1689 London Baptist Confession (part 64)

Our glorious God, we come before you this morning, thankful, thankful that we have the opportunity to even meet as we think about our brothers and sisters in countries like China where they're being persecuted, or Nigeria where they're being put to death, and different places around the world where the church is under scrutiny, if not under direct persecution.

And Father, we thank you for the freedom that we enjoy to gather here freely, openly, even with a printed public schedule.

What a blessing. Lord, let us not take that for granted. Father, we ask that you would bless our time as we look to your word, to the confession, to really the way we ought to think about the church, both locally and universally.

Father, I pray that you'd bless our time in Jesus' name. Amen. A lot of controversy here in the last few weeks.

I don't know how many of you have been on Twitter. Tell the truth. Shame the devil.

One person. One person's on Twitter. Okay. It's like somebody once said about decaf coffee, it's the devil's blend.

I don't know. Twitter's not my thing. But Twitter, Facebook, other places, you know, talking about this living out ministry, which is a parachurch ministry.

And the idea is that same -sex attraction, which by the way, I think Pastor Mike correctly says, is not really same -sex attraction.

It should be called what it is, which is homosexual attraction. Same -sex attraction, homosexual attraction is not, this one particular ministry says that it's not inherently sinful.

In fact, there are all kinds of, I won't sully your mind with it, but all kinds of articles about it and suggesting that it's okay as long as you don't consummate it.

Crazy and wrong and being accepted by more and more

Bible -believing conservative churches, this idea that you can be same -sex attracted and that's not inherently sinful.

And why do I bring that up? Because we have, again, it's a parachurch ministry, but it's influencing the church.

The world is influencing the church. I also happen to know of a couple churches that I find have interesting practices.

One church in particular I found out about this week, every quarter they review the membership status of everybody in the church.

And if there are any problems, they bring it up to the membership of the church. And I thought, well, now that's an interesting approach.

You know, we're having a problem with so -and -so in this particular area. I don't really know if I, would anybody like that?

Here's our problem with Steve. Well, you know. Then I listened this week to a church that had a family leave because they said the pastor was in sin.

They left the church. And this church held an hour and ten minute meeting at which the family was not present, in which all the people at the church got up and spoke and told the family why they should come back.

I thought that was kind of an interesting thing to do in a church service. But we're talking about what the confession says about the local church.

And then we'll talk later about what it says about the universal church. But we were talking about the fact that Jesus Christ is the head of the church, not the

Pope, not the pastor, not a denomination, not a Presbytery, etc.

We also mentioned the fact that people are called out of the world and into the church.

They're placed into the local body. We talked about how that happens.

We talked about why. And basically it's to obey. Matthew 28, verses 18 to 20.

The Great Commission says this, And Jesus came and said to them, to the disciples, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the

Son and of the Holy Spirit. And here's the key, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. In other words, believers obey.

They don't obey perfectly, but the idea is when you evangelize somebody and they come to faith, then you disciple them.

You teach them to observe the commandments. We also come together in the local church for mutual edification.

We talked about exercising spiritual gifts. We'll talk more about that today. We come together for worship.

Then we mentioned that the members of the church are saints by calling. Membership in a local church means you must be a believer.

You must show evidence of faith, which is actually where we are.

So why don't I read that part? The members of these churches, these local churches, are saints by calling, visibly manifesting and evidencing in and by their profession and walking their obedience unto that call of Christ and do willingly consent to walk together according to the appointment of Christ, giving up themselves to the

Lord and to one another by the will of God in professed subjection to the ordinances of the gospel.

So membership means, I like this, I think we may have left off here, sainthood.

I don't know if we did or not, but have you ever thought, okay, let's just get

Roman Catholic here for a minute. Who could tell me what it means to be canonized? I've got my eye on you,

Becky. Yeah, but I'm so disappointed because I was sure you were going to say it means to be fired out of a canon.

Bob, she's trying to behave. She's putting on a new set of behaviors today.

