Reformed Theology is More Than Election

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I invite you to take out your Bibles, turn with me to the book of 2 Timothy.
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Find your place in chapter 3 and verse 16.
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When we read, that will be the passage reading verses 16 and 17.
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The title of today's sermon is Reformed Theology is More Than Election.
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Why do we call today Reformation Day? Well, it was October 31st, 1517 that Martin Luther published the 95 Theses.
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He did so by nailing them to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.
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And these 95 Theses were 95 arguments against the sale of indulgences.
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The Roman Catholic Church had essentially made salvation a commodity.
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A person could purchase an indulgence certificate, which could be used to provide them with time off of purgatory, which was another false teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, or could provide them forgiveness in this life.
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And the money that was raised by the sale of those indulgences, which was essentially extorted from the people, was used to build St.
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Peter's Basilica in Rome.
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And those who purchased the indulgences were promised that they would share in the masses that would take place in that basilica from then until the end of time.
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That was how the indulgence was so powerful, that every mass that was to be performed in that basilica would be to their benefit forever, if they were just to buy this indulgence to be used to build up that edifice.
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The sale of indulgences was an ugly practice popular in the medieval church, and it caused a man named Martin Luther, who was a German pastor, theologian, and monk, to take up his pen, and he wrote against that practice, and his words against indulgences spread like wildfire throughout the land, to the point that even the Pope became aware of this seemingly insignificant monk, and the Pope threatened him with excommunication.
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But Luther never backed down, and his reformations spread further still.
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Now Luther was not the first, and neither was he the only reformer.
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He was preceded by great men like John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, and he had contemporaries like Ulrich Zwingli, and he was followed by men like John Calvin.
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But certainly no one would ever discount his influence.
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So today commemorates a moment in his life, and a moment in, as Brother Andy said, in church history, that is believed by many to be the moment that really ignited the fire, which would become the inferno called the Protestant Reformation.
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I wrote on my social media page yesterday, I said, you don't have to be a Lutheran to celebrate Reformation Day, because all Protestants, whether they be Baptists, whether they be Presbyterians, whether they be even Methodists, and so on, all who fall under the category of Protestant are indebted to what happened in the Reformation.
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By God's grace, He brought us back to the Scripture.
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That's what the Reformation is.
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It's the largest and most significant back-to-the-Bible movement in the history of the church.
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That's why we're going to read 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 in just a moment, because this passage reminds us what the Reformation brought us back to.
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It brought us back to the Word of God.
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No longer would the people of God be held in the ignorance that they were held in without the Word of God.
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Now the Word of God would be published.
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It would be published abroad.
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It would be sent out.
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And men like William Tyndale and John Wycliffe would translate it into language, and Luther would translate it into German, and it would go out, and it would be used of God to change hearts, to change lives, and to change the world.
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When the Word of God was unshackled and released, men and women were changed.
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And that's really what the Reformation is.
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It's the victory of the Bible in the history.
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We are a Reformed church.
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We have long been a Reformed church, but we were not always.
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We went through our own period of Reformation back in between 2008 and 2010.
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We went through a time of study and prayer and evaluation and change.
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We even changed our name, became Sovereign Grace Family Church, where we were once a different name.
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And even now we continue to Reform.
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We continue to grow and learn and go back to Scripture.
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We even this year adopted a Reformed confession, the 1646 London Confession.
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But one of the things that concerns me, and it's the reason for today's sermon, is that I still wonder when I say that we're Reformed if people know what that means.
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Really, no.
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Sometimes I think that all we think it means is that we believe in election.
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And I've even heard some of you will say, well, I talked to this person and they believe in election, so they must be Reformed too.
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But that's actually not the case.
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And so today what I want to do is I want to show you that believing in Reformed theology, being a Reformed church, is more than just believing in election and predestination, but it's believing so much more.
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And I want to admit before we even begin, really, that today's sermon is going to maybe be a little bit deep and a little bit like a theology lesson, but that hasn't run you all off yet.
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And that's pretty much standard fare, whether it's me, Andy, or Mike preaching, it's pretty much standard fare here.
