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So, good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are listening to this. I'm Kofi Edwine. I'm here with Eddie Casillas, and this is episode number five of the Cutting Room Floor.
Podcast.
Eddie, how are we doing today?
Oh man, doing pretty good, man.
How are you?
Yeah, can't complain.
Doing well. Doing well.
For all of you who are listening in, thanks for joining us. This is our weekly kind of post-sermon discussion, I guess, where, you know, especially Eddie grills me with a bunch of questions on stuff I said in the sermon or stuff I had to leave.
Out.
And we just have kind of a conversation advancing the topic we discussed on Sunday and hopefully being able to dig in a little bit more. So without much further ado, I'll turn it over to Eddie, and we'll have this week's conversation.
All right.
Well, thanks for having me again, Kofi. Always appreciate doing this and being able to talk about these things, even for our small church. One of the things I want to touch on real quick was sort of the first remarks you made.
You were talking about the state of theology survey that Ligonier does. What is that, like every year or something or every other year?
Every couple of years.
Every couple of years. It's usually pretty revealing, you know, kind of the doctrines that people believe. And so I guess, what was your, just your opinion? Could you tell me a little more about that?
Were you surprised? Did you think it was going to get better or the not new news to you?
I mean, every year when I read those things, like I've read every one since 2014. When I read those things, it's just, it's bad. But this year was exceptionally bad because the things that Christians were taking for granted, I couldn't, I just couldn't fathom.
I was like, you think every, just when you think it gets worse, it can't get any worse,.
I should say.
It gets worse.
Yeah.
To kind of see the things that Christians are capitulating on and just giving, you know, complete dominance to the culture, to tell them what they can and can't believe in some.
Of these areas was horrifying.
And I think I said it in the sermon that I was reading at one point, and I just started.
Crying.
Because as a shepherd and as a pastor, like I hear this stuff and it breaks my heart because it's so easily avoided. And yet, we'll get, I'm sure we'll get into it as we go, like just due to the lack of concern.
And I'm even talking outside in the world, I expect that in the church, the lack of concern in the church for matters of doctrine and matters of, you know, biblical fidelity, because we have such a low regard for that.
We are basically reaping what we've sown in terms of telling people doctrine doesn't matter. Just love Jesus.
Well, they believed you.
And as a result, they have terrible doctrinal ideas and actually they don't love Jesus much at all, if we're really honest.
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah, that's absolutely right. It's like, you know, how can you worship and love someone who you don't know? That's a key thing. How do you, how can you, and nothing is being revealed about this person to you, which makes the person not very unique, you know, or interesting.
And so, you know, there's a lot of biblical and theological confusion out there. And one of the things that you said during the sermon, and I don't remember who quoted it, but you said that, you know, the Christian ministry is an instructional ministry.
And you also said that being, I think you said this, being a disciple is a lifetime of learning. How do you answer people when they say, you know, that sounds kind of intimidating or that's a lot of pressure?
You know, why is that correct or not correct? How would you answer those folks?
Sure.
Good question.
So I think the first thing we have to grapple with, in fact, let me read that quote before I even get started. So it's from William Downing. It's from his excellent book, An Introduction to Biblical Hermeneutics.
This is what Dr. Downing said. And again, if you ever heard William Downing speak, like he pulls no punches and sometimes I think he can oversell some things. But this is what he said. And I think he's not far off.
Quote, the Christian ministry is an instructional ministry, didactic, evangelistic, polemic and apologetic. The minister's task is not only to declare the gospel, but to educate the congregation. Sitting under a sound, well-rounded ministry in the ordinary church services should be a biblical and doctrinal education.
If not, then there is necessarily a given amount of failure in the very nature of that ministry itself. Sitting under a godly expository ministry for several years ought to approach the character of a seminary education.
So like I said, little bit of oversell, I think. But I don't think he's wrong. And here's why I don't think he's wrong. I don't think he's wrong because if you have sat under a faithful Bible teaching, Bible preaching, gospel honoring ministry, you should have some facility with a broad sweep of biblical doctrine.
You know, in my own week to week preparation, whether I'm doing a series like what we're doing with Simple Church 2 or like what we're going to be doing in November when we get back to Genesis and we look at the life of Abraham.
In those things as I'm preparing, one of the things I'm thinking about is what doctrine is in this passage? What truth about God is here? And depending on whether it's important to the passage or it's secondary to the passage, I will more than likely address it in the sermon.
So you may not read, I'm going to pull off one of my systematic theologies here, you may not read something as big as this is Volume 2 of Beaky and Smalley's Reformed Systematic Theology. I want to say this covers God in Christ, man in Christ, okay.
So you're probably not going to read something as big as that. But if you've been exposed to a faithful ministry over time, those themes should be familiar to you. And so to the person who says that sounds kind of intense, well, first of all, you're making an assumption, which is that you're going to basically get a seminary lecture.
Excuse me, you're going to get a seminary lecture in every message, didn't say that. What we said is over time, you should be as familiar enough with the broad sweep of biblical doctrine because as these things come up in the text, a faithful expositor is bringing them out that by the time you sat under that for 5, 10, forget 5, 10, like a year, two years, you think, wow, I'm learning more about this Bible than I ever thought was in there because you're spending more and more and more time in the text.
And so I think that's my answer to the person who says that number one, we're not saying this happens overnight. And number two, we're not saying you're now signing up for a Master of Divinity degree, but we are saying that as we are faithfully expounding the word of God, there should be an awareness of even the fundamentals of Christian doctrine and a willingness to pursue that more and more over time.
Amen. Amen. About that.
It's been one of my joys to sit under the teaching and, and even for my own spiritual health, you know, coming to know the doctrine that just points me to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, and then seeing fellow members and family and friends feel and hear and see the same thing.
It's just beautiful.
You know, God's word is inexhaustible. We could study it for years and still be fed. And so, you know, we know that Bible doctrine is indispensable part of the church, of its life and a witness and that churches must be committed to its pursuit, which was your big idea.
So, could you expand on that just a little bit more, just how important, you know, doctrine is for the church?
