May 9, 2022 Show with Mark Raines on “God of Wonders: In Creation, In Providence, In the Family & In Salvation” PLUS Simon O’Mahony on “Church Membership: A Christian’s Duty & Privilege, Not a Mere Option”

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

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

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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.

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio wishing you all a happy Monday on this ninth day of May, 2022.

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And today we have a first -time guest for the first hour and the second hour we will have a returning guest who also happens to be one of my pastors at Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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For the first hour, we have Mark Rains who has served churches in London, South Africa, and Michigan and currently pastors since 2014

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Grace Reformed Baptist Church of East Haven, Connecticut. He is going to be addressing

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God of Wonders in creation, in providence, in the family, and in salvation, which is also the theme of an upcoming conference where Pastor Rains will be preaching.

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He will be the primary speaker and one of my own pastors who I mentioned just moments ago,

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Simon O'Maney of Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. He will also be on the speaking roster at this conference known as the

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Mid -Atlantic Reformed Baptist Family Conference which is coming up very soon. But it's my honor and privilege for the first hour to welcome for the very first time ever to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, Pastor Mark Rains.

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Hello, Chris. It's great to have you, Pastor Mark, and why don't you tell our listeners about Grace Reformed Baptist Church of East Haven, Connecticut.

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Yeah, I've been a pastor here in East Haven since 2014. We're a small Reformed Baptist church out here on the

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East Coast. East Haven is a town of about 30 ,000, I think, but part of Greater New Haven area, which

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I think the population there is closer to a million. So New Haven is probably better known for being the home of Yale University.

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The population out here is quite diverse, and we see that reflected in our church.

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We've got people here from Puerto Rico and Colombia, South Africa, Nigeria, Philippines, England, myself, of course.

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So a good mix of nationalities, which I like because my family, I'm English, my wife's from the

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Philippines. We've got two American children. So, yeah, we feel very comfortable out here. Well, praise

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God. And can you tell us something about the doctrinal makeup of the church and some other details about that church that would give our listeners more interest in visiting, either if they live in the

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New Haven or East Haven, Connecticut area, or if they're visiting there or have family, friends, and loved ones near there?

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Right, yeah, we're a confessional Reformed Baptist church adhering to the

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London Baptist Confession, 1689. Those would be our doctrinal standards.

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The church founded, I think, in the early 1900s as a congregational church.

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But in the 1980s, under Pastor Al Gerard and later Pat Leahy, we began to move in a more

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Reformed direction. That was something that was carried on by previous pastor Sam Owen, who came in 1998, and he served for 16 years.

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And Sam retired, and then the church called me in 2014. So we've sought to maintain

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Reformed worship here, fairly traditional, conservative worship. Congregation here,

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I'd say maybe on an average Lord's Day, perhaps we have 80 to 90 folk.

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As I say, a good mix of people, a good range of ages. So we're seeking to be faithful to Scripture, to hold out the

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Word of Life, preaching expository sermons most weeks, and seeking to preach the whole counsel of God with God's help.

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Well, praise God. Yes, I remember many years ago, I've been familiar with your church long before you were the pastor there.

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And it had a different name at that time. The word fox, like the animal, was in there, and I can't remember what exactly the name was.

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Do you recall the original name of the church? That's going back some years before I came.

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I think it may have been previously known as Foxen Community Church. That's it, that's it. That's right, yeah.

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That was in the days when it was a congregational church. But as I say, in the early 1980s, under Pastor Al Girard, the congregation started to move in a more

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Reformed direction, and so that's the way we've been going by God's grace ever since. Well, if anybody wants to find out more information about Grace Reformed Baptist Church of East Haven, Connecticut, you can go to grbcct .org.

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G -R -B -C for Grace Reformed Baptist Church, C -T, the abbreviation for Connecticut, dot org.

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G -R -B -C -C -T dot org, and we'll be announcing that later on in the program,

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God willing. And we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation story, including the kind of religious atmosphere they were raised in, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

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Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. So if you could give us your story.

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Yes. As you can probably tell by my accent, I'm from England. So I was born in Kings Lynn in Norfolk in England.

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I was the only child of my two believing parents. My dad was a supermarket manager and my mom was a teacher.

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I grew up in an apartment above a supermarket in Kings Lynn, which is known as a

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London overspill town. And what I mean by that is that following the war, there was quite a rapid expansion of the population of London.

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And so the government at the time began to designate these overspill towns where there was housing, estates were put up so that people who didn't have anywhere to live in London could move out to these towns in southeast of England.

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And so I grew up in one of those towns, Kings Lynn, a London overspill town. My dad had a supermarket on one of the estates there and my mom taught in the local school.

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So that was where I grew up. Went to the local school. My dad helped set up an evangelical church on one of the housing estates in Kings Lynn.

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And it was pioneering work really. He and his business partner bought a plot of land and set a portacabin on that land and they began to invite local ministers and seminary students to come and preach for them.

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Even Dr. Lloyd -Jones came on a couple of occasions. Wow. So I had quite a favoured upbringing.

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I was exposed to good biblical teaching each week and given good Christian reform books and sent to Christian camps.

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So a very blessed upbringing. I suppose on a sort of a cognitive level,

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I believed what I heard. I believed the Bible was true and believed in heaven and hell and I believed in Jesus Christ.

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But in my own life, there's a sort of reluctance to commit myself to Christ.

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I looked at my parents and they were such good and godly people. My dad especially was a very godly man and never knew him to lose his temper or swear or tell a lie.

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He lived such a good life. To me, I was quite a mischievous young boy and seemed almost unattainable to be like him.

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So I sort of made this subconscious decision that perhaps Christianity was for later on in life when

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I was mature, when I sort of got married or something like that. That would be the time to start thinking about becoming a

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Christian. So I instead began to just immerse myself in worldly things.

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I was very much into football, soccer you call it here, and going out to friends.

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So I just really gave myself to that and decided I'd put Christianity off until I was older.

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As I got older, as I got into my teenage years, that sort of morphed into a much more worldly lifestyle and eventually there was pub going, going to bars and clubs and eventually involved in nightclub scene and drugs and that kind of thing.

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I won't go into all the details, something can be very edifying. But I'm surprised to say by the time

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I was late teenage years and thinking about university, it was really that sort of lifestyle that was my motivating influence in choosing a university.

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I mean, what are the usual things you think about when you're choosing a college? I suppose you think about what the faculty at that school is like, their reputation for excellent study facilities, those sort of things.

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But that wasn't what was going through my mind as a teenager. I was thinking, which city has the best nightlife?

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Where are the best clubs going to be? All these kinds of questions. And at that time, this is the early 1990s, there was really just one answer to that in England.

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There was a place called Manchester. Manchester had the largest student population in Europe at that time.

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It was home to the underground rave scene. The popular press dubbed it Madchester.

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That was the kind of place it was. So that was where I wanted to go. So I applied and I was accepted.

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Went to Manchester, this was in 1990. When I got there, I began to look around for like -minded people and made a friend.

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His name was Andrew. And so we spent a lot of the first year together doing the kind of things that I mentioned, attending bars and clubs and then studying very hard at the end of the year to make sure we passed our exams to get through to the second year.

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Second year came around and Andrew and I shared the house. Midway through that year,

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I had an opportunity to go and study in the Netherlands. It was a sort of scholarship program that the college was running.

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So I had an opportunity to go and study in Utrecht, which was something that I was very excited about at the time because Utrecht was very close to Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam also had a reputation for being quite the party scene. So I left

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England in 1992, January, headed for Utrecht and spent six months there and only had seven hours coursework to do each week.