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But I want you to put your thinking caps on, because today we're going to be thinking through several very important things.
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What does it mean to be a Reformed church? But before we do that, let's stand and read.
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We're going to read our opening passage.
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This will set the stage for everything, because everything we're going to look at today is going to come from the Bible, therefore, let us proclaim what the Bible is.
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Verse 16, "...all Scripture..." That's the Bible you're holding in your hand.
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"...all Scripture is breathed out by God, and it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work." Let us pray.
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Father, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You that You breathed out this Word, and that when we hold the Bible, we hold the very Word of God.
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Lord, let it be today that we are moved to a better understanding of what Your Word has to say.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Please have a seat.
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There were a few times during the fishing hole that we had something interesting happen.
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It was kind of new.
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I don't remember it happening in years past, but it did happen this year where we would go to hand somebody a track, and they would say, no, thank you, I don't believe in Calvinism.
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That happened.
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And it was a surprise to me, because that was sort of like I said, I've heard a lot of other things.
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I've heard, I don't want it, or I'm already saved, or I believe in God, or I don't believe in God.
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I've had a lot of people, but very rarely do I hear somebody say, I don't believe in Calvinism, which means our reputation preceded us.
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Because nowhere on our literature did it say Calvinism.
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Now, it says Sovereign Grace Family Church, and anybody who knows a little bit about the term Sovereign Grace knows it's a fairly Calvinistic phrase.
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So, whoever said, I don't want your track, I don't believe in Calvinism, they knew enough to connect the dots.
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But if you ever ask somebody, what is it you have a problem with? Why don't you believe in Calvinism? I'll bet you dollars to donuts.
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They'll tell you it's got something to do with predestination.
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They'll tell you it has something to do with the doctrine of election.
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Now, we have spent many an hour talking about that doctrine from this pulpit and from the Sunday school class.
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We have taught on it, Brother Andy, Brother Mike and I did whole conferences on the sovereignty of God, and we did the five points of Calvinism last summer.
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We have spent time on that doctrine.
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If you have an issue with it, we are welcome and willing to talk to you.
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But that ain't what we're going to talk about today.
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Because today I want to talk about the other things that make us reformed.
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Because if you think that's all it is, you are missing so much more of the full-orbed understanding of what it means to be reformed.
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In fact, there are people who are Calvinistic and not reformed.
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If that blows your mind, let it for a moment.
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There are men out there who are preachers, who preach a Calvinistic view of salvation, but they're not reformed in their theology as a whole.
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And so it's important to be able to make that distinction.
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And we as a church have committed not just to the doctrine of predestination, but we have committed to the theology and the principles that came out of the Reformation.
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And while we would fall under the category of Reformed Baptist, and that does separate us from what would be called Presbyterian or Reformed, classical Reformed theology, which is Presbyterian theology, we do make some distinctions there.
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We still fall very much into the category of the Reformed.
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And so what I'm going to do, I actually put it on the screen for you today, and I do apologize, we're still dealing with one screen.
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This one here, I had Brother Dan look at it this morning.
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He thinks that we have a problem with our switch in the back, so we're going to try to fix that, but it's all going to be on this screen.
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Don't let it scare you, because this is a lot, but this is what we're going to look at today.
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We're going to look at three things, but there are three things in several parts.
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You guys got it back there? There it is, okay.
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All right, so Reformed theology is more than election.
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Number one, Reformed theology is covenantal, federal, and Christocentric.
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Number two, Reformed ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church, is Christ-mastered, elder-managed, and deacon-ministered.
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And we'll talk about that when we get there.
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And number three, Reformed doxology.
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What does the word doxology mean, church? It means worship, how we worship.
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Reformed doxology is specifically Trinitarian and scripturally regulated.
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So those are the things we're going to look at today, and because there is so much, I won't have time to flesh out as much as I would want to from each one of these, but I will say this, we got lunch for you, so don't rush me.
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I'll make sure I keep going as long as y'all don't sit there and do this kind of stuff while I'm talking.