Christian Hall of Fame. You know, for Roman Catholics to be, if you're canonized, it means to be elevated like what

Becky was saying. What they first do is they, what's the first step? It starts with a

B. Yeah, you have to be dead. Which is wrong and we'll get to that in just a second.

But then they do something, what's the first step? Yeah, I knew it started with a

B and I couldn't think of it. Yeah. Beatification, beatification, however they say it. It's an elevation and basically you have to be associated with kind of a, well miracles eventually, but also a good

Catholic life. But to get to sainthood you have to have two miracles post, post, why can't

I talk? After death. Yeah, that's what I was looking for, posthumously. I wanted to say posthumously and I'm like, that's not right.

Yes. What's that? Yeah. Which is an amazing thing, right?

To have more grace than is needed to get more works than is needed to get into heaven because you just think, okay, it's not like, you know, you go to the grocery store and your wife, my wife or you, if you're a wife or single, you go to the store or if your mom's saying, or, you know, anyway, you go to the store, you know, to buy a five pound bag of sugar and you come back with, you know, a 50 pound bag of sugar, you have excess sugar.

Well, how do you have the excess works to get into heaven? If Jesus said you must be perfect to get into heaven, how do you get better than perfect?

What score is that? You know, what were those extra credit points? I used to like extra credit points on exams, but how do you get extra credit points out of the

Bible? Well, you know, if you've really perfected yourself, then you can perfect others and get extra credit points.

There's no such thing as a treasury of merits, which is what

Roman Catholicism teaches. The excess merit goes into the treasury. There's a nice thought, right?

And then that treasury is dispensed by, by indulgences, but it's granted by the

Pope, you know, because the Pope, Matthew 16, 18 has the gates of, you know, the power of the keys over hell and he can decide who gets out of purgatory, which

I always say makes him really kind of a vile person when you think about it, because he's, he's keeping people in purgatory that he could let out.

Not very nice, but let's talk again about sainthood. A few verses.

I mean, there are, there are many that we can go to, but just a few Romans one seven to all those in Rome who are loved by God and listen and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from our

God, from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when you read that, you just think, okay, either the people at the church of Rome are saints or someday they will be saints.

But if that was the case, since there are very few saints, then Paul would have been writing what to like a handful of people, you know, just to the people that are called to be saints.

No, it's everybody there. Everybody who's a believer. First Corinthians one, two to the church of God that is in Corinth to those sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints.

Philippians one, one Paul and Timothy servants of Christ Jesus to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons.

In other words, and here's the point, sainthood means being a believer.

So to be a church member, you must be a believer. What happens when you have a church membership that is made up of believers and unbelievers?

What do you think happens? What's that? Start a band.

Well, if we look at history and if we look even at what's going on now, the lower you make the membership, the threshold for membership.

So let's say you make it, you're baptized as a baby or you're a member because you want to be.

And then you put more and more power into the hands of the congregation, like a congregational church, very popular in new

England, or you give a lot of power to members of the church.

For example, those in a Presbyterian denomination, if you dilute what it means to be a member of that denomination, then you also give more power to the people who are less mature in Christ.

So ultimately what you wind up with is something like the Presbyterian Church, United States, which is to say a completely liberal denomination that denies virtually every bit of Christianity or many

Lutheran churches or many congregational churches in New England or some

Baptist churches in New England and First Baptist of Worcester go by their church.

They're an open church. Anything goes. But church membership should mean being a believer.

Now, have we ever at Bethlehem Bible Church, have we ever let anybody into membership that was not a believer? Okay. Why would we do that?

What is wrong with us that we admitted somebody who was not a believer? Corey?

Fallible. Okay, I'm getting off my ex -cathedra. Yeah, we're fallible.

We don't know the hearts and minds of people. We can hear what they say. We can look generally at their lives.

But unlike God, we can't see the hearts and minds.