Well, absolutely. Like I said on Sunday, it's not the only thing we do, right? But it's a very integral part of what we do. And to the degree that we are committing ourselves to the exploration of and understanding of and heart belief in biblical doctrine, like the sky's the limit in terms of the benefit it has for us.
I think that if a church says we don't care about doctrine, it's essentially like having a immunodeficiency. You know what I mean when I use that phrase? Like you basically got an immune system that's compromised.
The job of the immune system in your body is that it wards off disease and, you know, if your immune system is working well, it's fighting off illness. Well, biblical doctrine kind of functions as the immune system for the church.
It keeps out unhealthy, not just ideas, but unhealthy practice as well. And I think that's what a lot of people forget. We think that, you know, we can divorce our practice from what we believe. And I want to say, actually, what you believe influences your practice.
Yeah, it's out of your convictions that you do certain things. So if I have a conviction that it is a good thing, let's just use a human example. If my conviction is good for me to spend time with my wife, well, that's going to translate in spending time with my wife before the action happens.
There's a mental commitment that says, I believe this is a good thing. So even if I have stuff I could be doing in that time, this is so important, I'm going to devote time and effort to this. And it's the same with biblical doctrine in the church.
If a church doesn't have doctrinal commitments, it will be swayed left and right. And I didn't say that. That's what Paul says. Ephesians chapter 4, he says that, you know, so that we will no longer be children tossed here and there by every wind of doctrine.
If you don't have doctrinal commitments, then when it comes time for practice, you just do anything that works. And we've seen that in the last 50 to 60 years in this country. And we saw it in my country, the United Kingdom as well.
We've seen it where people don't have solid doctrinal convictions. And so when this good sounding idea comes along, they just roll over like bowling pins. Rather than, no, I believe this. And because I believe this, I'm standing here.
Now you can go stand over there, metaphorically speaking, but I'm here. But that doesn't happen if you don't have some convictions. And where do we get those convictions? From the doctrines and the teachings of the word of God.
Absolutely.
What do you say to someone who says, I'm not doctrinal, I'm just about relationship?
I'm trying to find a polite way to answer that one. The push for relationships over doctrine in recent years is something that I will never understand.
I just don't.
And here's why. Relationships with who? Again, you're assuming that you have a perfect understanding of how all this works. And I want to say to people who say that, I don't think you quite understand how this Christianity thing works.
You see, you wouldn't know that there was a thing called, well, this is assuming the person actually believes in the church. That's a whole other conversation. But let's assume this person does believe in the church.
How would you know what the church is? How do you know when a church is healthy versus when a church is not healthy? How do you know how to conduct yourselves in those relationships? That's going to be actually the final week of this series.
We're going to have a message on what does life in the church look like? Because the Bible even addresses that question.
The Bible assumes that you can know what life in the church looks like. And here's the thing. The person who says, well, I'm just about relationships. I'm not about doctrine.
Okay.
Here's what's going to end up happening. And I've seen it happen time and time again. What ends up happening is the person who says that basically develops a me-centered view of relationships, not a God-centered view of relationships.
Hmm.
So what ends up happening is it just becomes about how many people I can form relationships with and how many people can make me happy rather than what you see as a biblical emphasis, which is actually the relationships we have are for the purpose of discipleship and for the purpose of me serving my brothers and sisters.
That's the real purpose of Christian relationships. And again, to understand how those works, you need biblical doctrine. That's Paul's point. You know, you read Paul. Paul says a lot about, you know, relationships and life in the church and all the time it's grounded in biblical truth.
You know, we can't just have this almost therapeutic understanding of how this works and then wonder why we hit so many problems. Like, no, it's not about you and it's not about you feeling like, oh, I found my people and I belong.
That's important, but that's a by-product of I found my people because we all believe the same things.
We're all committed to the same truth. It's if I can grab my Bible real quick. Actually, Logos is what Logos is for. Which I don't have open, but it won't take me a second. In Philippians chapter one, Paul says something that I think in relation to this question of relationships versus doctrine, I think is really helpful.
So Philippians chapter one, he's writing to these Christians. There's some speculation that the church is predominantly female. I don't know 100 of that's accurate, but I think it's fascinating to consider, to be sure.
And in Philippians chapter one, if I can now share my screen. And for the benefit of those of you listening to the audio version of this, I am pulling up Philippians chapter one. So hopefully you've got your Bible nearby.
A nice new Logos 10, looking very, very nice. By the way, Eddie, did you get Logos 10?
Yeah, I did.
Yeah. Good man. Always want to be up to date with the rest of stuff. So here we are. My trusty Christian standard Bible. Philippians chapter one. In fact, let's get that right in the middle. Philippians chapter one.
And so that people watching this can actually see that. I'm gonna boost that up right there. So Philippians chapter one, look at verse 27 with me for a moment. Paul says, just one thing. As citizens of heaven, I love the way the CSB translates that.
As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then whether I come to see you or I'm absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending, or some translations will have it striving together for the faith of the gospel, not being frightened by your opponents, in any way.
So how is it that Paul says that we live a life and the your here is plural. So to the church, he says, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Well, the way you do that is by standing firm. It's another color.
We'll give her that one. It's by standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel. Oh, that's a doctrinal issue right there.
How is it that we forge relationships together as God's people? It's by our shared commitment to biblical truth. If that's not happening, then you don't have the ability to stand firm together. So actually, it's not doctrine versus relationships.
It's a right understanding of doctrine that helps me know who God's true people are. And that helps me to form relationships with those people.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I would think, you know, if someone says that to me, I'd say, thank you for telling me about your doctrine.
It is a doctrine.
And I think you've made a really good point. I think a lot of people miss, which is that everybody has a doctrine.
Nobody can say I am a doctrinal or doctrinal. Like I don't have doctrine. No, everybody's got doctrine. The question is, is your doctrine sound or not sound? That's the real question.