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I promise I'll stay moving as long as you guys stay listening, all right? So let's look at the first one.
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Reformed theology is covenantal, federal, and Christocentric.
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What do we mean by those three things? Well, let's look at the first one.
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Reformed theology is covenantal.
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Reformed theology recognizes that the way in which God has interacted with His creation from the beginning is through what we would call the covenant.
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Now, classical Reformed theology recognizes three covenants that are not stated in the Bible, but some would say they are implied.
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The first would be called the covenant of redemption, where before time began, God, in the triune persons of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three covenanted together to create the world and to redeem the elect.
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That that was something that God did before He created.
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That God already had a plan.
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Now, some people don't like to use the word covenant of redemption.
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If you don't, you can say it's the eternal plan of God, if that's the way we prefer to say it.
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Because some people don't.
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They say, well, the word covenant is not in Scripture, so is there another way to say it? Well, we can say it's the eternal plan of God.
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And if you look at the Bible, it tells us that Christ was the Lamb slain when? From the foundation of the world.
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That God had a plan in place before He ever put one stone on this planet, before He ever formed anything, that He had a plan.
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You know what's great about that? That we can know that this world is not haphazard or moving along on its own whims or its own will, but it is falling under and on the plan of God.
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That it began with the plan of God.
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Now, classic covenant theology would also recognize something called the covenant of works.
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And there's some debate about this.
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I don't want to spend too much time with it.
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But basically, this is relating to Adam in the garden.
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When Adam was in the garden, Adam had one prohibition.
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What was it? Do not eat of the tree.
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Now, some people believe that Adam could have not eaten of the tree, and that he could have worked toward his own righteousness.
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That's what the covenant of works usually is implying.
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However, there are some differences, some debate there.
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I don't want to get too far into it, but let me just say this.
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When we talk about Adam in the garden, Adam did have, and this is where the second one comes in, he did have a federal position.
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You guys know what the word federal means? It means representative.
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When Adam was in the garden, he represented all mankind.
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You realize you're born into this world as a sinner? You say, well, how is that fair? Well, here's how it's fair.
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Well, first of all, let's not even get into the idea of fair, because fairness is not a biblical category.
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Justice is a biblical category, but not fairness.
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You say, how is that fair? Here's how it works.
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God appointed a man to be a representative for all men.
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And that man, in his fall, brought all men into that fall.
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And if you have trouble with that, I would just simply point you to Scripture.
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The Scripture tells us very clearly that that happened.
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In fact, if you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn to Romans chapter 5.
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And go to verse 18.
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I hear Bible pages turning, that's always encouraging.
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So I'm not going to outrun y'all.
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I'm going to let you get there.
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Romans chapter 5, verse 18 says this, Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.
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For as by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience the many were made righteous.
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You see, what Paul is doing there is he's talking about the two federal heads of the human race.
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There are two.
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The first one is Adam.
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And he represents all the human race.
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And when he fell into sin, he fell into sin representing all of us.
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And his sin has affected all of us.
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And we all are sinners by choice, but also we are sinners by nature.
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What does Ephesians chapter 2 say? You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked.
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And you were by nature children of wrath.
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By nature.
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But notice it says in Romans 5, what we just read, it says by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, but by one man's obedience the many were made righteous.
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You see, there's two federal heads.
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There's Christ and Adam.
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Adam brings us into sin and Christ brings us into righteousness.
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Understand, that federal representative, that headship, that covenantal relationship is part of Reformed theology.
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It's understanding that we have only two banners under which we can stand.
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We can stand under the banner of Adam who sinned and brought us into death, or we can stand under Christ who was righteous and brought us into life.
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There is no in-between.
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There is no purgatory.
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There is no other option.
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There is no other way.
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And so Reformed theology sees all of the Bible through the lens of that relationship.
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And then we see God working out covenants through the Bible in a progressive way to bring us to where we are now, which is the new covenant.
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Now I've talked about this a lot in my study of Genesis, so I won't spend too much time here.
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But do you remember what covenants God made? God made a covenant with Noah where He promised that He would not destroy the world by water.