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So there was plenty of time to indulge my lifestyle over there. Again, I'm not going to go into all the details.

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But midway through that time in Utrecht, I had a letter arrive in my flat and it was postmarked

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Manchester and it was from my friend Andrew, who was still back in Manchester. And in this letter, he told me, among other things, he said, you may not have realized, but at the end of last term,

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I was on a major downer. He means he's been very depressed. And I decided on a radical course of action.

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I've started attending the Christian Union and I've become a follower of Christ. Praise God.

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Yeah. As you can imagine, I was pretty shocked by that. The last time I'd seen him, he was on his back, semi -conscious, muttering away to the words of a

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Pink Floyd song. Now he's become a follower of Christ. I was really shaken by that letter.

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But it started me thinking too, because I thought I had all the Christian teachings stored away in the back of my mind and I began to think, you know, if Andrew can become a

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Christian, maybe I need to start thinking seriously about this. So that was one factor that was at work.

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And then also, around the same time, as part of the course I was studying there in Utrecht, I was studying

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American literature, 18th century American literature. And it was really the providence of God that I ended up studying that, because I had arrived back late after the

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Easter break. And when I got there, they told me that the social studies course that I should have been studying was oversubscribed and I'd need to take another subject and make up the study out of the credit points.

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So I looked at the list of options and one of them was American literature. So I thought, oh, that might be interesting.

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So I enrolled for that and they gave me a big thick anthology with the likes of the works by Henry James and Edgar Allan Poe and others.

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And sandwiched in that anthology were two sermons by Jonathan Edwards. Wow. One of them was

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Sin is in the Hands of an Angry God. Wow. Yeah. So the lecturer, he gave us an hour's worth of lecture about Jonathan Edwards.

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The professor himself was an atheist and so he described Edwards as a fanatic who was trying to scare people back into the churches with these hellfire brimstone sermons.

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And that was the way he described him. And then he gave us Sin is in the Hands of an Angry God and told us to go away and to write a critique of this particular sermon.

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Huh. So a few days later I opened up the anthology and I began to read

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Sin is in the Hands of an Angry God. And for the first time in my life

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I really felt the fear of God come upon me as I read the words of that sermon. Wow.

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It was very, very powerful. I don't have it in front of me but you know in that sermon

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Edwards talks about ungodly men are all the time exposed to the judgment of God.

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He says something like it's only the mercy of God that keeps them from falling into hell at any one moment. So I began to think about that and I began to think about my own life.

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If it's only God's mercy that's keeping me out of hell why is he keeping me out of hell? I'm not doing anything for him.

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And then at one point in that sermon that really struck me I think Edwards imagines going down into hell speaking to those who are in the torments of hell at the moment and asking if they ever planned to be there.

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And they say something like no we never planned it this way we planned things better in our own mind trusting in what we had done or what we would do.

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We intended to escape this place but God's wrath was too quick for me.

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Death outwitted me. And when I was saying peace and safety some destruction came upon me. And as I read those words

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I thought well that's me I'm trusting in what I might do in the future that at some point I'm going to become a Christian when

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I'm older. But who knows I may not make it. God's wrath may be too quick for me and just reading that really unhinged me.

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And I began to realize I needed to become a Christian and so I tried to even though I had so much gospel teaching in my life the first thing

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I thought I needed to do was try and be good. I set about a program of self reform thinking that would be the way to be a

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Christian just do good things stop doing bad things. But that was a failure

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I actually became worse the more I tried to be good the worse I became and my relapses became more and more startling.

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To cut a long story short I became quite depressed my life and inability to change it all came to a head one night and it was the middle of the night and I was just so desperate

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I just cried out aloud in my bedroom Oh God if you're there help me help me and the

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Lord heard my prayer and just a few days later I was coming home from a funeral I was with my dad in the car and we'd been at my grandfather's funeral and we're driving back and my grandfather's a godly man and one of the hymns at the funeral was

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Blessed Assurance Jesus is Mine and my dad just in the car said you know I love that hymn we sang at the funeral

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Blessed Assurance and I was very eager to know more about how to be a

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Christian at that stage and so I said tell me what do you like about that hymn and he said well it reminds me

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I have this assurance that even though I'm a sinner that Jesus Christ has died and paid for my sin but I have an assurance that I'm his and it really struck me to hear that my dad said he was a sinner and I said what you mean you're a sinner and he said oh he said sometimes

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I despair of myself my sins weigh so heavily on me and then he said to me if you believe that Jesus Christ died for you for your sins there at the cross and you trust in him he said that's what a

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Christian is and as he explained that to me it made perfect sense at that point because I realised there was nothing

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I could do I tried to reform myself all I could do was just trust in him and as he explained that to me something happened something changed in me you know

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Wesley Simbein I diffused a quickening ray it felt like that the dungeon flamed with light at that point and I knew something had happened

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I changed I sometimes say I got out of that car a different person to the one who got in and the

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Lord had worked a work in my heart and made me a new creature Hallelujah you and I have testimonies that are remarkably similar in many ways and I can also remember as a young man just who reveled in the night club scene everything from the heavy metal clubs to the punk rock and new wave clubs and I was a very serious alcoholic or as the bible puts it more accurately a drunkard and I can remember going through those years always knowing that I would go to hell if I died one thing that makes or that separates our testimonies is that it wasn't a

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Jonathan Edwards sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God but it was one of the true things that I retained in my mind and belief system from my catholic upbringing before I was saved was a belief in hell and I believed in Christ not in a saving way

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I didn't trust in Christ but I believed in his existence I believed he was God and I knew that I needed to repent and I can remember thinking just as you did well, when

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I'm older maybe I will dedicate my life to God and I viewed my rebellion and my drunkenness and my partying as like a man's rite of passage you know, a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood and you know this is what men are supposed to do and living as though I had a promise of a long future on earth ahead of me and then seeing not as an eyewitness but hearing about people

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I knew a couple who were fairly close friends and others who were just acquaintances who died at very young ages started to rattle my cage

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God used those things to finally bring me to repentance but a lot of similarities there and there was one other thing that you said that I was going to bring up that I can't remember right now but it's a fascinating story especially since it is ringing so true with me and so tell us about the reformed aspect that you said earlier that you're that even as a young child you were being nurtured in the faith and that you were hearing the truth from reformed literature when did that become a personal thing that you embraced in your own life?

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Yeah, just to sort of carry on the story a little bit I think that will sort of lead into that I was saved in the summer of 1992 and so that was around it was the day of my granddad's funeral it was

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June 19 so I still had a few more weeks of summer vacation at home and then I had to go back to Manchester so I went back to the university of course

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I had a whole this radical change had taken place in me so all the friends in Manchester were expecting the old

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Mark when he came back so that was quite a difficult situation to navigate a lot of people coming up to me in connection with my former life and asking me if I wanted to go to this party or that party so there were situations of compromise and so then

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I decided I had to say something and Jeff Thomas once said something like this he said either secrecy will kill your discipleship or discipleship will kill the secrecy

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Wow Jeff Thomas is a great man I've had him on the show many times right yeah very wise and godly man and I remember reading saying that one of his sermons one time but that was all

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I needed to do so I began to tell people and so I lost quite a lot of those old friends but then

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God brought some new godly friends into my life and so for the first year or two

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I went to Christian Union but the churches that the students there tended to go to were the sort of more charismatic some of the wildly charismatic churches so I spent the first couple of my couple of years of my

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Christian life in those kind of places and started to become a bit disillusioned with that so I went back to my dad and asked him if he could recommend a church that he thought would be a better place for me to go and he recommended

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Chorlton Evangelical Church which is a small reformed

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Baptist church in Chorlton in Manchester and so I started to attend there and the moment

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I walked in and the quietness the reverence the way the minister prayed the way he read the scriptures the way he expounded it immediately

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I felt comfortable I felt this is this immediately resonated that this was the place to be to truly worship

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God and so that kind of set me on a path and he began to recommend books to read

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I started to read Virgin and um Dr. Lloyd -Jones my dad of course had a whole library of Dr.