And unlike some denominations, we don't basically move into your house for a while or some churches I can name where they basically invade your home and want to know everything about you and then decide whether they're going to let you into their church or not.

First is profession of faith. Second is evidence of faith. Evidence of faith.

What sort of evidences of faith would we be looking for if you want to join Bethlehem Bible Church?

What would we be looking for generally speaking? What would you be looking for if you were an elder and you were evaluating people who wanted to apply to be members of your church?

How were you saved? Your testimony. If somebody says, well, here's my testimony.

I woke up one Sunday morning and thought I should probably start going to church. I googled local churches.

I saw Bethlehem Bible Church, West Boylston, and so I started coming two weeks ago. That's my testimony.

Is that a testimony? Why not? Because there's no regeneration.

Getting up and going to church doesn't make you a Christian. What's a testimony?

How God has changed your life. Maybe I could even put it this way. It's the gospel applied to your life.

How's that? So it's a recognition that your sin needed to be dealt with.

Again, I would argue, and I think Pastor Bob would agree with this. I'm sorry, what did

I give you the title of this morning? Your Eminence? What's that? Your Excellency. It's a good title for him, right?

The gospel applied to your life. So the first step of the gospel is what? You know, if we're using

Pastor Mike's three G's, it would be guilt, right? You recognize you're guilty before a holy

God. That your sin condemns you. Then I don't remember the other three

G's, but true confession.

I think it's grace and gratitude. That's it. So grace, like I was conversing with a couple of my uncles last night on Facebook.

Actually, I think it was somebody else, but it doesn't matter. Isaiah 9, yeah, it was

Gunther. When I was reading through the book of Isaiah, and I got to Isaiah 9, the

Christmas verse, Isaiah 9, 6, and I thought about Jesus being a wonderful counselor and how that just struck me that Jesus knew everything about me and yet died for me.

The gospel applied to my life. It was the grace of God in time that convicted me of my sin, yes, and then spoke to me, the word of God did, about his

Christ's death for sinners, that it applied to me. And because it applied to me, my sins were washed.

I could be whiter than snow, to use more Isaiah language. And then Jesus rose from the dead.

And then how do I live? You know, we're talking about evidence of faith and we're talking about testimonies. So I knew that I was a sinner and whenever anybody gets baptized,

I'm just like, why don't you just tell us before, during, after? In other words, before you were a

Christian, while God was saving you, even if it was instantaneously, what happened?

And then, you know, now how are you changed from before you believe the gospel? Because if there's no change in your life, then there's no change in your status.

There's no change in the way you think and live. Then there's no change in your ultimate destination.

You're not going to be perfect, but there's going to be a change in the direction of your life. So we want to see evidence of faith.

We might evaluate that in various ways. You know, if you say, well,

I believe, but, you know, I only go to church quarterly.

That's all I think I need to do. I don't give, I'm not really interested in serving. Well, we might just say something like, we don't think you're a believer.

We wouldn't say that. We'd probably say, well, why don't we just wait and encourage the person to start engaging in these things and let's see if we can, because there's a certain lack of fruit there.

Membership also means, right along that same line, a willingness to commit and serve. People who don't want to commit to a local body and don't want to exercise their spiritual giftedness actually are giving evidence that they may not be saved because people who are saved are excited to be among believers, to be engaged, to serve them, etc.,

etc. Willingness to participate in the ordinances. Here's one. I mean, if somebody says, well,

I want to be a member of Bethlehem Bible Church or I want to be a member of this church or I want to, you know, I am a believer. Well, have you ever been baptized?

Somebody will say no. Well, what are good reasons for not being baptized?

Allergic to water. Let's go to the board. I mean,

I feel like Steve Harvey right now. Allergic to water. Thank you,

Jonathan. What's a good reason not to be baptized? I think there's one.

Bob. Well, either one.

What's a legitimate reason? Okay.

Okay. They have so many electrical devices attached to them that, you know, they'd fry. That would be good.

Christine. Okay.