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And that covenant actually affected all mankind because all mankind live under the gracious providence of God where we will never again all be destroyed by water.
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And then later God chose one man out of all the men of the world.
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His name was Abraham and He said, In you shall all the nations of the world be blessed and I will give you the land and I will give you the seed and I will give you the sign of the covenant which was the mark in the flesh called circumcision.
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And then God would later come to one of Abraham's descendants whose name was Moses and He gave him a covenant in the law.
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And do you know what the covenant God made with Moses was? The Ten Commandments.
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In fact, if you read the Ten Commandments it says, This is the covenant that I have made.
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And what do those Ten Commandments do, church? They show us our sin.
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They point us to the righteousness of God and how we cannot be saved by ourselves.
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You see the covenant was a progressive thing.
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It was opening up more and more about God and with every new covenant comes a new understanding and a greater revelation of God.
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We call this progressive covenant.
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It progresses in our understanding.
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And God makes a covenant with Moses and no one is able to be saved by it.
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Just this last Friday we were teaching the Ten Commandments to our homeschool group.
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In fact, if you want to learn the Ten Commandments and you haven't yet learned the Ten Commandments, go see my wife.
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She's got the cutest little hand signal.
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You know, two, second commandment, don't bow down.
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It's this really cute thing.
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And so if you don't remember the Ten Commandments, go see my wife.
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She'll teach them to you and she'll teach you how to...
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I'm sorry.
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But the point is what we told those children and what I will tell you today is that covenant cannot save, but it can condemn.
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The law doesn't save us, but it points us to the need for a Savior.
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And that's why we have the blessing of the new covenant.
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In fact, the new covenant was promised in the old covenant.
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The promise was made through the prophets that one day God would make a new covenant and He would write His law on our hearts and we would be His people and He would be our God and our relationship would now be formed not on the law, but on grace.
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Therefore, sometimes we call the new covenant the covenant of grace because in it, as it says, the law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
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And every person who's ever been saved, even the people who came before Jesus, every person who's ever been saved has been saved by the work of Jesus.
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All of those Old Testament saints who died, who were saved, died on credit because their death, their sins were not yet atoned for, but God counted them as righteous because there was a Savior coming who would one day take their sin from them and He did and that's why they look forward to the Messiah.
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They look forward to that new covenant.
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They look forward to that Savior because one day He would come and He would take their sin.
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Every time they slit the throat of one of them animals and they let its blood bleed out on those altars, they were picturing what was going to come and that was Jesus who was going to come and He was going to die on that cross for their sins and He did.
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And when He did, He saved them and He saved everybody who was coming after Him.
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Some people say, if you get saved, God only forgives your past sins.
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He don't forgive your future sins.
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I say, let me explain how wrong that is because all of our sins were future sins when Jesus was on the cross.
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Every one of my sins was in the future when Jesus was dying.
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Now that doesn't mean that I shouldn't live a life of repentance.
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That doesn't mean that I shouldn't consider daily to repent of my sins, but all of my sins were future sins when He died on the cross and He died for every one of them.
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As much as He died for the past Old Testament saints, He died for the New Testament.
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And this is what makes covenant theology so important.
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In covenant theology, there is only one people of God.
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We do not separate Israel from the church with two different plans.
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But we say both of them meet together in the one plan for God's elect.
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And that's the big distinction because if you go to a lot of churches around here, you will find something that's different than covenant theology.
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You'll find something called dispensational theology.
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And dispensational theology talks about two plans of God.
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The plan for Israel and the plan for the church.
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Maybe you've heard that.
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Maybe you grew up with that.
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Maybe you believe that.
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And if you do, I want you to turn to your Bible.
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I want to show you something.
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Go to Ephesians chapter 2.
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Because this is the heart of covenant theology.
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This is the heart of federal theology.
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Is that we understand that there is one people of God.
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The elect.
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The elect before Christ.
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The elect after Christ.
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The Israel of God is not all the Jews over in Israel right now.
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It's the people of God, the elect of God.
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And if that offends you, come see me over lunch and I'll help you understand it.