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Lloyd -Jones books and the Romans commentaries and so now that became a place that I began to to visit more often and so it was really through those kind of influences that I became more and more interested in the reformed faith eventually

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I moved down to London to take a job I moved from Manchester down to London worked in local government there started to go to the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle in central London and listening to Dr. Peter Masters and visiting the bookstore there so all those kind of influences

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God began to began to put into my life and that um yeah that really set me on the path to to eventually going to seminary

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In fact I just remembered the other thing from your testimony that I was going to mention you are at least the third person

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I heard of who heard Jonathan Edwards being explained by a lost person a professor who was lost and even hearing the description of Edwards from a lost person had a radical effect on the other individuals lives that I that I know and one of them that I can specifically remember is my friend

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Ed Moore who is the pastor of North Shore Baptist Church in Bayside Queens it wasn't hearing

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Edwards from his lost professor that brought him or was used of God to bring him to Christianity he was already a

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Christian but he was an Arminian and he came to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace hearing his non -Christian professor in college teach about Jonathan Edwards just because Jonathan Edwards was a very significant figure in history especially

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New England America and it was a part of the course that even a secular professor could not leave out and give an adequate course on the history of this country and it was from this lost man that he came to embrace the doctrines of grace by beginning to read

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Edwards for himself right, yeah, yeah the lecturer in Utrecht he was an atheist and very much opposed to Edwards and he described him as this man to become disillusioned and seeing people drifting away from the churches because they were being taken in by science and the enlightenment era and people were drifting away from the

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Bible and from church and here's a desperate man who's saying so he starts to preach these very striking, stirring, hellfire sermons to try to frighten the people back into the church, that was the way he described him and so he kind of tried to set the scene for us to then go away and critique

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Edwards' sermon in that way but God had other intentions, for me at least

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I don't know, I sometimes say this I mean, you know why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room, and I don't know if it had that effect on many of the other classmates

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I never heard from any of them but the Lord certainly used it in a powerful way in my own life

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Well when did you realize you were receiving a call from God to enter into pastoral ministry

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When I was in London I started to attend Charles Hill Baptist Church the pastor there is a man called

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Gary Brady he's quite well known in the UK maybe not so well known, he's son -in -law of Jeff Thomas and a very faithful man, he's been holding out the gospel there in North London for 35 years or so, so I went to that church and we began to do some evangelism around North London and also going into central

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London, go out there quite regularly take tracts and speak to people, you know, London's a melting pot of all different nationalities, people coming through, so I used to find that quite exciting just to be able to go down into Piccadilly or Soho somewhere like that with tracts and you didn't know who you'd meet but just to have an opportunity to give a tract or speak to somebody about the

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Lord and so I was doing that quite often and felt like maybe I might want to go into evangelism full -time if that was

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God's will and so I thought I'd probably need some Bible training just to be better equipped to do something like that and so I applied to London Theological Seminary which is a seminary set up by Lloyd -Jones back in the 1960s and it was set up to train men for pastoral ministry and so as I applied and had an interview there

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I did make the point of the interview that I didn't know that I had a call to pastoral ministry I just wanted to study the

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Bible and see how the Lord would lead and so they were willing to take me in and I studied there for two years and during those years had opportunity to write some sermons and to go out to preach in some of the churches around England and as opportunity came and the

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Lord gave enabling I sensed the Lord might be leading me in that direction and at the end of two years studying there

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I was called to work alongside Gary Brady there at Child's Hill and so I worked as an assistant to him for a year and following that I had opportunity to study in the

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States and that was through meeting Joel Beakey in the bookstore at Metropolitan Tabernacle one time and asked about his seminary in Michigan I was thinking might be helpful to do a little bit of extra study and asked if it could be the possibility and he intimated if I was to make an application that it could be and the

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Lord opened the way so I studied some more over in Michigan and from there was called to serve in the

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Reformed Baptist Church in Holland in Michigan so regarding the call

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I don't know if I ever had a strong sense of call just seeing God providentially opening doors and every time

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I stepped through I've asked the Lord to give me the grace to do what he's calling me to do and just continue to trust him and to take the opportunities that come and so I suppose that's how

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I would answer that. Great. Well we have to go to our first break and I know that you are going to realize when we return from the break that there's a reason

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I do a two hour interview typically because time flies by so fast but we are going to focus on the main theme of the conference that's coming up, the

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Mid -Atlantic Reformed Baptist Family Conference God of Wonders and we're going to be doing so in obviously an abbreviated fashion just to whet the appetites of people who are who either are already attending or didn't even hear about the conference yet and this may instill in them a desire to attend but if anybody has a question for Pastor Mark Rains please send it in quickly because he is only on with us for the first hour of the program the email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside of the

31:36

USA don't go away, we're going to be right back with Pastor Mark Rains right after these messages

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Saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr. Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sent you.

35:04

Welcome back. This is Chris Arntgen. If you just tuned us in our guest for the first hour with just about 15 minutes remaining is

35:15

Pastor Mark Rains of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of East Haven, Connecticut. We are addressing the theme

35:20

God of Wonders which is also the theme of the upcoming Mid -Atlantic

35:26

Reformed Baptist Family Conference. Why don't you before we get into the theme describe the

35:31

Mid -Atlantic Reformed Baptist Family Conference where you are going to be preaching. The conference is going to take place at the

35:43

Bongiorno Conference Center in Carlisle, which I understand is a very nice place.

35:52

Yes, I've had one of my pastors luncheons there. Sorry? I've had one of my biannual pastors luncheons there at the

36:01

Bongiorno Conference Center. It's really beautiful. The view is absolutely breathtaking. Right, yes.

36:07

I understand that. It should be very conducive. I understand there's a nature trail and tennis court facilities like that.

36:15

The conference is going to be held there from a Thursday afternoon through to Saturday lunchtime.

36:23

Three days in total or Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, Thursday, a nice venue like that with friends, hopefully make some new friends too, and spending time with God's people and thinking about a subject like this, about the

37:35

God of Wonders, His great works, His mighty deeds, and the way He displays His glory in different areas of life.

37:44

The idea is that it would be a tonic and a help for God's people to have a time like that. Praise God. And it will be from Thursday, June the 9th, through Saturday, June the 11th.

37:54

And if anybody wants more details, you can go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org forward slash mid -atlantic -rbfc, which stands for Reformed Baptist Family Conference.

38:14

Once again, it's gracebaptistcarlisle .org forward slash mid -atlantic -rbfc.

38:23

And hopefully I will remember to repeat that later. Well, tell us exactly what you mean.

38:31

It might seem self -explanatory, God of Wonders, but if you were to ask certain charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, they might define that phrase in a different way than you would.

