Importance of Church and Interpreting the Bible

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The thing, though, is that the arguments the person was making was, hey, there's two or three gathered. We're singing songs. We're praying. We're preaching. That defines church. I actually said to him, I said, you know, I've done all those at a secular job site.

You know, we had a couple of believers that we got in early, and we would pray before work, and we'd do a Bible study. There was three of us. Does that make it church? And he's like, oh, you're being ridiculous.

I said, all I'm doing is using your argument that you're using on the street and applying it to a different situation. And it got me looking into what is the church?

Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

Humor, Denominational Differences, and the Value of Comedy

So, it sounds like the start of a really bad joke. A Presbyterian, a Baptist, and, well, all the denominations get together and walk into Buffalo Wild Wings? My name's Andrew Rapoport. I'm the host of Andrew Rapoport.

And if you're not familiar with my name, that's because you're listening to me on one of the other podcasts represented. Well, we have a Presbyterian here.

Is that my intro? That's your intro. We have a Presbyterian here. Take it away, Greg. My name is Greg Moore. I'm the token Presbyterian, I guess, reformed in my theology and host of Dead Man Walking Podcast.

Met these guys a few months ago. We've become good friends, and hopefully we can have a good chat tonight.

You're the Presbyterian. I'm the Baptist from Andrew Rapoport's Wrap Report. We have someone who is all the denominations. Would that be right, Greg?

I think he's all of them in his video, and he does them pretty well, too.

And that would be conversations with a Calvinist. Who could that be?

That's me, Keith Foskey, and I am your Calvinist. That is it. Yeah, absolutely. Good to see you.

OK, so we should explain where for those in my audience, at least, Greg, your audience knows Keith if they've been OK. Maybe if they haven't listened to all the episodes, they should go back and binge.

Would that be OK?

I don't know. Within the last month. So if you cut the last three or four, you know who he is.

He would. And you'd get the reference, even the reference to the Wild Wings. Keith, you're probably best known. You're probably better known than any of us here for something you do. When you explain it, everyone's going to have the same reaction that I had when we first met.

When I was like, oh, that's you're that guy. It's for bringing James White McDonald's.

That's what I'm famous for, is for bringing James White a hamburger. Actually, it was a cheeseburger Happy Meal. No, it wasn't. It was a cheeseburger. He said he wanted to toy. No, that's not. I'm the guy who everybody says you're that guy.

And by that guy, that means the guy who does the denominational videos. And I do various kinds. But the most popular ones are when I dress like other denominations and make fun of all of us.

You point out who has superior theology.

Yes, tonight it would be Greg who is the superior theology representative because it is always the Presbyterian.

And, you know, just just for you, I mean, I have to light this up. I mean.

So we we met and I think our first our first interaction was at a Buffalo Wild Wings. It was if we could just share the video that you did. We should explain the video first. We were sitting at the Buffalo Wild Wings together and we'll get to more serious theology tonight.

But we're sitting and having just having dinner. Very loud place. And Keith was Greg would be fair to say he was taking tons of notes and just getting ready for show prep.

Yeah, he was stealing our material. Andrew is what he was doing. Oh, there it is. He's got the stogie out. All right. There's my closet, Presby.

But he doesn't light it up. He just that's right. I just chew. I just chew like Winston Churchill over there. You mentioned that I was taking notes, actually, how it started. And I don't remember who said it, but we were we were about to order the wings.

The waitress had walked up and I may have been Greg, but somebody looked at me and they said, well, hey, how would a Methodist order wings? Because Methodist is the one that's always very progressive, very feminine.

You know, and I said, well, they would order the cauliflower wings. And everybody thought that was funny. I said they wouldn't want, which is also true, though. Yeah, they wouldn't want the meat. They would just want the cauliflower wings.

And everybody thought that was funny. So I pulled out my phone and wrote that down. And then everybody started throwing out other ideas. Well, what would the big Eva be? What would everybody and of course, you know, big Eva has chicken nuggets and calls them wings.

We didn't discuss the ending of it, so we'll have to wait for the ending to discuss that.

But we're going to say, Greg, I was going to talk about the ending. I said, you know, it's sad because we have a dipsy here in our presence and you kind of made fun of him. And Andrew's the exact opposite of that.