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But it is the truth.
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Now let me read this to you.
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Ephesians chapter 2.
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This is the second part of Ephesians 2.
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The part that hardly ever gets read.
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Everybody reads to verse 10 and goes hallelujah.
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And we hardly ever get to verse 11.
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But listen to what 11 says.
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Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision which is made in the flesh by hands.
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Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
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Stop right there.
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So see what he's saying.
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He's saying all of you Gentiles used to be outside of the covenant.
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Used to be outside of Israel.
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Used to be outside of the promises.
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You were in a bad position.
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Verse 13.
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I love the word but.
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The adversative conjunction which changes everything.
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Notice what it says in verse 13.
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But now in Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
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You who were outside of the covenant.
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You who were outside of the promises.
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You have been brought near for He Himself is our peace who has made us both one and has broken down in His flesh the dividing wall of hostility.
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Having abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that He might create in Himself one new man.
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Not two.
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Not Israel and the church.
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But one new man.
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One new man in the place of the two.
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So making peace.
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And might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross.
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Thereby killing the hostility.
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The hostility between who? Israel and the Gentiles.
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Between the Jews and the Gentiles.
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They're one people in Christ.
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In Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek.
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There's neither slave nor free.
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There's neither male nor female.
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But all are one in Christ Jesus.
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How many times how loud do we have to say it? That's it.
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And so understand that's the heart of covenant theology.
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It's about God's covenant making its way through history.
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That's why it's called covenant theology.
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It's not called election theology.
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It's not called predestination theology.
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It's called covenant theology.
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Because this is the focus.
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This is the point.
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It's covenant, it's federal, and it's Christocentric.
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Let me finish on that last one.
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Christocentric.
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What does that mean? It's centered on Christ.
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Christ is the hermeneutical center of the Bible.
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One of my professors used to say this.
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He said, everywhere you cut the Bible it bleeds the blood of Christ.
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Christ is throughout the Bible.
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In fact, when he was on the road to Emmaus with those two disciples, what did he say? He said, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he showed them himself in all the scriptures.
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He exposited to them himself in the Bible.
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I've heard people say recently, and this is getting out of hand as far as I'm concerned.
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I've heard people say, no, no, no, we've got to read the Old Testament in its grammatical historical context, which I believe that's true.
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But when they say that, often what they're saying is you can't see Christ.
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And I know a guy who said, Christ is not the focus of Isaiah 53.
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I about fainted, fell over, about hit my head on the floor.
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If Christ is not the focus of Isaiah 53, then you're not reading your Bible right.
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Because Christ is the suffering servant.
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If you don't believe that, go to Acts chapter 8 and look at Philip when he is preaching to the eunuch, and he reads and he says, who is this about? Is it about the prophet or is it about someone else? And it says, and he got up there and he explained how it was pointing to Christ.
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Christ is the hermeneutical focus of the Bible.
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Christ is the point of Genesis 3.15, the one who would crush the head of the serpent.
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Christ is pictured in the animal skins that were slain to cover Adam and Eve.
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Christ is the one that every sacrifice pointed to.
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So when we talk about Christ, we are not misreading Scripture when we say the whole Scripture is about Jesus.
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So that's first.
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That's Reformed Theology, Covenantal, Federal, Christocentric.
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If I had more time, we could do more, but I'm going to go on.
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Reformed Ecclesiology, because it's not just about theology, it's also about how the church functions.
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You know what? Let me tell you a story.
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When this church first became Reformed-ish, because we went from not Reformed to Reformed-ing and to Reformed-ish and then Reformed.
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We kind of like went through this sort of stages and I could tell, I was talking to Mike and Deborah last night, sort of going through the stages of what happened.
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But you know, I only spent a few weeks explaining election, but it took me a year of preaching to help the church understand Reformed Ecclesiology, that the church must change how it functions.
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Not just how we see election, not just how we see those doctrines of salvation, but how we are to understand the role of elders and the role of deacons and Christ as the head of the church.
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In fact, I wrote the book, The Biblically Functioning Church, based on those sermons.