38:46

Tell us what you mean by God of Wonders, which is the major umbrella theme of the conference with God of Wonders and creation and providence and the family and salvation as subcategories.

39:01

But tell us what you mean by God of Wonders. We're thinking largely in terms of the great and mighty works that God does and the way that he displays his glory in his works for us to behold as they're set forth in Scripture.

39:19

So that's why we've broken it down into these different categories. So considering God's, the wonderful works that he's done in creation, that's going to be the first session.

39:30

And looking at that, his work in, mainly at Genesis 1,

39:36

I don't want to give away too much, but looking at Genesis 1, seeing God's power displayed, his workmanship in creation and aspects of that, his ability to create life, wonderful works, things that are beyond us, things that are too wonderful for us to understand, and looking at that in creation and then also the other session will be on the family, and again

40:01

I don't want to say too much, but seeing aspects of God's glory in instituting the family and dynamics at work within the family as well and how that can become an arena to observe the wonderful works of God to see his glory set forth in the dynamic of the family.

40:22

And then also in providence and salvation as well, seeing the same aspect coming through there.

40:31

Well, one of the themes that you just mentioned, providence, is something that does divide

40:38

Christians, even evangelical Christians. We have,

40:44

I believe, amongst the landscape of Christendom, we have a unique view of the concept of providence because we, who are

40:54

Reformed, believe every single thing, every single thing that happens in heaven and on earth and has always happened and will happen in the future, everything is ordained by God himself.

41:12

And providence also has a joyful side and a sorrowful side, but explain to our listeners how

41:24

God is a God of wonders and providence and which really boils down to in the life of a

41:32

Christian, not in the life of everybody, but in the life of a Christian, Romans 8 .28

41:39

is so true in regard to providence that all things work together for the good of those who love

41:46

God and are called according to his purpose. But if you could just touch on providence as far as the

41:52

God of wonders is concerned. Right, yeah, providence is going to be the third session that we're going to look at the

41:59

God of wonders in that regard and looking at God's orchestrating, directing all the movements of providence, all aspects of our lives and controlling all the events in this world and directing them, as you say, in accordance with his own preordained purpose and will.

42:22

So providence is a great theme for us to think about and I think it was

42:29

Arthur Pink who said that providence is the pillow on the doctrine on which we can pillow our heads each night, knowing that everything that's happening to us in our lives is all under his control and he's directing it all for our good.

42:43

We don't always understand it at the time when we can find ourselves in the middle of it can be very plexing, but to be able to rest our heads on that pillow knowing that he's in control and not spiring out of control, it's not beyond him that he has everything.

43:02

He's on the throne ruling over everything is a very comforting truth for us and so we're going to be exploring that from different aspects and hopefully making practical applications to those who might be finding themselves in the middle of some distressing situations as can happen in the

43:19

Christian life, we're not immune to those, so hopefully we can draw our practical applications to help

43:25

God's people to see that he's still on the throne, he's still ruling and reigning, even though sometimes our world feels like it's falling in, we know that God is there and that he's directing all these things to accomplish his purpose in our lives.

43:40

Amen. Yeah, that's the kind of direction we'll be going with that.

43:48

There's also the whole area of God's wonder and salvation, that's the fourth subject too and that in itself is a thing of wonder.

43:58

Yeah, there is nothing that has gotten me through the most sorrowful moments and seasons in my own life than trusting in God, the judge of all the earth, doing what is right and always doing what is right and the fact that these sorrowful things, including losing my mother, losing my father in the 1990s, losing my precious late wife in 2010, the only thing that really got me through mentally surviving that is knowing that these things were ordained by God and no matter what

44:49

I may have done, I could never have changed the day or the hour of the passing of these dear loved ones and the thing that's interesting about that is you will very often find

45:04

Arminians and those outside of Reformed theology viewing these things the same way, even though it's very inconsistent with their own theological system.

45:15

Would you find that the case yourself? In the language that some of them use, yes, although they might take up different positions on various things when it comes to talking about God's own dealings with them in their life and their experience of passing through trials, very often the language becomes that of a clever

45:38

Calvinist and they're able to see that their hope is that God is the one who is ultimately controlling all things and not them.

45:48

So, yeah, in that sense I can see that. I mentioned

45:54

Jonathan Edwards earlier and one of the things that he said that struck me being over here in New England is that he said even a falling leaf in the

46:05

New England fall works together for my good. So, recognizing that every aspect of our lives and everything that's going on around us is all under its own control and to be able to relate that to the sometimes troubling circumstances that we face, that is what gets us through some of life's toughest trials as you yourself said there,

46:28

Chris. Now, the God of wonders and salvation, one of the ways that we who are

46:35

Reformed are at odds with the rest of Christendom is that we truly believe that God is the author and finisher of our faith.

46:48

We truly believe that it is God who chooses out of lost humanity, out of all of those, all of us who have been made from the same lump of clay along with the reprobate, he chooses not because of our goodness, not because of anything lovable that is innately existing within us, but out of his own good pleasure he chooses some of us to receive a heart transplant and change us and transform us and make us willing to flee to the cross.

47:26

And don't you think that this is also a great comfort when anyone who's a

47:32

Christian loses someone in death where they are very uncertain about where that person stood in relationship to God.

47:43

It's always going to be a sorrowful season when a loved one dies when we are

47:51

Christians, whether they are brothers and sisters in Christ or whether they are lost.

47:56

But especially in terms of losing the ones that we fear are lost, isn't this a great comfort to know that it is

48:06

God who chooses, it is the God of wonders who is the one who saves whom he chooses.

48:15

Yeah, that's a wonderful comfort, yeah. That's one of the sessions, the final session, so we're going to be looking at God's sovereignty and salvation and looking at different aspects of that.

48:29

And as you said there, it's nothing that we do ourselves, it's all of grace.

48:34

We are dead in our trespasses and sins. We have no power to make ourselves alive. It's only

48:40

God in his mercy quickening us and regenerating us and making us alive.

48:46

And so there is tremendous comfort for that in our Christian lives as we perhaps struggle wondering if we're going to make it to the end.

48:56

Seeing some of our sins, overwhelm us at times and wondering if we'll be able to press on to know that he who began a good work in us will complete it at the day of Jesus Christ and as he began it he will finish it, enable us to keep pressing on.

49:12

So there's great comfort for us in that. And yeah, also loved ones who've passed on, that can be a source of real heartache for us.

49:23

But again, we fall back on the doctrine of God's sovereignty and his overarching plan of redemption.

49:29

He has a people that he's calling to himself that he's going to give to his son and he's going to inhabit eternity with them.

49:36

All those souls purchased by his own son's blood and not one of them will be lost. Everyone will make it there and we will all be there with him forever with the

49:45

Lord. And so those are the kind of things that we need to comfort our hearts with when we're facing death and bereavement to know that I'm sure not the judge of all the earth do right.

49:57

Amen. We who are Christians never need to torment ourselves about if I had only evangelized that dear friend or loved one one more time, if I had only been a better representation of Christ in that person's life, if I had done this, if I had done that.

50:20

Now all of these are duties of ours. We should not think that they're inconsequential.

50:26

We should not look at them lightly. We should be grieved by our own lives when we recognize we're lacking in those things.

50:36

But at the end of the day, when someone dies that we love, and if they, to our knowledge, were not believers, we cannot and should not torment ourselves over that.

50:48

Am I right? That's right. We do as much as we can, humanly speaking, during the course of our lives.