He's very generous and giving person. But that ending where he pretends the rapture apps and he doesn't have to pay the bill. I laugh so hard at that. That's that's a good ending for that skit.

And let me just add to that. I went to lunch with Andrew during the conference and he bought my lunch so that there he is. That's what I mean. The one in the video. Yeah, he was. He's very generous soul that I shared.

I shared the video. I laughed hysterically at the ending. And I did say when I posted it, I said, but I paid my bill. That's right. Let's let's play a clip of it for folks that are watching on the video and or they could just those that could listen.

And so if you're listening, I'll just say you hear different voices. All the voices are done by Keith, but he's acting out different roles. So it's kind of better to go and just search for the denominations order chicken wings.

And that way you can watch the video because he dresses up as each of the people and it says whether he's the Presbyterian, the Baptist or or whoever.

So here's the video. Welcome to wings are us. My name is Chad. I'll be your server. Can I get you guys had a list, sir? I'll have, you know, we're a group of Christians, so there won't be any alcohol this day.

The Baptist. That's right. But hey, when the Baptist isn't looking, I need you to turn this glass of water. And there's my Presbyterian theory. Theology requires a superior beverage. Amen. Food order.

Of course, our specialty is wings. So what will everyone be having? I like my wings like I like my sermons filled with fire and brimstone. Independent Baptist. I'm sure those are really, really hot. Most people can't stand them.

Listen, if I can handle Steven Anderson sermons, I can handle your wings. Steven Anderson reference. Yes. By the way, before I forget, I want to give you this gospel tract. Well, thank you. Most most people just leave this with their tip.

That's just the thing. I won't be leaving a tip. Well, there's a big surprise. Very important to me that the wings be completely submerged in the sauce. I don't want any part that's not covered in sauce.

It's not like a Baptist unless it's immersed. Listen, don't put my wings in the sauce. I want you to bring the sauce on the side. I'll pour it on myself. Yes, I like it's covered in sweet and hot sauce.

It's a true via media of flavors. And that's the way I like it. I like beer battered wings, but you can hold the wings and hold the batter.

So just beer then? That's my boy. That's my boy.

Yes, I have a very special way that I want my wings prepared. I brought a chart with me. It's color coded and it gives the seven different steps that I want my wings made in here. You can just hand this to the chef.

I like boneless wings, please. I actually don't think we have boneless wings on the menu. Boneless. Listen, man, if you love Jesus, you're going to call chicken nuggets, boneless wings. I want to try your cauliflower wings.

Those don't have any meat in them. They're very progressive. And if you would bring me my sauce in a bottle, I want to sprinkle it on myself. A few moments later. All right, everyone, I hope you enjoyed the food.

Is this all going to be on one check or are we going to be separating this out for everyone? Yes, we're all going to be going separate tonight. Wait, where's the dispensationalist? And there's just the clothes.

He pretends to be raptured so he doesn't have to pay his part of the bill.

Oh, that's so good. You know why those are so good, Keith, too, is because there's little you're basically doing comedy, but you understand each one so well that there's little things in there that I look at and I go, oh, yeah, I get that.

And in most people would go right over the fact that the Presbyterian and the Lutheran kind of look at each other and have a little thing. There's a long running thing to where Presby's kind of have a thing for Lutherans.

We're like, we don't believe in your baptism stuff, your Eucharist stuff, but we kind of buddy up to him. And it's like only someone who really understands the relationship between all the denominations can do something like that.

And then you pick up on it and you go, oh, that's just gold.

There's so much gold in each one of your videos that you know, you guys on Dead Man Walking podcast, when Keith was on, you guys talked about humor and the fact that, you know, there are people. And I guess it was Keith, you played the independent fundamentals Baptist, so he'd be the one without the humor.

Right. So I'm saying that someone who is went to an independent fundamentals Baptist seminary, just for the record, full disclosure, full disclosure. So you guys talked about the fact of, you know, is humor appropriate?

There's a lot of people that think like Christians shouldn't be joking around, shouldn't have humor. I mean, scripture is clear in Proverbs that humor is good medicine to the soul.

Yeah, I get actually more than you would think people who tell me that I just shouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I've been told it's one that all denominations are bad and therefore I'm just perpetuating something that's bad.

Like I created the denominations, like I did this like, like, like denominationalism is my fault.

Well, you're representing all of them, so that's it.

But then some who just, you know, there's, you know, it isn't. That's the one thing I hear division isn't funny. And I'm like, no, it really is. It's hilarious.

That's the basis of comedy is the differences, right? Yeah, that's right. Stereotypical stuff, the difference between men and women, the difference between denominations. Like the reason why we, why comedy sometimes hits is because one, it's true.

And we're celebrating our differences through laughing kind of at each other.

Well, I think one of the biggest reasons I think that so many Christians don't find things funny and don't like humor is because they're just, well, one, they're, they're looking to be offended like the rest of the world.

So there's that problem. But I think that there's, there's some that have such a pride in their theology that they can't joke about it. They can't think that someone else may actually be right. They have to be the only one who's right.

I really think that's a struggle they have. And one of the things I appreciate when we all got together in that Buffalo Wild Wings we were at, we were all over the map in different theological topics.

And it was great. I mean, I had so much fun. Even, even when Greg, this was the funniest scene. Haps Addison, I had him on my podcast and he talked about this one thing that you did, Greg, because it was just great.

We're all sitting there and it was one point because, I mean, this was with Jeffrey Rice. And basically there's two topics that came up every night, every discussion, theonomy and end times, right? And Jeffrey Rice brought them up every time.

There was a point where everyone was kind of getting on the Presbyterians with theonomy. And you just turned and went, wait, we got a disp here. Why don't we all go after him?

And everyone was like, why are you picking on me when there is really an easy pick on guy right here?

Exactly. That's how I felt. I was like, wait a minute, he's dipsy, why are we picking on me? And so that was great.

But you know what? We disagreed. You and I, Greg, were probably the people on the opposite sides the most because everyone else pretty much was in alignment, except for you and I. We're sitting next to each other.

It was a great time. Even though we disagreed with one, we had a great theological discussion. We dug into discussing scripture. We disagreed with one another. There was no name calling. And it was enjoyable and fun until Keith left us.

And then the joke stopped.

Well, I'll say two things about that. One, it was kind of fun seeing how you and I, Andrew, had to kind of form our game of throne alliances because we were among so many Reformed Baptists. We had to find where we had common ground and kind of link arms and go, okay, at least we can battle together on this.

But two, I would also just say for those listening, yes, I love comedy. I love poking fun, or I can listen to someone talking about systematic theology. Now, where I do draw the line is if you're talking about my Savior in a demeaning manner, or if you're talking about Christ and his sacrifice and what he's done, I do draw the line there.

And I think both of you would agree with that. But I just want to make that clear for the listeners. I'm not going to sit through something that demeans Christ or God or any of that. But if you want to talk about our differences and systematic theology and things like that, and most of them are secondary issues, sometimes not.

Yeah, have at it. And let's joke about it. And let's have a good time with it. Amen. Yeah.

No, I think that's a very important point, because I think when it comes to the character and nature of God, that's in a different category than our systematic theology, which, look, all of us have a theological position that was written by men.

Okay, whichever position we have. Now, everyone's going to, no, I have just the Bible. No, you don't. Have you guys run into the person, because I'm sure you have, that person who tells you he doesn't go to church.

He doesn't need church. He doesn't need a confessional. He has the Bible. He doesn't listen to words of men. Yeah, they're called dispensationalists. I'm joking. Of course not, Andrew. We know. No, we run into those people.

It's like, have you ever realized you are your system? Yeah.

Oh, no, absolutely. It's funny how many of those people, when they say that, it's just, I don't need a system. I don't need a man telling me anything. It's just me and my Bible. How many of those people are just outright kooky when they start explaining the things that they've come up with, and it's just me and my Bible, and it's almost always some kind of really fringe, out on the edge, weird position that they've come up with.

And some people might claim, well, that's because the Bible's unclear. No, it's because that person has made themselves the standard, and they are going to read everything through their own filter. It's not as if they don't have a filter.

They do. It's their own brain, and their filter is messed up.

And, Keith, why is it that they all seem to struggle with that one passage, forsake not assembling together? Yeah, yeah. I've never met a single one of them that actually goes to church and submits himself to anyone.

Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. And they'll tell you. They'll say, I don't need anybody.

I don't submit to man. I just submit to God. And it's like, okay, ultimately, we do have to submit to God. But what do you do with Hebrews 13 that says to submit to your leaders and obey them, and that their work may be a joy and not a burden?

How do you submit? Well, I'm submitting to Jesus. Okay.

That's not what that passage is talking about. Yeah, I think it's an accountability issue. When you get down to it, it's a pride issue. I'm dealing with that with a very close family member. Well, I have my church service out here in my house.

I live by myself. Me and God, we talk, and we read the Bible. And you can skip over a lot of passages that actually command it. Submit to elders. Submit to civil leaders. Submit to one another. Hello.

Don't forsake the gathering of the assembly. Like Andrew pointed out, every sin comes down to pride. There's some pride and accountability issues there. And I've known I've went through those in my life in my early 30s.

Just thought, you know, I can make a run at this myself. Then realized, no, very quickly, you can't. And then when you realize the joy of the body of Christ that comes with gathering with brothers and sisters.

And as Keith, he's a pastor. I mean, I'm sure you wake up and you go, I can't wait to see my brothers and sisters on Sunday. Bring the word. Fellowship. Assemble with them. So, I don't know. It's tough, too, because they don't know what they're missing out on.

It's a common grace. It's a blessing of the Lord for us to be able to gather. Amen.

Yeah. I mean, I think what it ultimately does, I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding what church actually is. Because when you think, oh, I could do church at home with my family. Okay, so there's 31 one another's in the New Testament.

You're not practicing those the way you would in church. You have not only those, but you have all the spiritual gifts. And those are for the others. They're not for yourself. So now what do you do when you can't use your spiritual gifts?

Who are the pastors and the deacons? How are you doing communion? You can't do these things when it's just, hey, it's just me at home by myself. Or I'm watching TV. I'm watching someone on TV, and that's church.

You're not participating. You're doing the very opposite of what church is about. Church is not about me getting. I mean, there are times where I think we do. We go to church. Maybe it's just been a rough season of life.

And you go to church, and you're the one that people are ministering to. But that's because other times you're the one ministering to others. You can't do that with a TV. That's not church. Yeah. You sitting with the Bible.

You can't practice church.

Well, like I said, it's accountability, though, too, right? I mean, who are you submitting to at that point? You're becoming the monarchy, and the only monarchy is Christ. So if you're at home by yourself, and you make all the decisions, and you go, I'm checking in with God.

Well, I hate to tell you, but God doesn't come down to your living room on Mount Sinai and speak to you like you did to Moses. He has set in place a very structured order of how it is. And maybe this is a little bit of my Presbyterian coming out.

But you do. You have pastors. You have elders. You have other brothers and sisters who hold you accountable. And then through that line is if you're not taking your family to church, how are you going to be the head of your household submitting to elders and shepherds if you make yourself the king of that castle and essentially don't have any accountability?

So generally, I see it as a rebellious spirit when people do that. Now, I don't look at I know there's good Christians out there and people that we know that don't attend church and they're believers, but at the root of it, if we introspect and we look deep and we go, if they really were to ask themselves, what's the reason why I'm not doing that?

It usually comes down to, like I said, pride and accountability, I think.

The Biblical Structure and Accountability of the Church

Yeah, not to be self promotional, but I do want to mention something. I've not written a lot of things, but I do have a book that I wrote called A Biblically Functioning Church, which talks about the structure that you were just talking about, Greg, and understanding the structure of the Biblically Functioning Church, what elders do, what deacons do, what gift-based ministry is, is what Andrew was just talking about.

How do we use our gifts within the body? It's available. You can order it, but you can also get it for free. I have it available on our church's website. You can get the digital version absolutely free at sgfcjacks .org and I also have my book on the Trinity, but this particular topic means a lot to my heart.

I even did a video, I had a video, people want to find it on our channel, of two men arguing over whether or not they should go to church. It's me arguing with myself. It's the way I do the videos. The guy says, I don't go to church, I am the church.

It's like, no, you're not. You are not the church. The church is the assembly and you don't get to assemble by yourself. You're not Voltron, okay? You don't get to assemble all by yourself. That's an 80s reference right there.

Anyway, if anybody's interested, they can go and check out the book. We actually use it for teaching one of our classes at the academy, teaching the Christian life and ministry.

As you guys know, my background, I do a lot of open air evangelism and there was a guy who wrote a book about whether women can do open air. Part of the argument that was made was when you go out on the street, that's church and therefore a woman can't be preaching because it's called open air preaching.

Now, I've always referred to it as open air evangelism because that's really what you're doing. You're evangelizing. Now, there are guys that prepare sermons who you preach into. If it's an evangelistic sermon, okay, that would be fitting.

But the thing though is that the arguments the person was making was, hey, there's two or three gathered. We're singing songs. We're praying. We're preaching. That defines church. And I actually said to him, I said, you know, I've done all those at a secular job site.

You know, we had a couple of believers that we got in early and we'd pray before work and we'd do a Bible study and there was three of us. Does that make it church? And he's like, oh, you're being ridiculous.

I said, all I'm doing is using your argument that you're using on the street and applying it to a different situation. And it got me looking into what is the church. And that's actually, you know, when I wrote my book, What Do We Believe, what started from that, it was going to be just a blog article, became the chapter of the book.

And it just gives a history of the church because as we see, the church has morphed and become more and more precise over time. I mean, the word ekklesia, where we get the word church from in Greek, it really came from Ephesus referring to voting.

And we don't think of it that way, but it was a gathering together of people for the purpose to vote. That was the first reference that we see of ekklesia. And it became in the New Testament time, it was just a gathering in the time of Christ when he walked the earth.

It was just a gathering coming out. But then after Christ, it became more specific to a gathering for the worship of God. And then you end up seeing through history in the Middle Ages, it became what we started talking about, the invisible, invisible church, referring to that local body, that visible body that assembles, that's made up of believers, unbelievers, and that universal body, the invisible body of only believers everywhere.

But the Puritans got more specific and they were like, no, no. Churches got to have three elements. You got to have the preaching of the word, the practicing of the ordinances, you know, baptism and Lord's supper.

And you had to have, and this one might surprise people, church discipline. If you didn't have church discipline, they would say you're not a church. And so you end up seeing it morphing. Now I'll admit in my book, I'm a dispee there, Greg, but I do say that it continued to morph in the separation between Israel and the church, but Hey, not everyone's going to agree with that one.

I would say the most important point in that. And then Keith, I'll let you jump in here is it's, it is my pet peeve when people use the two or three or more gathered to talk about church or prayer or anything like that.

We're talking about church discipline there. Christ is saying, Hey, you know the law that says you have to have multiple witnesses to convict someone I'm there in your presence. When you bring someone before the elders, after you've already tried to settle it between them, bring them there.

I'm in your midst. I will be that person. That's essentially ruling over that decision. So that two or three are gathered and we're a church. It's not even the right use of that, that biblical passage, first of all.

And then second of all, just like you said, it's more, it's more than either a building or a gathering. There's you could call a church, three people. Heck if you've got three underground, there's churches right now in China that have nine people in them and it's a church.

They're all running. They don't want to be beheaded. They're underground. They're swapping micro SD cards that have Bible chapters on them. And they're a church. They're part of the larger universal church as well.

So the numbers games doesn't really fly with me. Yeah.

And the two or three, I mean, you nailed it. We did a podcast about it on the subject of, you know, understanding the two or three are, are, are gathered. People use that also for house churches. And I am not opposed to house churches necessarily, but house churches have typically what I have seen have little to no structure.

Again, the whole biblically functioning church, my, again, my term biblically functioning church means there's a structure, a structure under which we function. I understand as Andrew was saying, I agree.

There has been a morphing or an evolution. Would you, to use an ugly word, an evolution of church over time, but the structure of elders and deacons and those things were there in the, in the beginning, they're there in the writings of Paul.

Paul gives us the structure and the pastorals. Yeah. For somebody to say, well, we don't need the church. All you know, the majority of Paul's writings were written to the church specifically to churches.

You know, the new Testament is all about the church.

When I hear you say structure, I hear accountability. Is that kind of what you're talking about too? Because that's what I see. Oh, I just got a house church, me and my 15 buddies. And now I'm, I'm, I'm out on an Island here.

There's absolutely no accountability to elders, shepherds, any biblical accountability. That's when you're saying structure. Some people might think, oh, you have to have a church. You have to have two services a week.

You have to have parking for the handicapped. You have to be up to code with the local bit. Is that what you're talking about? What are you talking about? The larger presbytery, the accountability of leadership.

Well, I accountability is a good word, but here's what I mean by structure. And I usually, when I have a whiteboard, when I teach on this, I would, I would draw this out. I would say that the structure of the church begins with Christ as the head.

And if Christ is not the head of the church, then you don't have a church. And how do you know if Christ is the head of the church? Well, the word is how Christ governs his church. If the word is not being preached, then you don't have Christ at the head there for you don't have a church.

So it begins with crisis, the head of the church, that's the structure. The word must be preached. That's how the head governs the body is through the word. The word is how he governs. And so it begins with that.

But then after that, who is responsible for preaching and teaching that word that's the elders job. And therefore you have under the head, you have this sphere of authority given to the elders to preach and teach that word.

Therefore Christ is leading his church through the word being preached by the elders. That's the structure. And then the ministry of that body is done through the deacons who are the arms and legs of the church doing the ministry within the body and being examples to the body that they might minister one to another.

Cause the Bible says we were given these leaders to do what to equip the saints for the work of ministry through their gifts that they've been given to them. According to first Corinthians 12, everyone's been given a gift by the choice of the Holy spirit who gives as he wills.

And therefore the body is working as it's being instructed through the elders by the head Christ, which is his word. So that's the, so like I literally draw this picture of like a body, like this is, this is what the church structure is.

And if that's not, and, and, and really, you know, we could talk about Episcopalian and Presbyterian and congregational models, but it all comes down to is Christ the head. And if Christ is in the head, and if there's not this basic structure, then there's, then there's not a church.

So really quick, let me just respond to that. And then Andrew, of course, you can talk on your own podcast here. Sorry, it's been a minute. So you would be okay. So we had like a Dale Partridge on the podcast, I think almost a year and a half ago now, and he is really big on home churches, but the home churches have that structure set up no more than 50 to 60 people.

They have shepherds, they have elders, they have deacons, but it's on a much smaller scale and they meet in their homes. So you wouldn't be opposed to something like that because you do have that structure accountability, that biblical line of, of, of where that authority is.

It doesn't matter where you're physically meeting at that point.

Yeah. Where, where you meet is not the focus. It's how you structure the gathering and how you structure the body. And when we come to issues like church discipline, how is that handled? You know, one of the things Andrew said earlier, the three things, preaching of the word sacraments and the discipline of the church is that handled biblically.

I know a lot of churches right now, I can think of a couple off the top of my head that have exercised discipline in a way that was unbiblical and the church suffered for it. And a lot of times it's because you have men and I'm going to say, I'm going to use a phrase here and this might catch me.

This might get me ugly emails, but you have untrained men leading the people of God. Now I'm not saying that every pastor has to go to seminary, but every pastor should be trained in the word of God, whether that is through the local church, whether that, however that training has happened.

And what happens is you get unskilled, untrained men handling the word of God. And that's more dangerous than a child with a gun because that person has the ability to endanger souls with the behavior that they're doing.

So you need men who know what they're doing, especially in a house church, because you're in a situation where the structure is going to be need needed even more to be defined because it's not defined by the externals.

It's going to have to be defined by the internals.

I would even say the Bible steps that up when we looking at eldership and what the bare minimum requirements are. It's not you need to know about the Bible and we say, Oh, you don't have to go to seminary, but you need to be trained.

No, the Bible says, what's his personal life like? Are his children believers? Are his children acting rightly in public? How about his wife? How does his wife treat him? How does he treat his wife? What age is he?

Has he attained just even a certain level of wisdom and discernment because of his age that God gives us through common grace through age and experience. The Bible is so much more strict on what a shepherd should be.