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You read it, I know, because you had to take the class.
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Jackie, you read the book? And what did I talk about in there? That so many churches function businessly rather than biblically.
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They got every committee for everything.
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They got a toilet flushing committee.
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They got a door locking committee.
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And they got a committee for this and they got a committee for that.
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Let me tell you something, if you have biblically functioning elders and you got biblically functioning deacons, you got everything you need as far as offices are concerned.
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And let me tell you this, I thought a lot about this as I was preparing for this message.
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When I say it's Christ mastered, that has to be the truth.
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Christ must be the first place.
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This is not Keith Foskey's church.
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This is not Michael Carrier's church.
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It's not Andy Montoro's church.
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It's not Dale Springer's church.
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It's not Manoah Budd's church.
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This is Christ's church.
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Christ must have first place.
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And do you know how Christ has first place in this church? By the Word.
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If the Word is secondary, Christ is secondary.
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The Bible must be preeminent.
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And it must be the foundation for everything that we do.
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Otherwise, we are not a Christ-headed church.
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Because Christ governs through His Word.
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And Christ manages the church through His men.
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And I want to tell you all this too about the elders.
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And this is important and I hope, don't turn me off, listen to this.
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This is important.
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The elder of the church, the role of the elder is the same as the role of the pastor in regard to the duties and the authority that the Bible gives.
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So, when I talk about Mike and Andy, often times it's Pastor Keith and it's Elder Mike and Elder Andy.
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But actually what it should be, if you're going to call me pastor, then you should call them pastor.
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Because it's the same biblical title.
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Now you might say, well I don't know, that's a little different.
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Hey, different is good sometimes.
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Sometimes you need change because it teaches you something.
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In fact, I didn't ask your permission to do this, but I went on our website and I changed the website.
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It no longer says our elders.
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It says our pastors.
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I talked to them.
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And I said, are you all comfortable with this? And they said, well, yeah, if you're comfortable with it, yeah.
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So I did that.
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And by the way, you'll notice on the screen, it no longer says elder prayer.
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It says pastoral prayer.
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Because that's what it is.
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A biblically functioning church, a reformed church, understands that the pastor is not a...
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I'm not a pope.
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I'm not the protestant pope of this church.
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And that's how you get the wrong thinking when you begin to think the man who has the most preaching time is the man in charge.
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No, Jesus is in charge.
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And I have people to answer to, too.
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Most importantly, Him.
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But we answer to one another and we answer to you all in one sense because you're the body of Christ and we're ministering to you.
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But we are the pastors of this church, plural, not singular.
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Is that helpful? I hope it is.
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I hope you understand.
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I'm not rebuking anybody.
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I'm just helping us to understand the role.
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And when we talk about the deacons, understand this.
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Everybody turn to Acts 6.
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Because I want you to see where the deacons actually were formed.
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The deacons were formed for a purpose.
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It was so that the original apostles who were charged with preaching and teaching the Word would not have to give up the preaching and teaching of the Word to serve tables.
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Now, there ain't nothing wrong with serving tables.
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And there ain't none of our elders or pastors who would ever deny serving a table if it needed to be done.
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But understand this.
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The role of the deacon was to serve the body so that the elders, the apostles, could preach the Word.
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Listen to what it says.
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Acts 6.
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It says, Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because the widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.
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I don't got time to get into it, but there was basically mistreatment going on because of the way people talked.
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Some people spoke Greek, some people spoke Hebrew.
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That was kind of an issue going on within the church.
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And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables.
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Hear that again.
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It's not right that we should give up the preaching of the Word of God to serve tables.
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Therefore, brothers, pick out from among yourselves seven men of good reputation, full of the Spirit and wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.
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What's the primary role of the elder? Prayer and ministry of the Word.
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That is the primary role.
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Now that doesn't mean I ain't going to visit you in the hospital.
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That doesn't mean I ain't going to come have coffee at your house.
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But my primary role in your life, and the primary role of Mike, and the primary role of Andy, is to pray for you and to teach you the Word of God.
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That is our primary role.