50:57

On our side, there are things that the Bible says we can do, we should do, and that is that we pray for them, and we pray earnestly and fervently, and we're reminded that the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much, and we have many encouragements to come and to pray for our family and our children, and to pray with faith and trust in the

51:18

Lord, and we do that. And also we take opportunities as best we can when there are times that we can speak with them about the things of God and opportune moments to share with them scriptures and really plead with them as best we can.

51:34

Also, knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men, there should be that heart about us, an earnestness and a winsomeness about the way we speak to those around us, especially our family.

51:45

So we, humanly speaking, we do as much as we can, and then we leave it to the Lord, and at the end of the day, we have to leave it there.

51:54

If God has a people, as I said, he's chosen before the foundation of the world, and Christ has shed his blood for them, and those he's died for he will save, and so we leave it there and know that his purposes will be accomplished, and in the end he will bring all of his people infallibly to be with him.

52:15

That's our ultimate comfort. Amen, and we're out of time, brother, and I just want to repeat your website for Grace Reformed Baptist Church of East Haven, Connecticut one more time.

52:25

It is grbcct .org, grbcct .org.

52:31

Thank you so much, Pastor Raines. We look forward to you returning to this program in the future for another interview.

52:38

Great. Thanks for having me on, Chris. Appreciate that. My pleasure. God bless. And don't go away, folks, because we are going to be joined in the second hour by one of my pastors,

52:47

Simon O'Maney of Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who is going to be addressing the theme of church membership.

52:56

Please be patient. This is the longer than normal break in the middle of the show, and send in your questions to Pastor O'Maney at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

53:06

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We'll be right back after this commercial break. As a mother,

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Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Iovineo and thanks for listening. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

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01:05:13

Before we introduce my second guest who will be joining us any second now,

01:05:19

Simon O'Maney, one of two pastors at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will be discussing the theme,

01:05:25

Church Membership, a Christian's Duty and Privilege, Not a Mere Option. We just have a couple of very important announcements to make.

01:05:33

First of all, if you really love this show and you don't want it to disappear, go to IronSharpenZionRadio .com,

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click Support, then click Click to Donate Now. Last but not least, if you're not a member of a biblically faithful Christ -honoring church, no matter where in the world you live,

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I have extensive lists spanning the globe where I can recommend a church to you, possibly even within minutes of your own home, as I have done with many people, including listeners in Perth, Australia, who

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I was able to recommend to a fine Reformed Baptist church out there.

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There have been many people all over the world who have received church recommendations from me.

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Many of those folks have visited and joined those churches. So you can be one of them if you are without a biblically faithful church home.

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So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put

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I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send in a question to my pastor, one of my two pastors at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who is my guest for the final hour,

01:08:40

Simon O'Maney. He's going to be discussing church membership, a Christian's duty and privilege, not a mere option.

01:08:47

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Trumpet's Iron Radio, Pastor Simon O'Maney.

01:08:54

Thank you, Chris. It's a pleasure to be on your show again and to chat with you for a little while about church membership.

01:09:02

I'm looking forward to it. I am as well, and I hope I don't swell your head, brother, and tempt you into the sin of pride, but I have to tell my listeners that I've been a

01:09:15

Christian going back to the 1980s, and I've been in Christian radio for most of my adult life.

01:09:23

I've heard many pastors preach, both excellent and bad, in varying spectrums of the

01:09:33

Christian faith. And Pastor Simon O'Maney and Pastor John Miller at Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, are two of the very finest preachers

01:09:44

I have ever personally heard, and I'm not saying that just because I don't want to be under church discipline or something like that.

01:09:51

They are profound, and Simon is one of the most structured and powerful preachers

01:10:02

I've ever heard, even though he's a young man. And if anybody ever hears about him preaching at a conference or if they live near Carlisle, Pennsylvania, I strongly urge you to hear the man preach, and you will be edified and blessed.

01:10:17

But tell our listeners about Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Pastor Simon. Yeah, that's very kind of you and very gracious of you to say that,

01:10:26

Chris. Yeah, Grace Baptist, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Well, I've been there pastoring for about four years now.

01:10:36

My fellow pastor, John Miller, a great brother in the Lord, he's been there just about four and a half years.

01:10:43

Before us was Brother David Campbell, and before David was Walt Shantry.

01:10:49

There were some other associate pastors along the way. But the Lord has been very faithful to the

01:10:54

Church for many years. I think it was 1951 that the Church was started and planted, and the

01:11:02

Lord has been faithful to the Church since then and has blessed the Church in many ways.

01:11:10

Well, if anybody wants to find out more about Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

01:11:17

and Carlisle is spelled C -A -R -L -I -S -L -E, gracebaptistcarlisle .org.

01:11:23

And we will repeat that at the end of the program. Well, you have one session at the upcoming

01:11:30

Mid -Atlantic Reformed Baptist Family Conference that is coming up in June.

01:11:37

Pastor Mark Raines, who we just had on the program, has the majority of the sessions, but tell us about exactly what you will be speaking on at the upcoming

01:11:46

Mid -Atlantic Reformed Baptist Family Conference. Yeah, I don't know if it's because he's

01:11:52

English that he's getting all the sessions. One, he's being Irish. I don't know about that,

01:11:58

Chris. But yeah, I'm just doing a little sloth, and I'm going to be giving a missionary biography, and Lord willing,

01:12:09

I'm planning to do that actually on St. Patrick, of all people. Oh, wow! Yeah.

01:12:15

So he, of course, was a very important missionary of the early church, and he actually lived in a time that is, in many ways, not unlike our own.

01:12:24

The empire, Rome, was crumbling, and there was a lot of uncertainty, and people were fearful.

01:12:30

People were fearful of what it would mean for Christianity. And this brother in the

01:12:35

Lord was faithful, and his drive was towards missions and to preach the gospel.

01:12:41

So I think there's a lot of lessons we can learn from the life and ministry of Patrick.

01:12:47

And folks, just to repeat, the Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle website, because that's where you'll find more information about this upcoming conference.

01:12:58

It is Grace Baptist Church—I'm sorry, Grace Baptist Carlisle. There's no church in the website.

01:13:05

Gracebaptistcarlisle .org forward slash mid -atlantic -rbfc.

01:13:12

That's gracebaptistcarlisle .org forward slash mid -atlantic -rbfc for Foreign Baptist Family Conference.

01:13:21

And hopefully I'll remember to give that one more repeat at the end. Well, today you have chosen a subject that is a very important subject.

01:13:32

It's also a controversial subject, even though it shouldn't be. It's regarding church membership, a

01:13:39

Christian's duty and privilege, not a mere option. And over the decades

01:13:45

I have been a Christian, I can't even count the number of times I have encountered individuals who will say,

01:13:54

I am not a member of any church because the phrase church membership is not in the

01:14:00

Bible, and I am not enslaved like Roman Catholics are, who believe that the

01:14:08

Church of Rome actually dispenses salvation. You cannot have salvation without their church.

01:14:16

I don't believe in any of that, so therefore, I don't believe in church membership as a requirement at all.

01:14:22

If you like that and you find joy and peace in your own life with that, that's great, but it's not for me.

01:14:28

But this should not be the attitude of a regenerate believer, right? Yeah, absolutely.

01:14:37

And I think all of the objections that you raise, I think in many ways, even as we discuss this topic,

01:14:43

I think it might even be helpful to fill out some of those kinds of objections. You mentioned the kind of idea, well, it might be your thing, but it's not really my thing.