Sound doctrine is what really, really matters. So you in your sermon, you had three mandates, you know, related to Bible doctrine that should lead to the church's health and vibrancy. And in that same line of thought, you know, everyone believes in a doctrine or a type of doctrine, but why can't we just believe doctrine according to our reason?
Because nothing in the church functions on the basis of our reason. That's a foundation. The church is a product of divine revelation. I think sometimes we miss that. Like this wasn't just something that, you know, people thought, oh, this is a good idea.
We all seem to believe the same things. Let's form these societies we call local churches. Like that's not how that happens. Like when we read the Bible, the Bible makes it very clear that the church is Jesus's idea.
So Matthew chapter 16, verse 18, Jesus says, I will build my church. Like this is God's idea. And if we respect the fact that it is God's idea, that God is the one who builds the church, then we can't say, well, human reason is how we build the church or human reason is, you know, how we determine things.
Now, does the Bible address every single thing that could be addressed? No, it's not really designed to do that. In fact, if I can pull this up again, this is how our fathers in the faith talked about this.
And I think it's helpful for us to consider this. So if I can open up again to Logos. And we're not being sponsored by Logos, folks, by the way. I just like Logos.
It's really great.
I had someone text me this video, like, man, you mentioned Logos a lot. I'm like, I don't know, it's useful. If they do a good job, I'll tell them they're doing a good job. So here we are. So, oh, it's actually the right section.
I didn't plan that, but here we are. So in the 1689 London Baptist Confession, which, again, is a helpful summary of what God's people believe on, again, matters of essential doctrine. Again, it's a human document, so it's not perfect, but I think it's a very good document as far as it goes.
Here's what the 1689 says about this. I think it's helpful. So they say, 1 -6, that the whole counsel of God concerning everything essential for his own glory and man's salvation, faith, and life is either explicitly stated or by necessary inference contained in the Holy Scriptures.
Nothing is ever to be added to the Scriptures, either by new revelation of the Spirit, sorry, Pentecostal friends, or by human traditions. Sorry, Roman Catholic friends. Nevertheless, now this is where they, again, they're very precise.
We acknowledge that the inward illumination of the Spirit of God is necessary for a saving understanding of what is revealed in the Word. We recognize that some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church are common to human actions and organizations and are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian wisdom, following the general rules of the Word, which must always be observed.
So it's not that there aren't things that we have to kind of say, you know what, this is just common sense. So for example, nowhere in the Bible does it say we should sit during worship, that we should have pews or chairs.
But common sense tells you if you stand for an hour and a half or almost two hours, if you come to one of our services, like people are going to be tired and they're probably not going to worship as well.
Might be helpful for us to have somewhere to sit. Technically speaking, there's nowhere in the Bible that says you should have a pulpit in the church. I think there are many practical reasons for having one.
But again, there's nowhere in the Bible that says you should have that. But we recognize it might be a good idea if a preacher didn't have to juggle like three gazillion notes and an open Bible in his hand during a service.
So let's create a platform where he can hold it. Nowhere in the Bible says a building should have speakers or microphones or air conditioning, but we all recognize all these things are useful. Like a confession says, the light of nature tells us good idea.
Christian wisdom tells us good idea. So we're not saying that there's no place for human reason. However, what we are saying is when it comes to fundamental matters of Christian doctrine, we don't start with human reason.
We start with what the word of God says, and we exhaust everything the word of God has.
To say.
And then when we have done our best to exhaust the application of biblical principles, then we can have a conversation about, okay, we've done everything we can biblically. We may need to think through one or two other things.
So again, it's not that there's no place for reason. It's simply that reason is not in the driver's seat, as it were. It's a servant to the word of God. Hmm.
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you, Kofi. So it's not just because of reason. Well, what if we feel strongly about an idea or a particular doctrine? And in particular, at this point, you were talking about romanticism.
And so can you go into that a little bit? Well, what does that even mean, romanticism?
Ooh, child, how long do you have? We could be here for a few hours talking about romanticism and its effect on not just the church, but just society at large. Now, most of us aren't historians, which I think is bad.
I think if you want to understand the world you live in, you need to understand everything that happened before you got here. And romanticism is one of those things that has affected the church. And often Christians don't talk about it.
We talk much more about rationalism because that led directly to theological liberalism, which we're still dealing with in the 21st century. But romanticism, I think, is kind of a sleeper and people don't talk about it.
But if you know the history of romanticism, like I said in the sermon on Sunday, essentially romanticism said, like, yes, the Enlightenment was right. This whole God, Jesus, divine revelation deal make too much of that.
But then they said the Enlightenment, which is another big move response to the Reformation, essentially said, the Enlightenment went too far. The Enlightenment basically said human reason. You know, once human reason is enlightened, hence the Enlightenment, we then shake off the shackles of religious repression.
And we can actually think and be logical and all the rest of it. Well, the romanticists began to look at that and said, too much about that. Like the internal experience is what matters. And, you know, it started primarily as a movement in the arts.
So how familiar you are with the poem Daffodils?
Not at all.
Eddie, you disappoint me. I thought you're more cultured than that. So Henry, Henry Wordsworth Longfellow, he had a famous poem, I wandered lonely as a cloud. And on it goes basically saying, you know, I became as free as a daffodil.
Essentially, it was a classic example of romanticism. You know, now romanticism wasn't all bad. It gave us some really great art and some really great poetry. I think Daffodils is actually a really nice poem as it goes.
But with that came a worldview and the worldview basically said the internal and the emotional is what's most important. Does that sound like something we hear in 2022 all the time now?
Oh, yeah.
Like we're obsessed with and again, there's a good way and a bad way to think about this. Like, you know, we're obsessed with the subject of mental health. I was talking with a lady in our church after the sermon on Sunday.
She made a point of the fact that we're always talking about mental health more than ever. And I don't think that's necessarily an entirely bad thing. But here's where I think it can become a bad thing.
That becomes the measure of whether you do something or not, or whether something is true or not, or whether something is valuable or not. Does it protect my mental health?
And I want to say, your emotions are a terrible guide for just about anything.
