of my friends. I started wearing a three-piece suit to church. I used to go around and bib overalls with my Afro and my, you know. And now here I am. Not that they made me wear a suit.

I just wanted to clean up. Hey, things are changing. So anyway, we got married, and we moved out to Los Angeles to go to Bible college. And I went to Life Bible College in L .A. But this was as I was growing more and more in my understanding of Reformed doctrine.

I wasn't thinking of it in terms of Reformed doctrine. I was just understanding certain things in the Scriptures.

And is Life Bible College a theologically Reformed college?

Yes.

So it was not Reformed then?

Pardon?

Then it was definitely not Reformed.

Nobody was faithful to what I was understanding. The professor had us pick out a verse we were going to do our study, our term paper on. And I reached in the hat and pulled out Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10.

And I thought, oh, wow, that's providential. And so I did my paper on Ephesians. By grace you are saved through faith. That and out of yourselves is a gift of God, not of worse. The professor got up. He read the paper in the class, and he said, this is a great example of good.

That's good. But then he turns right around. He raised my hand. I said, excuse me, sir. I have a word that you don't agree with. We're saved by grace through faith. And he turned around in front of the whole class, and he was angry.

His face was actually red. And he said, you're a Calvinist. Well, I said, that's fine with me. I mean, I love John Calvin. I don't have a problem with being called a Calvinist. I said, but you mentioned Calvin's name.

But I'm here at this school. I'm paying money to learn. Anyway, that was an eye-opener for me. And I thought, well, I still didn't. After I graduated, my wife and I ended up moving back to Allentown, Pennsylvania, and started a church.

We pioneered the church. It was still a four-square church. And nobody was pressuring us. I mean, we started from scratch. And all my ministry, I don't set out, I'm not going to preach Calvin, or try my best to preach.

And I'm certainly the first one to tell you, I'm well aware of my shortcomings. But I started preaching expositorily. I like to pick a book of the Bible and work through it expositorily. And the people, it was all new to the people that they were receiving.

The church was slowly starting to grow. But it was a struggle. At the time, by the end of the eight years, I have to be honest, we were feeling burned out. We had the opportunity also to teach at Teen Challenge Training Center.

So my wife and son and I, we would drive back and forth. I would teach at Raresburg, still pastor at Allentown. So one day I just felt it was hard because the people that were there, they loved us and they wanted them to leave.

After eight years or so, we went to Teen Challenge. And it just was, even that was a blessing in many ways, ministering to the men. I have a real heart for it because of my past. But there was just growing conflict.

Again, I wasn't preaching Calvin. I wasn't preaching, teaching the Bible. They had me teaching. And I was, it was happening in terms of having to have people come who were, quite frankly, involved in some, in my opinion, extreme behaviors as far as like get into that.

After a while, I just, I can't stay. I can't keep fighting, fighting this.

Well, why don't you at least mention something about how they were misusing the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Because, obviously, we who are Reformed believe in love, preach, and teach the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

He is one of the three persons of the Godhead. So why don't you tell us about, at least in summary form, what was aberrant that you could see? What was the aberrant doctrine about the Holy Spirit that you saw and heard?

Get more extreme in terms of some of the Reformed theology, at least for me, has wrong teachings. Contribute some of it back to a difference of understanding in terms of theology. For instance, what I'm saying, on this rock I will build my church.

I will build my church. Gates of hell shall not. Whether it's not a particular denomination, we know that the church, for instance, we're the temple of the living God, where Ephesians 2 says that we're fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God, built on the foundation of Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

We're the household of God, Paul says. The church of the living God, the pillar, this is a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people for his own possession. Just think of how the Bible describes the body of God as foundational.

He is the one who is building. Look at it from a human standpoint and see many reasons to be. All the different denominations, people, the church is so divided. You've got all these different, and it's true.

And later on, if we have time, if you'd like, I'd like to give you some of the reasons, more specifically why I'm more than confident in the church. But the sovereignty of God is the foundation of it all.

The Bible is so clear, and that's the thing that I was starting to see as I was reading and praying. The Bible is such a wonderful book. It's God's book. Because of the revelation that it gives to us of God himself, that we could never have devised on our own.

Man never would have devised this picture that the Bible paints of God himself, sovereign over all things. Psalm 113, Who is like the Lord our God who is enthroned on high, who humbles himself to behold the things in heaven and earth?

Our God is in the heavens. He does whatever he pleases. The Lord is great and does what he pleases. I was reading, been reading verses like this and thinking, Yeah, God is, I don't, who can even fathom?

Where would this come from if not from God himself? But then we see in our own lives, and even in some theology, how to fit our views and our understanding, that we limit God to one way or another. And I began to see that some theology's limitations, and for one minute that Arminians don't love the Lord, or that they're not Calvinists.

I would never say that with some of my Arminians. I would want to challenge me on, for instance, how can you put a, if you put a limitation on that and say, God's grace is, he's not sovereign in grace.

Well, then you're almost tempted to make faith. And I would say, whatever you understand about, don't ask anybody whether they're Arminian or Calvin, Calvinist, Reformed, Non-Reformed. When you're on your knees praying, if you're truly saved, how much glory?

Do you give all the glory to God, or 99 of the glory? Because if you take it upon yourself to say, well, God did all that he's going to do, and now it's up to me to give some of the glory away from God, as far as I can see.

Yes, and we're going to have to go to our first station break right now.

Okay.

And we're going to switch to Microsoft Teams to do our, to conduct. So am I. I don't know why you'd be, all right, we're going to have to stick with this then. All right, we'll just stick with this method.

And you seem to be hearing me now, fine. So my webmaster said you're coming through loud and clear. So let's just stick with what we're doing then.

All right, Chris.

All right, we're going to our first commercial break. And we'll be right back with Mark Ortiz, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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We are discussing trusting the Lord to build his church. Right before the break, you were talking about how you were becoming increasingly more troubled by the Arminians, not only in church, but also in the Bible college and even on the faculty, that were limiting the power of Jesus Christ in their words.

Of course, nothing can actually limit the power of Jesus Christ, but in their words and teachings, and especially in the area of salvation. If you want to pick up right where you left off there, and then we'll move to our main theme of the church.

...bring us out of that. Well, certainly not ourselves. Not some act of our own. We understand the scriptures, didn't know the scriptures, but I knew, again, something happened I didn't deserve. I had this overwhelming sense of being lost, and then I had forgiveness and mercy.

And as I learned, jeez, people argue over the five solas. To me, once again, I can't imagine arguing over depravity. Now, they're misunderstood, all of these doctrines, partly because sometimes we as pastors and teachers do a poor job in teaching and expressing.

We're novices. I was a novice. I can't, if I go back and think of all the mistakes I made over my life, and this really takes me to the subject of trouble. When I think of the vessels that he uses, yours truly included, it truly is a wonder and a testimony of his almighty grace that there will be a church.

In our presentations, without preparing them, little depravity. If you read the Bible, you'll see that it makes it clear that every part of our being, we're not as bad as we could possibly be. We're not totally depraved in that sense, but every faculty of the human being is painted and ruined by sin.

Our minds are darkened. Our wills are enslaved to sin. We love sin. That's all we do, our minds, our hearts. And so that's total depravity. There's nothing good in us in terms of spiritual good. People say, well, that's a good guy.

We're all relative. We're talking relative to one another, but not relative to the Bible makes that clear judgment of God. That's part of the problem with much of the modern church in terms of the preaching, in terms of the teaching.

Too much of it is so human-oriented, self-oriented. Again, I try my best to preach expositorily, go through the Bible, Old and New Testament. The more you understand the scriptures, you can see how human experience lines up.

We're living in, look at the days in which we're living now and tell me that it's corrupt, that man isn't depraved, if you will. Total depravity. People argue over election, and yet I can't see how you can read your Bible and read not only the New Testament, but the Old Testament as well, and not understand, and we'll argue over what caused the election, what prompted God to foreseen faith, or there can't be foreseen faith because God would wait all of eternity and the only thing he would see us do is reject and unbelief.

No faith. Faith comes by hearing, hearing the word of Christ. Even faith is a gift of God. And faith, by the way, is not a work of merit. It's an empty hand reaching out and receiving what God himself has done.

We have to go to our midway break right now. We're going to pick up where you left off. And if anybody has a question for my guest, Mark Ortiz, on trusting the Lord to build his church, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence. If you live outside the USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

We also ask of you, since this is a longer than normal break, required of us to be longer than normal by Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, because they are required by the FCC to localize this program geographically to Lake City, Florida.

And they do so with their own public service announcements and other local things that they air in the middle of the show. While they do that, we simultaneously air our globally heard commercials. So please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the information as you possibly can from the advertising that you hear and the contact information that you hear in the commercials. Please contact as many of our advertisers as you can and thank them for sponsoring this show.

We would love it if you very frequently purchased what they're selling and support their para-church organizations and visit their churches whenever possible. But when you can't do any of that, at the very least, please at least contact them and thank them for sponsoring Iron Truck and Zion Radio if indeed you really love the show and don't want it to go off the air.

We depend on our advertisers to exist, folks. We cannot survive merely on the donations that come in because tragically they have plummeted to an all-new low after the COVID mandate hysteria that has occurred in our country.

We have never recovered from it. So we need our advertisers. Please let our advertisers know that you value them because they value us. And also, as I said, send in your questions to Mark Ortiz, to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. As always, 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. Don't go away. We are going to be right back with Mark Ortiz after these messages.

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Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland, who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed, Dr. Joe Moorcraft.

I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland. Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is Dr. Joe Moorcraft. If you've been blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Moorcraft and Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia are largely to thank, since they are one of the program's largest financial supporters.

Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming is in Forsyth County, a part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Heritage is a thoroughly biblical church, unwaveringly committed to Westminster standards, and Dr. Joe Moorcraft is the author of an eight-volume commentary on the larger catechism.

Heritage is a member of the Hanover Presbyterian Church, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone, and tracing its roots and heritage back to the great Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

Heritage maintains and follows the biblical truth and principles proclaimed by the reformers, scripture alone, grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, and God's glory alone. Their primary goal is the worship of the Triune God that continues in eternity.

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