01:14:55

The first thing I think I would say, as we're about to have this discussion, is that I think all Christians should assume, and I think we will assume,

01:15:04

Matthew 16, that the Church isn't just a good idea that a couple of believers kind of sat around and they said, wouldn't it be great if we all kind of did this together?

01:15:14

Well, no, that's not how the Church began. The Church began with Christ instituting the

01:15:19

Church, giving the keys of the kingdom to Peter on behalf of the apostles, and giving the

01:15:26

Church the various means of grace and whatnot. But, yeah, people have different objections for why they don't attend

01:15:35

Church. And they range from maybe, how would I say it, maybe better motives to maybe worse motives.

01:15:44

I think there can be practical reasons, I think there can be doctrinal reasons. And there can be reasons that there are people who have been harmed greatly by being in horrible churches or cults or something, and they are just totally paranoid about putting themselves in a vulnerable position again.

01:16:06

Yeah, you're absolutely right, you're absolutely right. Yes, people can be harmed by spiritual abuse, you know, their spiritual abuse.

01:16:14

You know, it's sad to say that even response churches have not been completely innocent in terms of even sexual abuse and cover -ups and that sort of thing.

01:16:25

I'm not going to go into any examples of that at this point, it's beyond the scope of our discussion. But, you know, there are a host of reasons why people can feel burned by the

01:16:35

Church and therefore not want to be part of the Church. But there's other reasons,

01:16:41

I mean, for some, there's what I call the myth of the early Church. I don't know if you've heard of this,

01:16:47

Chris, but it's kind of the idea that, well, in the early Church, there was no structure, you know, there was no real

01:16:52

Church. It was just, you know, kind of believers just sort of doing their own thing and everything was kind of free and natural and flowing and there was no structure and no

01:17:00

Church officers. The easiest way to debunk that is just open the book of Acts and there you see there's

01:17:08

Church officers, there's Church meetings, there's voting, all of those kinds of things. Yes, and as I said before, there are people who say there is no phrase in the

01:17:21

Bible that says there is a thing called Church membership. I can even remember, probably before you were born, but I think it was in the 1980s, here in the

01:17:33

United States, there was a big news item where a woman who was a member of a congregation in a fellowship of congregations known as the

01:17:48

Church of Christ, they are also known as being part of the

01:17:55

Restoration Movement of the 19th century, led by Alexander Campbell, but there are many congregations, they're not all the same, they're not identical, some people make the mistake of trying to pigeonhole them, but there are many within that group that do not believe in a concept of Church membership for the very reason

01:18:18

I just said, but there was a woman who committed adultery, she refused to repent, and she sued the

01:18:28

Church for publicly exposing her behavior because she was not a member, and I can't remember right now if she won or lost that lawsuit, but basically she was saying that they destroyed her reputation, even though the things she did actually happened, because they had no business to do that since she was not a member, but that is a basically long way of saying that this is a very simplistic way of determining whether something is essential for a

01:19:06

Christian, just because a phrase like Church membership is not in the inspired text, am

01:19:13

I right? Yeah, that's probably, I think, maybe even the objection that many

01:19:22

Christians might make from right motives, you know, many Christians come to Scripture and they have this faulty hermeneutic, hermeneutic simply refers to the way we interpret

01:19:31

Scripture, they have this idea that unless there's a specific phrase in the

01:19:36

Bible, well, therefore, you know, the doctrine can't be in the Bible, but that isn't how we interpret

01:19:43

Scripture, that isn't how the Church has ever interpreted Scripture. Just take, for example, the doctrine of the

01:19:48

Trinity. You know, we don't have an explicit statement that God is one essence subsisting in three persons, but as we interpret

01:19:56

Scripture, and as we allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, we conclude that it is something that is necessarily contained in Scripture.

01:20:05

That's the language that certainly the Reformed confessions use. And so what we're saying is that, you know, maybe there's no explicit phrase,

01:20:15

Church membership, but we would say that it is proper deduction from Scripture. When we read

01:20:20

Scripture and when we put it all together, we conclude that it's, you know, it's something that necessarily is deduced from that.

01:20:32

Go ahead, I'm sorry. Oh, no, go on. Oh, I was just going to say, isn't

01:20:39

Hebrews 13 .70 a key passage where it really renders a believer who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, believes that the

01:20:50

Bible is God's own breathed words, where we have the writer of Hebrews saying,

01:20:59

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who give an account.

01:21:07

Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. But the fact that there is a command here to obey your leaders, and it would seem to me that this is referring to elders in a church because they keep watch over your souls, and they'll give an account for us.

01:21:25

Isn't that a clear example of the fact that you would obviously have to be a member to be expected to submit to the leaders of a local church?

01:21:36

Yeah, absolutely, that is a very important text because, you know, the other way of kind of turning that around is if you were a

01:21:44

Christian, you know, and you believe the Bible, and you read this phrase, Obey your leaders and submit to them.

01:21:49

Well, the question is, who are your leaders? Obviously, the context here is spiritual leaders, pastors, elders.

01:21:57

Who are your leaders that you must submit to? Because you have to submit to some leaders. You know, if someone walks up to you on the street and they say,

01:22:05

Well, I'm Pastor So -and -so, do you submit to them? And if not, why not?

01:22:10

Doesn't it say there, you know, submit to your leaders? Of course, what we would conclude is, here, this is the context of a local church where you're joined to a local church, where you have elders, you have pastors, who you know, and they know you.

01:22:25

And along the same lines, you have commands not only to church members, but also to church leaders themselves.

01:22:36

You know, there are texts of Scripture that speaks to elders. Think of Acts 20, verse 28.

01:22:43

It says, I'll just read one other passage that really is saying a similar thing.

01:22:58

It's from 1 Peter, chapter 5, verses 1 -3. Not for shameful gain, but eagerly.

01:23:15

Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And so the exhortations here from Paul and from Peter are that elders are to shepherd those under their care.

01:23:28

Paul uses the language of overseer. Peter also uses that language of oversight.

01:23:34

And here, obviously, it's an oversight over a particular people. You know, elders are not called to shepherd the whole world, or even every

01:23:42

Christian in the world. Who is their duty to? Peter says, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

01:23:52

So the elder has the duty to those in his charge. And the fact that he can be an example implies that the sheep also know who the elders are, and so there's this kind of two -way relationship.

01:24:06

You cannot interpret these passages and conclude anything other than the fact that the elders know who is in their charge.

01:24:13

I mean, if I have a duty to someone, then I know who that person is.

01:24:19

Just to give an example, Chris, you're in my church. I have a duty to you. You know me.

01:24:24

I'm your elder. And I know you as a fellow member of the church congregate. But for all of your listeners, maybe people

01:24:31

I've never met, well, I don't have a duty to shepherd them in the way that I have a duty to shepherd you.

01:24:37

Amen. And as I said at the outset, this should not be viewed as some kind of burden being placed on Christians.

01:24:50

Let's face it. Believers, especially new believers, are rightly to be viewed as children in many aspects, not that even a new convert has no knowledge or that the person is juvenile or infantile in the way they think and behave.

01:25:14

But there is a need for guidance. There is a need for oversight.

01:25:21

And to claim that a Christian does not require this, it's as if they are saying that children don't require parents as long as they're fed and clothed and given shelter.

01:25:37

I don't want to exalt the role of an elder too highly in an unbiblical way, but there is a parallel there, isn't it?

01:25:46

Yeah, absolutely. The elders are given to care for the flock. Paul in Colossians speaks of how it's his duty to proclaim

01:25:54

Christ and it's his duty to bring those under his care to maturity. And isn't that just what parents do?