Being ignorant, which we can rectify that. Charlie. I think that would be a reason that people struggle with it.

Certainly, you know. Yeah. I mean, especially if you're really, you know, people think, some people think this is a big church.

Yeah. Try getting baptized, you know, in front of 3 ,500 of your closest friends. Yeah. A phobia could be a real issue.

It's something you'd have to work with somebody on. Erickson. Okay. Doubting their salvation would be really good.

That'd be a good reason for them. You know, I was even going to say, you know, would be a really good reason for not getting baptized would be, you know, you're not a believer, but if you doubt your salvation, that'd be a reason to, to wait and to study and to, but again, if you're not going to get baptized, we're not going to admit you into membership because that's the first step of obedience, right?

Believe and be baptized. That's a good question. You know, what about re baptisms?

And I think that's something that, you know, because we're not really big and a

Baptist here, which means, you know, re baptizing, that's something we'd have to evaluate and talk to you about and kind of understand why you thought you weren't believed because here's, you know, as we say, you know, how saved do you have to be to get baptized?

What percentage of salvation do you have to possess? A hundred percent.

But, you know, sometimes, you know, it's like the disciples, we believe help our unbelief, right?

Sometimes we sin and we think, well, I can't possibly be saved because I wouldn't commit to that sin.

Well, do you not believe? Well, I believe, but I can't believe I just did that. Well, you're missing the point because if maturation or perfection was a standard, then none of us would ever get baptized.

Yeah, people may. Excellent point, Pastor. Your Excellency.

Some people may not get baptized because they just don't. It's not stressed. The need for it is not stressed.

So people come to faith in Christ and think I'm good to go and I don't need to be baptized. Well, one of the reasons you need to be baptized is to publicly identify with Christ.

Well, why is that important? If you don't acknowledge me before men, I will deny you before my father.

Right. Yeah, I think that'd be faulty because I think if we examine some of the baptisms that take place, you know, they're not mentioned.

Well, I mean, the one in the acts. Yeah, I mean,

I wonder how many people were attending the Ethiopian eunuchs baptism. Yeah, he's like he didn't say there's water, there's a crowd.

What prevents me from being baptized? Right. So I don't know. That would be some dubious reasoning there.

But, you know, I've told I've spoken out of school about my wife before. And since she's in a meeting,

I can do it again. When she what she got saved, you know, we were going to Grace Community Church and she's like she goes, well,

I'm not going to get baptized. You know, I've been baptized because I'm not going to get baptized. She goes,

I don't need to get baptized again. And I started to argue with her. There are things that there are waters where you just learn not to tread in.

And this was one of those things, you know, I started to debate her. And she's like, no, you don't get it. I was baptized as a baby, a

Roman Catholic. You know, I was baptized as a child in a little funky denomination they have there in Iowa.

She was baptized when she was in the Navy. She hung out with a bunch of believers, got excited, got baptized.

She got baptized into the Mormon Church. Thank you. She got baptized.

So that was four baptisms. She's like, I'm not getting baptized again. And, you know,

I started to debate. And there's just a, you know, if you've been married for a while, there's just a tone that sort of comes out of your spouse.

And you just realize, OK, so how about those Dodgers, Lakers, whatever, you know, whatever

Red Sox, we were not here yet. So and so lo and behold, sometimes you have to wait on the

Holy Spirit. Call me old fashioned. She was talking to one of our friends a few months later who told her of her own struggle,

I didn't set this up, of her own struggle to get baptized later on in life.

And when she realized it was the right thing to do, she just did it. So Janet comes to me and says,

I need to be baptized. I was like, OK, well, that I didn't have to do anything.

But it's evidence of faith, right, because the spirit convicts us of our need to do these things.

So anyway, let's move on. If there is another comment or question,

Mark, she was also baptized

Mormon, you know, and that was the thing for her. The idea of being the last baptism being a

Mormon baptism was not acceptable, you know, but Roman Catholic baptism. Let's just think about it.

Or even, you know, Presbyterian infant baptism, period, Lutheran, whatever.

What's the value of that? From our perspective, we would say there is no value to it.

Right. Why? Because it's believe and be baptized, not baptize and believe, you know, be baptized and believe.

So the idea that the baptism involuntary baptism of a baby has either salvific value or value as an ordinance, you know, is not something we would subscribe to because we believe that you need to submit to the

Lord and obedience in baptism. And that's not it. Babies can't give their consent.

Good question. So we would say, you know, Catholics would love to have you come to faith. And once you do, we'll be happy to baptize you.

Okay, back to the confession. To each of these churches, again, we're talking about the local church, thus gathered by the power of Christ, working through the

Holy Spirit, according to his mind declared in his word, he hath given all that, excuse me, power and authority, which is in any way needful for their carrying on that order and worship and discipline, which he hath instituted for them to observe with commands and rules for the do and right exerting and executing of that power.

Let me just kind of summarize it this way. What does all that mean? You know, it sounds like a lawyer wrote it. Maybe, maybe a lawyer did.

Basically, what it says is local church is autonomous. We need to keep in mind that this is a

Baptist confession of faith, right? There are reasons that Baptist churches are the way that they are.

We believe in the autonomy of the local church, not, not a central point.

You know, sometimes, you know, we joke about, we, it is a joke about Mike being the

Pope of New England or something like that. There is no Pope of New England. There is no

Archbishop of New England. All we have is Pastor Bob, His Excellency. Every church, every local church is autonomous.

And what does that mean? That means if you go from one Baptist church to another Baptist church to another

Baptist church, you are going to see little changes here. You might see change in the order of worship.

You might see, you know, different styles of music or whatnot.

Here is an issue because it falls in line with what the confession says and also scripture.

You know, it would be really an odd thing in a Baptist church for us to exercise discipline on somebody outside of our church because we have no authority over anybody, you know, like let's say from Cleveland.

I don't know why Cleveland, but, or, or wherever, you know, well, you know, there is a church so -and -so and they are doing this or there is a person involved in that and we want to exercise.

No, because we have no, they are not our responsibility. But within our church, you know, we do have that.

And we would expect that nobody else would try to impose their discipline, you know, because again, this has to do with Rome.

We have to keep the historical context here where, you know, the

Pope would excommunicate people or, you know, an archbishop or somebody would go to battle against some priest or whatever, you know, and get involved in a local congregation.

Well, that is not how we believe the church is set up. Yeah, I do think there is a, you know, we often say that you don't want to, you could take examples from the book of Acts, but I don't think you can really make a pattern out of that.

And so what would I say there? You know, should we look to the church of Jerusalem to make decisions? No. Yeah, they are dead.

Yeah, all the apostles are dead. All the leaders of the early church are dead. I think what we can say there is, you know, this was obviously very early on and we're trying to, they're trying to sort out the law gospel issues.

You know, do we need to be under the law? What did actually Jesus do? And so they're sorting all that out.

So I don't really think that it's applicable to us today. I don't think it's,

I don't think that's instructive as an example. I think it's just a historical description. Yeah, Mark.

Well, I'll get to you in just a second. I would just say this. I'd say the main difference there is, you know, this is a statement of faith, the confession of faith or confession of faith, however you want to worry about that.

Whereas they were actually dealing with a biblical scriptural gospel issue, you know, so they, the council of Jerusalem was either going to be right or wrong, you know, and they got that right.

Yes. And that's a great point. You know, the canon wasn't yet closed. And I like the fact that we've used canon in a couple different ways today.

Now, if somebody could just use canon in the actual, you know, shoot way, then we'll have everything different spelling.

But yeah, I think that's a good point because not having the full canon of scripture, then they, this was an issue that was still up for debate early on, you know, and it was some, there was some consternation, some conflict, you know, and understandable again, looking even as we study through the book of Hebrews, people with all this tradition and, you know, really their identity in being

Jewish and now we're told that's not your identity anymore. So, you know, a pretty big deal and some pretty big decisions that had to be made early on before the full canon of scripture before really,

I mean, if we study the history of doctrine, we would understand that a lot of things were not really codified.