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And if there is a ministry in your life that's needed, that is where the deacons are to become the hands and feet of the church and meet your need.
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In fact, I wrote something.
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I want to say it just how I wrote it.
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The goal of any Reformed church should to be to be fully submitted to Christ as the head over everything and to have a robust eldership who govern with the Word and a caring and committed group of deacons who are in love with serving the people of God.
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That's what a Reformed church looks like.
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You've got the elders, pastors, who are preaching and teaching the Word of God, who are praying for the people, and the needs are being met through the ministry of the deacons.
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That's a Reformed ecclesiology.
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Now finally, Reformed doxology.
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This will be the shortest one.
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Reformed doxology is specifically Trinitarian and scripturally regulated.
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Now when I say Trinitarian, do you all know what I mean? It means we worship God as a Trinity.
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We worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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One God in three persons.
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We sing the song, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.
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Early in the morning my song shall rise to Thee.
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Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.
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God in three persons.
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Blessed Trinity.
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We don't worship God the Father to the expense of God the Son and God the Spirit.
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We don't worship God the Son to the expense of the Father or the Spirit.
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And we don't worship the Spirit to the expense of the Father and the Son.
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But you will find that in a lot of churches.
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Especially a lot of charismatic churches.
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Become so enamored with the work of the Holy Spirit that you never hear about the work of the Son.
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You never hear about the work of the Cross.
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You never hear about the Incarnation and the Resurrection and all of the Atonement.
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Because they're so worried about these fits of spiritual gifts.
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They get so focused on one person of the Trinity to the expense of the others.
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And in doing so they become out of balance.
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Reform worship is Trinitarian worship.
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We worship the Father through the Son by the Spirit.
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And we always keep that in mind.
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In fact, I'll read to you from Alan Vander Paul.
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This is an article written for Ligonier Ministries.
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Listen to this closely.
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The true worship, excuse me, the reason true worship is Trinitarian is that God's revelation of Himself to us, especially His saving revelation, is Trinitarian.
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When the Father sent the Son, the Son came in the power of the Spirit.
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And since the Father saved us through the Son by the power of the Spirit, we approach Him using the same pathway.
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Through Christ we have all access in one Spirit to the Father.
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It becomes clear that our worship is our response to the Gospel of Christ and our way of approaching God reflects the way that He has approached us.
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The Father has approached us through the Son by the Spirit.
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So we go through the same pathway by the Spirit through the Son to the Father.
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So our worship must be Trinitarian.
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I'm telling you something.
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I've been in conversations where people have come to this church and I say, what is it about your old church? What is it that you're struggling with? Why are you thinking about leaving? Whatever.
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And they will tell me, our pastors are preaching a Jehovah Witness view of the Trinity.
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That Jesus is created.
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The Holy Spirit is just a force.
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Or they're teaching a modalistic view of the Trinity where Jesus and the Father are one person.
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They have a false view of the Trinity and they don't even realize it.
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I was sitting on a council one time of a man who was being ordained to the Gospel.
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Everybody got to ask him a question.
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And they let me ask a question.
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I went last.
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And I said, I want to ask you this.
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I said, can you just, for the sake of everybody here, please explain in simplest of terms how you would tell a Jehovah Witness how to understand the doctrine of the Trinity.
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There was no sound.
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You could hear a pin drop.
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And the guy beside me, wasn't the guy answering, the guy beside me, he said, well that question's too hard.
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Why would you ask him a hard question like that? I said, because we're not investigating this man to see if he can be a dog catcher.
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We're not investigating this man to see if he can deliver mail.
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We are investigating this man to see if he can stand before the people of God and proclaim the Word of God about the God who is, not the God who isn't.
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There's a reason why he should know that answer.
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He's not going to be a politician.
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He's going to be a preacher of the Word of God and he needs to know the truth.
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We are specifically Trinitarian in our worship.
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And if your church isn't Trinitarian, maybe you're a guest with us today and you've not heard this or you don't even know what the doctrine of the Trinity is, you need to go and talk to your pastor.
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You need to find out what's going on.
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I'm telling you what, the doctrine of the Trinity is not optional.