01:26:02

They bring their children to maturity. They're trying to raise them up, and that's the job of pastors. And so the question is, can you do that by yourself kind of at home, just surfing the web or listening to your favorite preachers online and never actually going to a church, never actually committing yourself to a church?

01:26:19

And I would say no, and I think Scripture's answer is no. The church, the institution of the church and leaders and elders that know you and that you are accountable to and that they are accountable to you,

01:26:32

I think that is the way that we grow in maturity in the Christian faith. And don't you think this is also where you have a danger of extremely large churches that do not have a sufficient number of truly

01:26:48

God -ordained elders, of men who are truly fulfilling the scriptural requirements for that role in that office, to make sure that every one of those many thousands of people that may be in that church, to make sure that they are truly being shepherded.

01:27:07

Isn't that a common danger that exists today? I have met many people who are weekly attending a megachurch and they have never even met an elder.

01:27:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. Funny story, I won't name the church because I'm not in a hurry to bash churches, but we were visiting relatives in another state and the relatives we were visiting, he was telling me what a great preacher that the pastor was and telling me all about the pastor.

01:27:41

And I was really looking forward to meeting the guy. Well, we go to the church where my wife's relatives lived, and we go to the church and we go into this big auditorium, and I'm excited, you know,

01:27:54

I'm looking forward to meeting the pastor, seeing him, and then all of a sudden the lights go down and a projection screen lowers from the ceiling and he's projected, and he's on some other campus in some other place.

01:28:07

And lo and behold, when I talk to the relative about this, about the pastor, he's never even met his pastor.

01:28:16

Wow. And that's sad. It's really sad when you think about the biblical requirements of elders to congregants and also congregants to elders.

01:28:32

Yeah, and obviously you say he never even met his pastor.

01:28:37

Well, that man really isn't his pastor as far as really being a pastor because it is more than just speaking from a pulpit that determines what a pastor is.

01:28:51

You know, in some ways it's hard not to see, it's hard to see much of a distinction between going to a building and watching a projection screen as it is just,

01:29:04

I don't know, staying home and going on Sermon Audio or YouTube or something like that and watching your favorite pastor that way.

01:29:11

But that's my opinion. Now, in the sensitive area where we already stated, both of us, that there should be an extra measure of patience and compassion and kindness, not that that shouldn't always be the approach of a

01:29:29

Christian, but an extra measure of those things, those people that have been truly harmed, having been members of a church, it might have even been a church that was theologically and doctrinally sound, but still behaved perhaps as a cult in its way of conducting church discipline and preserving unity and actually demonstrating their authority over the congregation.

01:30:05

They may have abused their roles, and these people were, as you were saying, psychologically harmed, or they might have even been physically harmed, they might have been sexually abused, whatever the case is, or they might have been in a cult.

01:30:18

What words of counsel and encouragement and comfort can you give to those people who will say,

01:30:25

I will never put myself in a position like that again, I will never join a church, I will never become a member of a church,

01:30:33

I will have Bible studies in my home, I will watch televangelists and listen to Christian radio, but I will never jeopardize my well -being again by becoming a member of a church.

01:30:45

How would you respond to such people that may be listening right now? Yeah, yeah.

01:30:53

The first thing I would say to them, if they've been hurt in some kind of way, if there's been an abuse of authority by an elder, by a pastor, by a church, if there's been emotional or spiritual abuse, maybe there's been sexual abuse, the first thing

01:31:07

I'd say is that that was wrong. That was wrong, and you've been wronged. And they had no right to do that.

01:31:14

God did not give them authority to hurt you that way. He did not give them authority to abuse you that way.

01:31:23

I would also say that Scripture is explicit in the warnings to leaders who abuse their authority.

01:31:31

Jesus told his disciples, don't be like those who lorded over others like the

01:31:38

Gentiles. Jesus talked about the millstone around the neck of the leader who caused little ones to stray.

01:31:44

James warns, not many of you should be teachers. So there is a real warning, and there is an accountability that, you know, where the church fails or where denominations or associations of churches fail, the

01:31:57

Lord sees, and the Lord holds men and individuals accountable that way.

01:32:03

So, the first thing I would say to an individual. The other thing I'd say is that, you know, much like the hymn, the church is one foundation, you know.

01:32:14

If you're familiar with that hymn, or if you're not familiar with that hymn, I'd encourage you to look it up later and listen to it.

01:32:20

But, you know, it speaks of many of the challenges the church faces. False sons in her pale, you know, enemies without enemies within, that sort of thing.

01:32:29

Where does it bring us back to? It brings us back to Christ. And Christ is truly the one who is head of the church.

01:32:37

And so I would encourage an individual to, not to, you know, give up on church because of the bad experience and the hurt and the abuse of an individual, but to remember that Christ is the head of the church, and He assembles

01:32:52

His bride. The church will always be imperfect, but there is a day coming when Christ will return, and He will make perfect His bride that He is currently sanctifying and preparing.

01:33:06

Amen. And we have to go to our final break right now, and if anybody has a question for Pastor Simon, send it in as soon as you can, because we are rapidly running out of time.

01:33:16

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson 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 the

01:33:26

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01:45:28

Pastor Simon O'Maney on with us for about 10 more minutes. Pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

01:45:35

We are discussing church membership and we do have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania who asks,

01:45:42

When it boils down to it, isn't the main reason why people who claim to be

01:45:47

Christians refuse to be members is a matter of pride? They don't think that they need teachers.

01:45:53

They think they have enough wisdom, intelligence, and understanding of the Bible and that they're holy enough where a teacher or a shepherd are not required.

01:46:05

Yeah, you know, I would say that for some that is definitely the motivation and that is a very sinful motivation

01:46:11

I think I would say. You know, there are definitely those who don't want to submit to leaders in a local church.

01:46:18

They don't want to be known and they don't want to know that way. But I'd also say, you know, that's not the only motivation.

01:46:25

I think there are other motivations. I think there can be immature Christians, Christians who aren't taught or, you know, as we discussed earlier,

01:46:34

Christians that have been kind of burned that maybe need some shepherding and they need some counsel and they need the words of Christ kind of brought to bear and also the love of Christ in actions that way.

01:46:48

Well, thank you, Arnie. We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York. And Bobby says,

01:46:55

In my experience, there are also many people who bounce around from church to church and never submit themselves to any of them nor become members of any of them.

01:47:06

It's due to nitpicking. Unless a church agrees with them on every single issue, they will move along to the next church.

01:47:15

Isn't that also a bit arrogant? Yeah. You know,

01:47:22

I'll say this rather publicly, but, you know, even as a pastor, you may not agree with every jot and tittle of what a church does or the history of a church.

01:47:33

And so, you know, even as a pastor, there's an awareness that, you know, you're not like the new sheriff in town and you can just go turning all the tables and change everything that you want.

01:47:45

You know, every church, every church on the planet has a mixture of error.

01:47:54

You know, that's one of the things that the 1689 Confession says, Baptist Confession of Faith.

01:48:01

It might be in the Westminster Confession as well. I'm not sure. But all true churches, all true churches contain a mixture of error.

01:48:12

And so it's an awareness that you'll never find the perfect church. And if you do, as they say, don't join us.

01:48:18

It won't be perfect for long. Right, exactly. And as Groucho Marx once said,

01:48:24

I will never become a member of a club that would have me as a member. Exactly.