They were in the scripture, but they weren't really codified until later. So, you know, this is why, you know, sometimes we wonder why heresies kept popping up in the church.

Well, one of the reasons is because they hadn't had enough time to write systematic theologies and have them printed and, you know, have them online and all those kinds of things that would take a couple hundred years to happen.

No, so they didn't have all these, all these kinds of things. So somebody would harp on, you know, one particular verse of scripture and wrench it out of context or not pay attention enough to context and the bigger context of scripture and get it wrong.

And because of their, either their personal charisma or because of the persuasiveness of their arguments or what have you, people would start following them and we would have things like, you know,

Jesus being a created being by Arius or different heresies that would rise up during the centuries and would gain some popularity.

Again, I think it goes back to the canon not being closed, people not having enough time to really have a systematized understanding of scripture.

Sure. I mean, what an opportunity, right? You know, you have a question about some doctrinal thing and you go, well, let's see, we can go to Peter.

We can go to, you know, whoever and ask him, well, why wouldn't you do that?

And a lot of times if you think about it, especially, I mean, specific letters that come to mind, if you think about the

Corinthians, the first, second Corinthians and some other letters that are generated, well, why are they generated?

It's either because a church is in error or because they're asking questions of the apostles and the apostles are like, okay, let me just straighten you guys out on these things.

You know, they're written for specific purposes and sometimes to address those kinds of issues.

So excellent point that having the apostles alive, you have basically, I don't want to call it an original source, but, you know, as good as you can get, right?

Humanly speaking. So yeah, good point. Autonomy of the local church, independence of local church, meaning, you know, they have the right to select their own elders and they set up their rules for elders and whatnot.

I don't want to go too much further because we'll get into the next section, but, you know, it's interesting.

How do churches select elders? How do different churches select elders? Voting, you know, or rotations.

I was looking at one church this week and I just thought they had all these different committees and you rotate it in and rotate it off.

And I just thought this is a very unique way to run a church.

It wasn't a Baptist church, but one man wrote that there should be, and I don't subscribe to this theory and I want to make this clear, that there should only be one local church,

Bible -believing church in any given city or town. Now, can you think of problems with that?

You know, we should only have the Bible church of West Boylston.

Any other church in West Boylston should be absorbed into us unless they're heretical. Excuse me.

You think of a problem with that? Different opinions, right? About what should go on, Larry? Logistical problems.

I actually asked this man. I said, so let me see if I have this right. One believing church in Los Angeles, because there are a lot of people, you know,

I could say New York, but there are only five believers in New York. A lot of people who profess to be believers in Los Angeles.

Well, Los Angeles is a little different than most cities in that it's very spread out, right?

I mean, LA is probably, I don't know, 30, 35 miles wide, you know, and there are 10 million people.

And so I said to him, I said, okay, where are you going to get all the professing believers together?

I mean, like we could probably pack the Coliseum out four or five times, at least, you know, on a

Sunday. How's that going to work? And I said, here was a killer, you know, in any given town.

Who's going to be the preacher? Well, the most gifted person, most gifted man.

He wasn't a liberal, most gifted man. And I said, now, isn't that a little subjective? Are people going to debate that?

Who are going to be the elders? Well, the most qualified people. And I said, don't you think they're already doing that right now?

Don't you think in their minds, they're already doing that? So when you bring them together and ultimately what do people, if we went around all the churches in West Boylston, the believing ones, if we went to the local church here and we said, you know, we think that everybody should be together, what do they hear?

What do they hear? Mike starts, you know, contacting the different churches and says, you know what? There should only be one believing church in West Boylston.

What's that? In other words, we want your people, we want your money.

That's what they're, right? That's what they're going to hear. And I'm like, this is, this is very problematic. Churches have their own rules.