Now, I don't say that to say that human reason is a great guide by itself. It's not either. Like man, Jesus said, man is not lived by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
Like that's how we're supposed to live. But I think in this day and age, it needs to be said that our emotions tend to be the probably the most dangerous way to think. Because we think, okay, as long as it makes me feel good emotionally, it makes me feel emotionally.
And again, I'm not saying that we are, we don't care about the emotions, that we don't think emotions are important. No, God made us with healthy emotions. In fact, I wasn't planning this, but sorry, folks, if you see my arm there.
I just so happened to have from a few months ago when I was prepping a series and I just left it there. An excellent book on the subject of emotions. Feeling and Faith. I'm not sure if you can see that on camera.
I can pull that up.
There you go. Feelings and Faith. Cultivating Godly Emotions in the Christian Life by Brian S. Borgman.
Cool.
Pastor out in Minden, Nevada. Great guy, I listen to his preaching all the time. Emotions aren't bad. We want to cultivate godly emotions. But we don't start with our emotions. I don't know if we'll get another chance.
I might just tackle this now. The Puritans, who I love deeply, I think personally, the greatest generation of Christians since the apostles, but that's just me. The Puritans talked about the human soul, the internal part of us.
And they said that the internal part of us is made up of the mind, the faculties of the mind, the will and the affections. The mind is the seat of our understanding. The will is the seat of our decision making.
And the affections are the seat of our desires. And what they said was that the affections basically deal with six areas. Some have called this the faculty psychology of the Puritans. And I think there's something to that.
So you have what you love and what you hate. Those are the, as we would consider, the base desires. They're the foundational desires. So think of it like this. You've got what you love and what you hate.
Well, let's start with what you love. If you love something, when it's far away from you, that's expressed as desire. So, and again, that desire can be broad. There's all kinds of ways we think about that.
So I'll use an example. I was away recently. I was at a conference. And at one point, I really missed my wife and my son. Because I love my wife and my son. And so since they weren't near, what ended up happening was I had a desire to see them.
Why?
Because they're far away.
I was in LA. They were in Medford. And when I got home and they came to pick me up at the airport, now I didn't experience desire. I experienced delight. I was really happy to see my wife and kids. And so the parents said there is love.
When love is focused on something far away, that's desire. When love receives the object of its desire, that's delight. Well, let's talk about hate. Well, hate or something we dislike, when it's far away and we think about that, what do we think?
Fear.
So I've got a dental appointment coming up October 31st. I'm really not looking forward to it. It's a checkup after my dental surgery at the beginning of the year. So it's got to be done. Am I looking forward to that?
No.
I'm kind of fearing. So that's fear when it's far away. And when it comes close to you, I mean, it might be a little melodramatic because I actually like my dentist, but there's sorrow. You're like, oh, great.
It's here now. Now, why do I go into all of that? Because all of that is predicated on your mind. You need to actually have an understanding of what it is that you love and hate. So that your will can then be inclined towards that.
And then your affections will follow. The problem is we've kind of inverted that and then cut off the mind entirely in the 21st century. So basically we start with how does this make me feel? If it makes me feel this, then I tell my will.
If metaphorically speaking, we're having a conversation. I tell my will, we're going to do that. And in most cases, we're actively encouraged not to over. Most of the time we use, we say, don't overthink things.
No, it's true. You can overthink things to a degree. But what most people generally mean is don't think about that. Just like go with the flow. Do what feels good to you. It's like, no, don't do what feels good to you.
Actually, think about this. And this is where, again, that's why the soul needs the word of God. The word of God is what puts the mind, the will, and the affections in the right frame. It puts it in the right gear.
So you can't just say, well, I'm going to run with my emotions. Let my emotions tell me what to do. Actually, what you need is the word of God, which by the way, in the fall, the mind, will, and affections are completely affected.
So where we once had knowledge of God, we now have ignorance in the mind. In the will, where our will was once inclined to do God's will, our will is now inclined to do evil. And our affections are no longer affections for good, but they're affections for that which is not good.
So all three of those things, the word of God is what shines light upon the mind, the will, and the affections to give us a truly organized mind, a truly God-desiring will, and true God-desiring affections.
But that can't happen without the word of God. That's where I was going with all of that.
Yeah, yeah.
Otherwise, if you don't have that, your emotions, your affect, well, I would say your emotions are the result of your affections. Your affections are going to be out of order, which means your emotions are out of order.
And if you put those in the driving seat, all I can say to you is good luck. It won't end well for you.
Man, that's so intense. It just makes me so grateful for God's word that that's what sets us right, keeps us in the straight line, you know? So we can't build our doctrine on our mind alone, our will alone, our affections alone, and so on.
And so it just highlights just how amazing God's word is and how desperately we need it.
Absolutely, absolutely.
That's a lot of doctrine, man. How would you encourage someone to start getting into doctrine? I mean, assuming they've never had it, which I wouldn't agree with, but still, where would you encourage someone to start when they're going into any type of doctrine, I guess?
I think if somebody's just getting started, I'd say, first of all, this is why you need to plug into a Bible-believing, Bible-teaching church. I mean, the reality is... Oh man, this is gonna sound so bad, but I'm gonna say it anyway.
Not all churches are built equal. Let's just call a spade a spade. Not all churches are built equal. Some churches are really great places because they value the word of God. They value the life of the body.
They value what we're going to talk about next week, the means of grace. Those are good churches. And I'm not gonna say they don't exist. No, they're out there.
Praise God for it.
And then you get some churches where you can tell they just don't care. And one of the great pains in my life is when I see people who are in a church that I know they're not getting the word of God. I know they're not being exposed to some of these matters of biblical truth and doctrine and teaching from God's word.
I know they're not. And then they want to tell me, but I know we're not getting that. But I like this other thing about the church. The people are really nice. They've got great programs. They meet in the morning, not the afternoon.
Okay, slight dig. I would love to meet in the morning again, but it is what it is. In God's providence, we meet in the afternoon. But okay, are those the things that you should think about when you're picking a church?
No, find a church where you're going to get the most word of God. And I can say from personal experience, having been in an environment where on paper, they said we believed in the preaching and teaching of God's word.