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Finally, scripturally regulated.
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What does that mean? You ever wonder why we do what we do in worship? We do it because the Bible says so.
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Scripturally regulated.
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In fact, when Brother Andy and I were at the conference, we heard a man, I don't remember his name, but it was the second brother who spoke.
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He spoke about having a theology of worship.
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And that really impressed on Brother Andy and me.
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And we got back and talked to Brother Mike about it.
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And we said, next year for our Bible conference, every year we do one, next year at our Bible conference, that's what we're going to preach on.
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A theology of worship.
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Why do we come and do the things that we do? Why? What is it that makes this day different than the other days? Why is this service set up the way that it is? Do you know why we do what we do? It's because it's regulated by the Bible.
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We don't come in here and haphazardly throw things together just because it's what we want.
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We do what the Bible commands us to do.
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And it regulates how we do it.
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In fact, there's a church today, I was hesitant to even say this, but I'm going to say it, and if it gets me, I'm going to say this, because I'm not trying to kick anybody in the teeth, but there's a church today that posted a thing on Facebook yesterday that said, come have our Halloween party with us today from 10 to 1.
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And somebody asked, does that mean you're not having worship? They said, yep.
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From 10 to 1 today, there's a church in our area that has chosen, rather than to worship the living God in spirit and truth, to have a Halloween party.
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Now, I don't care what y'all do tonight, I'm going to be handing out tracts.
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In fact, I got a bucket of tracts right here.
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If you want tracts to hand out tonight, I brought them.
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I put them right here so I wouldn't forget.
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You come take as many as you want, but give them out.
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Don't put them in your car and let them sit and go to waste.
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You give them out.
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But that's what we're going to do tonight.
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But you know what we're doing today? We're worshiping today, because this is the Lord's day.
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It's not your day.
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It don't belong to you.
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It belongs to him.
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And that's shame, to say instead of worshiping today, we're going to have a party, have a Halloween party.
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What a shame.
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Here's the thing.
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You know what scripturally regulated worship is? We worship God His way, not our way.
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People all the time, I want to worship God my way.
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We'll go somewhere else, because we ain't worshiping God your way.
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We're going to worship God His way.
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Ultimately, a Reformed church is a church that holds the Bible as the sole and fallible authority for faith and practice, and it seeks to conform everything that it does, its theology, its polity, its worship, everything to the Word of God.
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I can say this without hesitation.
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If you do not believe the Bible is God's Word, you will not be happy here.
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I ain't telling you you got to leave, because maybe God will change your heart.
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But we ain't changing for you.
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If you do not believe the Bible is God's Word, either God's going to change your heart, or you ain't going to be happy, because it is our full conviction that we stand upon God's Word.
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And whatever we do, whether it's our theology, whether it's our ecclesiology, whether it's our doxology, everything must flow from the Word of God.
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I'll close with this.
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When Martin Luther was threatened with excommunication, he was summoned to the Diet of Worms, which was essentially like a legal proceeding, where he would have to make his stand, and either recant of his teachings, or not, and face the consequences.
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He was told, Martin Luther, will you recant of what you have taught? And after a time of consideration, because he knew if he didn't, it could mean his life.
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After a time of consideration, he came before the Council, before the Diet of Worms, and he said these words.
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Unless I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture, or clear reason, for I trust neither Pope nor Council, since they have often contradicted each other, I am bound by the text of the Bible.
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My conscience is captive to the Word of God.
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I cannot and I will not recant anything, since to act against conscience is neither right nor safe.
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Here I stand, I can do no other.
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God help me.
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Amen.
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Brothers and sisters, can that be said of us? Can we say our conscience is captive to the Word of God today? That's what it means to be reformed.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your Word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you, I pray that this message has been clear, and has been clearly received.
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I pray that you would open the hearts of your people, Lord God, that they might hear the Word, and that it might change them and draw them closer to you.
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And Lord, if there are those here who have never bowed the knee to Christ, Lord, today might be the day that you would change hearts and lives, and draw men unto yourself.
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I pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.