You know, is there anything holy about the, the constitution of Bethlehem Bible Church?

Not really. I mean, I think we can all be thankful.

We've taken out Robert's rules of order. I really don't.

I go to town meetings and yeah, that stuff in there. Autonomy of the local church means it's independent, means that it's, it still has

Jesus Christ as its head. And I don't think we should miss that. You know, the leader of this church, the human leader might be

Pastor Mike, but ultimately he's subjected. The leader of this church is the

Lord Jesus Christ himself. It's his church. The rest of us are under rowers, as it were.

It's his church. We're just functioning and serving in it. I remember that you, you went with us and we took some of their leadership out in the parking lot.

That's not true. Take that out of the tape. Yeah, we were, we were there to, to basically support righteousness, you know, to support the right thing happening.

And yeah, I remember that, remember that very well. It was a sad time for that particular church.

And it wasn't like we, we, you know, we didn't say, Hey, can we vote or anything like that?

We just wanted to be there to support. And there've been a few instances like that where, you know, what happens when a church is trying to get rid unbiblically, get rid of a pastor, you know, is that good and right just because they have autonomy?

No. If they have good reason to ask a pastor to step down, that's one thing.

But if they're just getting rid of them because, you know, they would like somebody to tell them stories or somebody who's more engaging or somebody who knows how to read, read spreadsheets, which

I don't, I do confess that, um, you know, there are a lot of bad reasons to hire a pastor.

I listened to a testimony of a man here not too long ago. He says, uh, you know, a number of years ago, you guys went looking for a

Baptist minister. Instead, you hired a basketball coach. That was his, that was the pastor talking, you know, you hired a basketball coach instead.

And I thought, well, that's, it's an interesting way of framing it. I don't know that I'd say that exactly, but autonomy of local church, not beholden to any, you know, anyone other than pastor

Bob, there's no hierarchy, you know,

I mean, you can look at almost, well, I mean, when I think about my own background,

Mormonism, very structured, you know, from Salt Lake city, then there were apostles who had so -called apostles who had jurisdiction over various regions.

And within those regions, there would be regional leaders. And within those regions, there would then be stakes within those stakes.

There would then be wards, which were individual congregations. But those individual congregations were not autonomous.

Even though they had something resembling a pastor, those pastors, they're called bishops. They would be removed by the stake and everything, you know, was very, very structured.

We don't have anything like that. The Bible doesn't describe anything like that. We exist under the authority of the

Lord Jesus Christ for his glory. And we're trying to build this local church. We're not responsible for other churches.

We want to build the, and we're going to talk about the church universal in two weeks, next week,

Evan Burns, our missionary is going to be here. We're trying to build the true universal by supporting missionaries.

You know, one of the things that we do in terms of our philosophy of missions is we want to support men who are going to train local nationals over there.

And we're seeing why right now. If you look at the persecution in India or various countries, they're chasing who out?

The foreigners, right? I mean, go to South Africa. Who's going to be left when everything is said and done?

It's going to be the indigenous people that are going to be left. And all the foreigners and missionaries, you know, from outside of the nation are going to be driven out ultimately.

And that's happening in many countries around the world because there's this kind of,

I guess you could call it anti -colonial, you know, fervor. So rightly or wrongly, but part of that is, you know, getting rid of the, of Christianity too.

It's seen as imperialistic. So anyway, we'll, we'll close there and we'll pick it up in two weeks.

Father, thank you for your word. We thank you for the sureness of it. We thank you for the guidance that it gives us on how to run a local church, thinking even of the pastoral epistles and the sorts of men that you would choose to lead your local congregations.

Father, we acknowledge that your son, the Lord Jesus Christ is the head of the church universal. He's the head of the local church.

He is our head. We are his body fitted together for the edifying of the body.

Lord, teach us to love one another, to honor one another, to serve one another, and to really just fix our minds on this, how we can glorify you best by serving one another here at Bethlehem Bible Church.