And then in practice, they didn't. I've been there firsthand. It is one of the most spiritually detrimental things, period. Let's forget about learning about doctrine. Just for your own spiritual life and health.
Bad idea. Forget who said it, but life is too short to be in a bad church.
Yeah, I've heard that before.
Yeah, so first things first, find a bible teaching, bible believing, gospel believing church. Plug yourself into that church. And as you plug yourself into that church, excuse me, I'm kind of bleeding into my sermon from two weeks from now because we're going to talk about what is preaching.
One of the things I will say is this, our culture, our church culture in the last however long it's been, has really encouraged people to come to church and be passive listeners of sermons. Well, I'm going to say if you want to grow in your understanding of doctrine, don't be a passive listener, be an active listener.
If you want to know more about that, there's an excellent book called Expository Listening by Ken Ramey. He basically wrote that book to help his church members listen to preaching better. Which isn't a new concept.
If you read the Puritans, they had a lot to say about how to listen to preaching. Because if you're going to learn biblical doctrine, I would argue that the primary place God has designed us to learn that is in the local church.
Like we said on Sunday, 1 Timothy chapter 3, the church is the pillar and the foundation of the truth. So get into a good church, faithfully listening to the preaching and teaching of God's word in that church, and then speak to those who are involved in teaching and say, when you hear stuff that is new or something you don't understand, go to them and ask, hey, where can I get some resources on what you've just mentioned?
Let that happen in the context of the church. Listen, I love the internet. I love books. I mean, I have Logos. I won't embarrass myself by saying how many books I have in Logos. It's a lot. But books and I love conferences, all these things that we have, podcasts, YouTube videos, they're great as they go.
And I'm going to say they ought to be supplemental because the local church is the place God has said he will bless in the preaching and teaching of his word. So primarily start with your local church.
Go to your elders and say, hey, you mentioned this in the sermon. Where can I study more about that? Can you help me dig in a little deeper? Let that be a healthy place for you. Let that be like a greenhouse.
You know what a greenhouse is, Eddie?
Where we grow plants and stuff. Let that be the greenhouse for you. Before you start branching out into reading this and doing like, let those who are tasked with Hebrews 13, 17, you know, they're told to keep watch over your souls.
Well, part of that is through their doctrine. So let them help you in some of that. I mean, that would be my starter kit for somebody who's completely new to this. Find the best Bible teaching church you can find.
Sit under the ministry of the word in that church and talk to those who are tasked with teaching about where you can start to dig in deeper.
Yeah, that's really helpful. I guess what? So, you know, we've gone through or we were going through a systematic theology and it's got different doctrinal categories. And, you know, it's really interesting to learn about a lot of them.
But for somebody who's new, is there a particular doctrine that you would encourage them to start with?
Oh, that's a tough one. There's two places you can go with this and different systematic theologies. If you read them, they'll go different ways with this. Either start with the doctrine of God or the doctrine of scripture.
I personally, I favor the doctrine of scripture and here's why. Before we can talk about what the Bible tells us about God, we need to establish what this book is. So if I think about it, it's like if I come to you and say, hey, you need to listen to so and so.
I know you to be a discerning person. Probably the first person question you're going to ask me is, why should I listen to them? I mean, if you're a sensible person, you're just going to say, oh, OK, and then just go off and you don't know who I'm telling you to go listen to.
Yeah, who is that and why?
Yes, exactly. Like who that is and why am I wasting my time? You should ask that question. Well, it's the same thing with biblical doctrine. I would say before we try and assume, OK, or not assume, before we try to dig into, OK, the Bible says this about God.
Let's ask the question, what is this book called the Bible? Like what are its marks? Why should I trust this book over the Quran? Or why should I trust this over the Bhagavad Gita or Bhagavad Gita or Vita?
Let's get that wrong. I can't pronounce it. Um, the Hindu book. Why should I read it over this? Why should I trust this over the Book of Mormon? Like, why not? Well, that inquires kind that kind of requires, excuse me, knowing a little bit about the nature of the Bible.
That's why if you remember when we were reading Beaky and Smalley, um, the first volume, the first volume is devoted to the Doctrine of Revelation and the Doctrine of Scripture, because we need to establish that God has spoken and that he's spoken in his word.
And then from there, we can start to have conversations about doctrine. And I would say the most fundamental thing we can ask about is who is God and why does that matter? So Doctrine of Scripture followed by the Doctrine of God would be my answer.
So back to the basics.
Always back to the basics.
So awesome.
Um, so one of the things that you said during your sermon was that the church protects doctrine through faithful pastors and teachers, and that's their primary responsibility. But then you said that people in the pew also protect sound doctrine, which is in the church, not just the few.
And so how would you respond to someone who would pretty much just say, actually, no, it's just the elders and just the teachers.
What would you say to that?
I think to someone who says that, I think you misunderstand what a church is. And I think it's a good thing you bring that up because I hear that fairly regularly, even for people you should know better.
The reality is a church is not just its leadership. That's the error that Roman Catholicism makes. If you actually understand Roman Catholicism and its teaching of the church, the church isn't, you know, your little old grandma who goes to mass every Sunday.
She's not the church. The church is the Pope and the bishops. Yeah, the Pope and the bishops, basically. Like they are the church. Well, no, we're not Roman Catholics. Thank heavens for the Reformation.
We are Protestants. We believe in the priesthood of all believers. The church is made up of, yes, faithful leaders and elders and those who assist those leaders in service. We call them deacons. But it's also made up of just everyday people.
And all of us have a role to play in the life of the church, period. Before we even talk about the defensive doctrine. Like when you read the New Testament, the New Testament is very clear. There are no such things as just consumers in the church.
You know, people who turn up, who sit in a pew, they probably wouldn't have sat in pews, but you get the idea. People turn up, sit down, basically receive and go their merry way. Now, do I believe that everybody in the church is in the ministry in the formal sense of the word?
No, actually, I don't believe that's God's will, period. I believe that we have what we call the doctrine of vocation, which is that God calls us in a variety of areas. So the mother who's at home with her children, that's a calling from God.
And, you know, let's see, you got a husband who... I'm trying to pick a job that's not in our church. Businessman, you know, he's a businessman. That's his vocation from God, and he should pursue that with excellence.
He's pursued that to the glory of God. So we're not saying that, okay, your entire life just becomes a church, you don't do anything else. Never said that. What we do mean is that every believer has a responsibility to know the truth of God's word and to be able to defend that truth.
How that looks will look different from person to person. Some will be more gifted than others. We understand that. But it's the responsibility of the church corporately, not just its leadership, to believe and to defend and to...
The word I'm looking for just escaped me. Believe, defend, and to cherish these doctrines. That's why when you become a member of our church, for instance, we very clearly spell out what our doctrine is.
Because we want you to be clear about what it is that you are joining. We're not saying that you necessarily have to agree with us in every area. But you are saying when you become a member of this church that these doctrines and these truths are precious to me, I love them, and I will defend them.
And so it's not just, again, leaders who are charged with this. Yes, they have, I would argue, the bulk of the responsibility because they're the ones who are preaching and teaching and faithfully expounding the scriptures, but they don't have the sole responsibility.
That is the entire body's work.
So I do have a question from one of our members.
Here's the question.
It is,.
As the acting pastor of RBF, what doctrines would you consider secondary issues that someone can hold to and still be members of our church, like paedo-baptism, for example? And what doctrines, like the Trinity, would you absolutely consider non-negotiable?
That's funny. We thought about this in our growth group this past Wednesday. So I personally, and not everyone's a big believer in this, but I am. I would advocate for what Dr. Albert Muller famously called theological triage.
Let me see if I still have my diagram. I have a diagram I did on this years ago, or I found years ago.
So this is actually a really helpful way of thinking about this.
Oh, nice.
So theological triage. This is from another church, but I think they've pretty much got it where I would put some of these things. So there are what we will call first level or primary doctrines. When I did it, I actually drew a version of this for our home group on Wednesday, and I had it flipped, but this worked just as well.
So there are certain core doctrines I think we can't argue about. And I think the list that they have up on screen is a very helpful one. So who Christ is, that he is both God and man, truly God and truly man.
Could you zoom in a little bit?
There you go.
Perfect.
So the sinfulness of man, original sin, the death, burial, and bodily resurrection of Jesus. If I'm being very clear, that's part of the gospel. So you can't get rid of that. Justification by faith alone.
I'm sorry, to me, that's a primary doctrine. So I can't be friends with those who reject that doctrine. Like, sorry, not going to happen. But I can't consider you a Christian if you know this doctrine and you reject it.
So that's another conversation for another time. The Trinity. Yeah, I'll put that in there. I would add the virgin birth, the authority of the scriptures, the inheritance and infallible word of God. Yeah.
As this diagram says, these are fundamental and essential truths of the Christian faith. You can't believe these. You can't not believe these and be a Christian.
Now let's talk secondary.
Now,.
Again, this is, I assume you're talking about just somebody who is, um, wants to become a member. They're not in leadership. I would say with leadership, you want as much agreement as humanly possible.
Because you've all got to teach. So you've got to teach from the same consistent world. Now, so let me make that caveat. But for membership, I think this is helpful. So the way I describe secondary issues is we disagree enough that we can't go to church together, but we agree enough that we're both going to heaven together.
That's helpful.
So for example, I have friends who are Presbyterians. They have a different polity of the church compared to me. I love my Presbyterian brethren.
They're believers.
We enjoy fellowship together in so many other areas, but chances are, given that we are committed to independency, broadly speaking, and they are committed to what's called connectionalism in their view of the church, probably not going to be planting a church together anytime soon.
Um,.
The ordinances,.
I would say an example of this. So could a paedo-baptist be a member of Redeemer Bible Fellowship? They could, but they're also consenting to the fact that we, as a church in our teaching position, don't practice that.
Right.
So you might have to think about that one.
You know,.
We could differ on, I'm trying to think of a second way, is that secondary where we can't fellowship together? Well, baptism we've mentioned. So baptism would be a big one. Church government would be a big one.
So this chart here says, some identify that theological systems, i .e. Calvinism,.
Arminianism,.
Dispensations versus covenantalism can also be considered in this. Yeah, from a membership perspective, I think from leadership, you want to be a little more clear on some of those. Um, that's fine. And then there are tertiary issues.
Tertiary issues are, we can debate these and still be in the same church, and it'll be just fine.
So for example, they put up on their views on creation. Now I am a strict six day creationist. If you have, if you don't believe me, go back and listen to the second sermon in our Genesis series here on this YouTube channel.
I am a strict six day creationist. Do I think that you're not a Christian if you hold to a,.
What's called an old earth view?
No, I think you're confused, but I don't think you're not a Christian. Or millennial views. I am a pre-millennialist. I teach from that perspective. My, I have lots of all male friends. I have even a few post-male friends.
Um, we don't necessarily agree on this subject, but okay. Um, how you understand, for example, I'm trying to think of a difficult Bible text. Hebrew chapter six. Within the pale of orthodoxy, there are differing views on Hebrew six, and we can agree to disagree.
Or Romans chapter seven. You know, the person that Paul's speaking about there, is that a Christian or a non-Christian or something else? You know, who wrote Hebrews? I personally don't think Paul wrote Hebrews.
I have had pastors who did think Paul wrote Hebrews. It is what it is. Um, like we can agree to disagree. Because again, these are, come back to our little diagram here. They're grounds for fruitful discussion and debate, but they shouldn't threaten the fellowship of a local church.
So I basically think in this sort of way, when I think about doctrine and membership in our church. So you can be a member of our church and disagree in some of these areas. And you will still love you as a member, but just know that from a teaching perspective, we're not going to be on the same page and that's okay.
Provided that you're willing to accept that this is where we come from. That's why we often talk about the teaching position of the church, because that's just where from a teaching perspective, we would be coming from.
That's very different to, um, what you must believe to be a Christian. Really the requirement to be a member is to be, the requirements for being a Christian. So chances are, if someone walks into our church and said, you know what?
I've heard about this Trinity deal, but I don't believe in the Trinity. Not going to be a member.
It ain't happening. Or I've heard about this, um, virgin birth deal. And that sounds like nonsense to me. One, we're going to have some much more serious conversations. And two, you're not becoming a member.
You can come to me and say, you know, I'm not sure where I land on the subject of infant baptism or believers baptism. And I'll sit there and tell you what our church's stance is. And also say, you're welcome to come here.
Just know that we are going to teach this, not that. And so in answering that question, I would say that obviously in leadership, we want as much unanimity, if not total unanimity on statement of faith.
And for membership, there's a little bit more flexibility depending on the nature of the doctrine.
Well, thank you ever submitted that question. Um, I hope that's helpful to you.
Awesome.
Thanks for answering that. Um, so that's really interesting. So that, that graph, that diagram is going to be really helpful. And so let's go on to our next subject real quick. In regards to that diagram, where would you put, uh, you know, our confessions of faith?
Cause there's, I know we hold to one, but there's a range of them. Um, how are they used in light of that diagram? Are they primary, secondary, tertiary?
So a confession of faith does is a confession of faith essentially says, if you read a confession rightly, it tells you what's primary, what's secondary, what's tertiary. So regardless of whether you hold to the new Hampshire, like we do, or you hold to the 1689, like I kind of do personally, or like my Presbyterian friends, you hold to the Westminster or my Dutch reform friends, you hold to the three forms of unity.
You read all of them. Here's a classic example. They all agree on the doctrine of God. So if you come back to our little diagram that we have up here, pull it up again. If you look at our little diagram, when it comes to the doctrine of God, all in agreement.
But it's interesting when you read those confessions, even our confession, technically speaking, when you read it, it leaves a lot of leeway for some of these things here. From a teaching perspective, it gives us some great boundaries.
That's why we say our church, we have a statement of faith for coming into membership. And we have a confession as a teaching position for anybody who's going to teach in our church. And we say for our confession, you have to a hundred percent agree with it.
Yeah, there's a lot of room.
Not to me.
And the reason I say that is, again, from a teaching perspective, you want there to be unanimity. You want there to be unity of thought. You don't want to come in and have somebody who's, I've got a view on.
So for example, and again, your confession is not going to define for you everything. There are some things you're going to have to say, we need to write a position paper or kind of clearly define where we are with this.
So for instance, charismatic gifts. Our church is cessationist. So chances are, if you still there.
So chances are, if you come to our church and you want to occupy a leadership position and you say, well, I, I'm continuationist. We probably won't let you into leadership because that has direct implications for how you do things in church.
So, sorry, probably not going to let you in. But the reason we can do that is if you read our confession, it's very clear that we believe that God has spoken in the scriptures and that he's spoken finally in the scriptures.
So there's no room for continuing revelation. So can you see how having a confession allows for both broadness because it doesn't deal with everything. And yet from a teaching perspective, it creates specificity, which is what you want.
You want your, all your teachers and all the people who have spiritual authority in that way to be on the same page. So that would be my answer to that question.
Yeah, I think all the confessions are pretty helpful to understand the doctrine, you know, which is awesome. But to plug our confession, I like it even more because of the sort of devotional language that it has regarding Christ and his sovereignty.
And so, yeah, go New Hampshire.
Yes, go New Hampshire.
Let's talk a little bit about, you know, in regards to confessions and creeds. Oh, man, just like, just like the person says, well, I don't believe in Bible doctrine. I believe in relationship. You know, well, you gave an answer to that example.
Well, how would you, you know, answer someone who says, well, I believe no creed but Christ.
Nice creed.
Yeah, that's the answer to that question. Like, nice creed, you know. And by the way, people don't, when people say that, more often than not, they don't know where that came from.
That's Spurgeon?
That came, sorry? Nope, Spurgeon didn't say that.
Not Spurgeon.
Spurgeon was a 1989 guy.
He has another quote in regards to that, that people take out of context. And I don't remember what it was.
Well, people take Spurgeon out of context, left and right, so.
Yeah, poor man. But here's, allow me to explain what I think. Well, not what I think, what I know to be the origin of that phrase, no creed but Christ. No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible. That comes from something called the Restoration Movement.
The Restoration Movement is best expressed in our modern day in what's called the Church of Christ Movement. So for those of you who are familiar with the Church of Christ, they have a number of distinctives.
I'll name two of them that are probably the most obvious. So the Church of Christ don't believe in instrumental music in worship. So if you go to them, we have one in our town. You can go watch their live streams, I have.
They sing a lot of the songs that we all sing, but they sing them without instrumentation because they believe the Bible does not allow for instruments in worship. And they also believe that baptism is necessary for salvation.
Do you know why they believe both those things? They believe both those things. Because they say, well, we read the Bible. Divorce from what everyone else says. We just read our Bibles by ourselves. And the Bible says this.
So they will say, well, first Peter 3 .21. Now baptism is now corresponds to this, saves you. Oh, well, that's what it says. So we believe you need to be baptized to be saved. They'll say, well, you read the New Testament.
I've had Church of Christ people tell me this.
You read the New Testament.
And you don't see musical instrumentation in the New Testament. So we don't believe in musical instrumentation. It's a very flat way of reading the Bible. There's no comparing scripture with scripture.
There's no understanding of, okay, hold on. Some of this stuff is assumed in the Old Testament and carried into the new. There's none of that. There's just, if the Bible doesn't say a chapter and verse, I don't believe it.
And I want to say, when we think about theology, we have to be a little more nuanced than that. Because there are things that the Bible doesn't explicitly say that we have to look at the totality of scriptural teaching, pull our arms around it together, and then say, okay, in light of all of these different threads of truth, we come to these conclusions.
So to the person who says, there's no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible. The reality is even you don't live that way. Because what you just told me is a creedal statement. And if we start to ask some questions, I say, okay, what do you believe about this?
You're going to give me some answers. You're now at that point doing creedal and confessional theology. Just the difference is, your creedal or confessional theology comes from you. And I want to say, well, mine comes from the scripture.
Oh, and I've got all these people in the church who agree with me. And so that's how I'd answer that, that you're honestly, you're doing creeds and confessions. You're just not doing them in the most healthy way possible, which is reading the scripture and reading the scripture together with all of God's people.
And it's interesting to think about that God is consistent with his theology and doctrine all throughout the ages, since the first century. And we can look back and be like, oh, God has been speaking this whole time.
No, one of my favorite books on, set of books on church history by Nick Needham, who's a pastor in the UK, 2000 Years of Christ Power.
Yes.
Great way of thinking about the history of the church. That for 2000 years, God has been at work in raising up and teaching his people.
The truths of the faith.
And in raising up people to defend those truths and to articulate those truths. I think we would be wise to listen to them a little more. They're not infallible. They're not inerrant. Only the Bible is infallible and inerrant.
And yet the Holy Spirit was at work all that time. If what Jesus said is true and I will build my church, then that means then he builds his church through the faithful proclamation of other godly people.
And we would do well to remember that.
Yeah, absolutely. So I think this is the final question I have, because I'll probably run out after this one. But in light, in regard to, you know, confessions and creeds, what are some helpful ways to think about them?
And what are some unhelpful ways to think about them? Because I've heard of things like, you know, creeds and confessions are your guardrails. But then I've also heard that creeds and confessions are like your, they're like your Pope.
You know, don't do anything outside of what the Pope says. So can you shine a little light on those two aspects?
And I mean, this is a, you need a whole show just to talk about this.
So here's the kind of stance I have come to take when it comes to creeds and confessions. Creeds and confessions are like your perimeter fence. Let's say you own a plot of land and your house is somewhere on that plot of land.
But you want to clearly delineate what is your plot of land? Well, you put up a perimeter fence as a perimeter fence suggests that forms the perimeter of your property. Now, I don't go fixating on the fence all the time.
I get on with my life. But I have a perimeter fence so that if I start, let's say one of Gareth, I'll say Gareth because Gareth definitely would do this. If Gareth decided I'm going to go run off and wander somewhere, what does the fence do?
The fence keeps him in the boundaries. And I think that's a healthy confessionalism. What a good confession. Here's the thing. Again, I favor historic confessions because I want to be in conversation with the people of God.
But let's say you've got a church like John MacArthur's church, Grace Community. I've read my church in London used to have their statement of faith, what we teach. The what we teach document is like 30 pages long.
In full, it's in depth. They wouldn't call that a confession, but it's basically a confession. And what does that do? It creates a boundary in which they're able to do ministry to even fellowship with people, even people they don't necessarily agree with.
Because they know what their boundaries are. I think when you fix, and this is one of my, I will say this with some of my reform brethren, I love them, but I think this is where they go too far with some of this confessional stuff.
I think at times what can end up happening is we spend all our time fixating on the fence. Rather than living life within the boundaries that the fence creates. So I don't preach my confession. What I do is I preach the scriptures and where the scripture and my confession agree.
I have no problem in saying, oh, this is just like what God's people have been saying. And so, like I said, I personally, I love the 1689. I quote it pretty regularly. Not because I think the 1689 is perfect.
I don't. I think there are some areas I would disagree with it. That being said, when I'm teaching through scriptures and I see, oh, this is what, oh, this is the Bible saying exactly the same thing they said.
I know. Okay, cool. I'm in the boundaries. Boundaries of orthodoxy. And so I think that's a healthy way to look at confessions and confessionalism. That they create healthy boundaries for the people of God.
So the people of God are not led astray into false teaching and false doctrine that is ultimately harmful. Always recognizing that any creed and any confession is a important term here. It is a subordinate standard to the standard.
So for us as Christians, the standard is the word of God. This book forms the final authority for all matters of faith and practice. But to help me, let me put it like this. As I read this book and this book gives me explanation and understanding of who God is and what God would have from me.
I know I'm not the first person to have read this. And so with the body of God's people, I can faithfully look at what they have said about these matters and see, okay, here's what they have said as they read the scriptures.
I go back to the scripture. No, this is what the scripture teaches. And I can confess that, say the same thing that they did. So we never want to get away from this book being primary, which is why you will never hear me, for instance, doing, you know, there may be times and places, but I want to do like a series on the New Hampshire, which is our confession.
But you're never going to hear me doing that to the expense of scripture. Like by and large, I'm going to stick to teaching this book. Because this God inspired everything else. God didn't inspire, which means I look at it.
I look at it with an appropriate amount of suspicion. And when it agrees with this book, praise the Lord, we affirm it. And when it doesn't agree with this book, well, it is what it is. We aren't bound to that.
We're bound to, as Luther said, my conscience is captive to the word of God.
Awesome, man. Well, I've had a really good time just hearing and asking the questions. Is there anything else you want to talk about?
No, I think we've touched on everything. Like I said, biblical doctrine is incredibly important. And, you know, for the members of our church, who will be watching this, you know, biblical doctrine matters.
And that's why at Redeemer, we take our doctrine very seriously. You know, we give time to preaching and teaching it. Once a month, we're reading a, you know, we're doing a corporate confession of faith together.
We are, you know, we have a book table with great doctrinal literature on it to help people think about these matters. Because this stuff really does matter. It's not optional for us. It's essential for us.
And I just knocked over my drink. It's important. It's incredibly important. And so my hope is that our body would become a body that loves the doctrine of God's word, that cherishes it and allows good gospel doctrine to essentially create a culture of biblical faithfulness and faithfulness to one another as a result.
Amen.
All right, well, you've been listening to the Cutting Room Floor podcast. I hope this has been a blessing to you. If you have any questions that you'd like us to tackle in a future episode, you can email us at Cutting Room Floor.
That's Cutting Room Floor at RedeemerMedford .org. That's Cutting Room Floor at RedeemerMedford .org. I'm Kovey with Eddie and Lord willing, we will see you next time.