01:48:33

There's just another kind of side note. I saw a church, a Reformed church, when

01:48:38

I was in California, and they had a sign outside the building and they said, I think they said, it was something like, you know,

01:48:45

I'm going to misquote it, but it was something like, you know, hypocrites welcome because we're all hypocrites here or something like that.

01:48:51

You know, it was basically kind of playing on the sort of objection that, well, I wouldn't join a church because they're all a bunch of hypocrites.

01:48:59

Right. And it was kind of playing on that, well, we are hypocrites and we need God's grace and we need the gospel.

01:49:04

And you have people in that category who are nitpickers, who as the listener included in that question about arrogance being a part of it, the person is arrogant to think that they have finally arrived at understanding everything completely and perfectly, as if they know with certainty all of those things that they're nitpicking about, but they know with certainty they're on the right side of those issues.

01:49:41

But also, being a member of a church, you contribute to the church, and I'm not just talking about the financial offering, you contribute to the church with your own voice and having fellowship and meeting privately with elders when it's a matter of teaching or practice that you may disagree with.

01:50:01

And you never know, if you are truly on the biblical side of an issue, you never know what may occur in that church.

01:50:09

In fact, I know of two circumstances where I wasn't a member of these churches, but they were churches pastored by friends.

01:50:20

One of them had altar calls, and I just very graciously, as I could, and lovingly, during a private time of fellowship, informed that pastor that I believed it was an unbiblical practice, wasn't even in existence until the 19th century.

01:50:43

And that church changed their view after further study on that. And another church, this is more of a matter of preference.

01:50:54

It's not because there's a God -breathed order of worship or liturgy that we have to follow these things in lockstep.

01:51:06

But I remember I visited another church that was pastored by a friend. And the very last thing that they did after the sermon was preached is they had a collection.

01:51:19

And I just told them, do you think that's the best thing or the best time to be passing a plate around when people should be really contemplating on eternal issues that they just heard?

01:51:32

And that church changed. They had the collection moved near the beginning of the service.

01:51:39

And if I was a member of any of those churches, I probably would have had even more of an impact on them.

01:51:47

So am I making sense here that people have to also take into consideration the knowledge that they can share with a church?

01:51:59

Not to be arrogant about that, but just because a church isn't conducting themselves in every single way according to their preferences or according to what they think the

01:52:10

Bible teaches, there's still hope when you become a member of such a church. Yeah, and just as you're talking there, it makes me think of Paul's language of the body.

01:52:24

He talks about it in Romans 12, verses 4 to 5. He talks about it in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12.

01:52:32

I know we're under the gun for time, but I'll just quote it here. Read this. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, so many are one body, so it is with Christ.

01:52:45

For in one spirit we are all baptized into one body. Jews are Greek, slaves are free, and all are made to drink of one spirit.

01:52:51

For the body does not consist of one member, but many. Paul goes on to kind of ridicule the idea that one body part, like a foot, can just kind of exist by itself.

01:53:00

No, it needs the rest of the body. And so, on the one hand, while we'll say, okay, the phrase church membership isn't in Scripture, it kind of is when you think of this membership of the body.

01:53:12

And that's even more intimate than probably any other kind of analogy we could think of, being a member of a body.

01:53:19

And as you're saying, we can impact the rest of the body, and we are impacted and benefited by being part of a broader body.

01:53:29

Now, what would you think, in summary, before we close, are the essential elements that should be present in a church before we request membership?

01:53:41

I have said on this program, I always look for Reformed Baptist churches when people contact me requesting a church recommendation, because people daily in my audience from all over the world contact me asking for church recommendations near them.

01:54:03

And I first try to find confessional Reformed Baptist churches. But I know that if I was not blessed to live in an area where a church like Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle existed,

01:54:16

I would even consider joining an Arminian church, as long as I knew that most of what was taught and done there was biblical, and even if there was a

01:54:30

Reformed church nearby that was notorious for having a tyrannical authoritarian leadership,

01:54:38

I might even prefer to be a member of a church that wasn't quite what

01:54:43

I was hoping for, but was willing to make exceptions, just because I know the importance of being a member of a

01:54:51

Christ -honoring church. And if I knew that the pastors of the non -Reformed church were godly, humble shepherds that were biblically literate and just behaved and lived as true under -shepherds, am

01:55:08

I making sense here? Yeah, I think I would very much agree with you there.

01:55:15

You know, when you think of the Reformation, the Reformers saw it first and foremost as a

01:55:21

Reformation of the church, not simply a Reformation of our sociology or doctrine of salvation,

01:55:29

Calvinism. First and foremost, these men saw themselves as churchmen, and so I think

01:55:36

I would agree with you there. I would recommend if someone was moving to a new area, the first thing

01:55:42

I would say is go on their website, look at their website, find out what they believe. Some churches don't put a lot up there.

01:55:49

They may not have a confession of faith like many Reformed churches do. I'd recommend approaching the pastor after a service and saying,

01:55:57

Look, we're new to the area. Could I sit down with you? And then go to him, have written out questions that you have, areas of doctrine, and find out.

01:56:07

He might tell you a lot more than what you might get from a website or even sitting through the service for a number of weeks.

01:56:15

And then you can, in your own conscience, evaluate that and say, Can I submit to this ministry? Can I join a church like this?

01:56:23

Amen. And having said what I said, I also am very often grieved by the behavior of some professing

01:56:35

Reformed Christians who claim they strongly agree with a

01:56:40

Reformed confession like the 1689, and yet they will prefer to join a non -Reformed church or a church with substandard teaching just because they've got a lot of wonderful programs and a choir that could rival a

01:56:58

Broadway musical and all those things, where they're preferring aesthetic things and things that are pleasing to the eye and ear and things that involve ways their children can have glorified babysitting going on.

01:57:15

This is also a negative in regard to joining a church, isn't it? Yes.

01:57:22

Yeah. And I think that, you know, as we think about the church and the church that we attend and are members of, we need to look beyond even the aesthetics, you know.

01:57:33

Maybe the best church for your soul isn't the massive church with all of these programs. Maybe it's just the little small church that meets in this building that kind of smells a little bit moldy and, you know, it's falling apart and it's, you know, a bunch of old people.

01:57:46

You know what I'm saying? I think so often we look at the big and the grand and we have this theology of glory and we think, that's what

01:57:54

I need, that's where my soul will be set. When actually, when you read the pastoral epistles, what does

01:58:00

Paul tell Timothy again and again and again? He says, be faithful, be faithful. And so what we need for our souls is pastors and ministers and churches that are above all faithful beyond the kind of aesthetics that can so often be so pleasing to us, to our senses.

01:58:19

Well, we are out of time. It was such a joy, brother, to have you back on the program after a long absence.

01:58:25

I look forward to you and Pastor John Miller returning to my program. I want to remind our listeners, don't forget about the conference we have been discussing,

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Thursday, June 9th through Saturday, June 11th, and that is in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at the

01:58:43

Bon Giorno Conference Center where my first guest, Mark Rains, will be the primary speaker and my second guest,

01:58:51

Pastor Simon O'Maney, will have a message on the life and legacy of St.

01:58:57

Patrick. And for all those details, go to gracebaptistcarlisle .org, gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

01:59:05

forward slash mid -atlantic -rbfc. That's gracebaptistcarlisle .org,

01:59:14

forward slash mid -atlantic -rbfc. Thank you so much,

01:59:19

Pastor O'Maney, for doing such a superb job today. I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater