September 14, 2017 Show with Jonathan Master on “Doctrine Matters!” AND Ron Glass on “The Church Family Matters!”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 14th day of September 2017.

I'm delighted to have as a returning guest today someone who never disappoints me as a guest.

He is truly a fountain of information. I always love having him on the program and that's Jonathan Master, Professor of Theology and Dean of the

School of Divinity at Cairn University in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, Editorial Director for the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and host of the Alliance podcast Theology on the

Go. He's also an author of A Question of Consensus, The Doctrine of Assurance After the

Westminster Confession. Today we are discussing with him during the first hour Doctrine Matters.

In the second hour we're going to be joined by my dear friend Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church of Wading River, Long Island, New York, who is going to be discussing

The Church Family Matters. So we have two things that really matter today and the first, as I said, is

Doctrine Matters and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Jonathan Master. Thanks, I'm glad to be here. It's a pleasure to be back on the program. If anybody would like to join us, our email address is

ChrisArntzen at gmail .com. ChrisArntzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. And if you plan to ask

Dr. Jonathan Master a question, I would strongly advise you do it quickly because an hour goes by quickly.

He's only on for the first half of the show, so you might want to send in your questions earlier than you normally might consider doing that.

First of all, once again, since we have new listeners joining us all the time, tell us something about Cairn University.

Cairn's been around for over 100 years, and we're just outside of Philadelphia in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

And one of the unusual and special things about the university is that every student here takes at least 30 credit hours, at least 10 classes of Bible and theology.

So we offer a wide number of majors, and our school is all the highest kind of accreditation you'd want, but the students are focused as well on the study of Scripture and the study of theology, and so that kind of infuses everything.

We're not a huge university. We have about 1 ,200 students between the undergraduate and the graduate school, but it's really a privilege to teach here and to see students go out into such a wide range of fields.

I have a very strong prediction here that when

I am, God willing, manning a booth, I should say, an exhibitor's booth for Iron Sharpens Iron Radio at the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals' Quaker Town Conference on Reform Theology, I've got a very strong belief that Cairn University will have their booth right near mine, just like they always do.

Yeah, we try to get around and get the word out, and places like those Alliance events are usually great for meeting people.

So yeah, I'll make sure they stop by and say hi. All right, great. And I know that, speaking of the

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, as I just mentioned during my introduction of you, you host the

Theology on the Go program, and I know you've described this before, but we have new listeners all the time, so why don't you tell our listeners about Theology on the

Go. Theology on the Go is a podcast where we try to take about 15 minutes to look at one particular theological issue, and sometimes it's not an issue, it's a person, a theologian or someone that's important in church history, and I interview one expert on either that topic or that individual or that movement in church history.

And so we try to make it short so that you can listen to it on your commute, listen to it while you're walking your dog, and the tagline that we have, which

I think really sums it up is, a brief interview about an eternal truth. That's what we're striving for.

Well, I know that the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals website is alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org, and then if you click on broadcasts, you just scroll down, and you will find

Theology on the Go. You can also find Theology on the Go at placefortruth .org,

placefortruth .org, and that's four, F -O -R, not the number four, placefortruth .org.

Well, we are discussing today something that I think is an important issue, and it very often comes up, actually, on Iron Trip and Zion Radio broadcasts, regardless of what we're talking about, especially, you know, regardless of whatever specific

Christian issue or biblical issue we are discussing, the issue of the importance of doctrine inevitably comes up because of the fact that you have a very large number of evangelicals.

I don't know if it would be the predominant percentage of evangelicals, but from what

I've experienced in my own personal life, I would get that opinion very easily, that doctrine, in their opinion, doesn't really matter, or perhaps

I should say that it matters a lot less than your joy and what they would call the love of Jesus and the love of others.

They somehow think that they can accomplish that without having biblically accurate doctrine.

But why don't we—I mean, this may seem like a very basic, silly question, but could you define for us doctrine, please?

Doctrine just means teaching, and when we talk about it in terms of the

Christian Church, we're talking about the teaching of the Church, or the teaching of the

Bible, and sometimes that'll get subdivided, so we'll talk about your doctrine of God, or your doctrine of sin, or your doctrine of humanity, but really, doctrine just means the teaching about something, the content that you hold to about a certain subject.

And then, like I said, broadly speaking, when we talk about it and we don't qualify it with the doctrine of God or something, what you basically just mean is what it is that you believe about these biblical categories and these systematic categories.

So when somebody says, doctrine is not important, or it's not on the higher levels of importance, or doctrine divides when they say these things, they are actually professing doctrines, but they're professing bad ones.

Well, that's absolutely right, and that's one of the first points that needs to be made. I mean, I meet people just like you were talking about earlier, who say, you know, why do we need theology, why do we need doctrine?

But the truth is, you know, you have a theology, everyone has operative teachings about these issues, and they may be sloppy, they may be incoherent, they may be unbiblical, you know, all those things may be true, it may be bad doctrine and bad theology, but they have one nonetheless, and you're right, in a sense, denigrating doctrine or saying it doesn't matter is a kind of theological statement in a way, and it just happens to be one that I think is directly contrary to the

Scripture. Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. Well, I was going to say, Jan, and you just finally used the word denigrating doctrine, because, you know,

Chrissy was saying about many evangelicals that feel that doctrine isn't important, but I was going to tell you, they go to the other extreme and say that God can't use you if you've got doctrine.

And I remember, even before I ever went through the charismatic movement myself, many of them, when they talk to me, it's like, you know, you just have too much doctrine, you know, that's stifling the freedom of the

Spirit in your life, because, you know, you're too knowledgeable or something like that. So they go so far as to, it's almost become a dirty word.

Yeah, that's a great point. That's a great point. I've seen that myself, and a lot of times what you find is underneath that is actually a subtle attempt to basically say, you know, nothing should control what you do and say, and nothing should control what

I do and say. It's very dangerous. Yeah, I think that where that issue comes from, those who look upon it as a dirty word, they hear the word doctrine and their mind is immediately transported to a cloistered library or study in a seminary where you have a roundtable of scholars that are pale -skinned because they never leave that darkened study and they are never seeing sunlight and they are bantering and debating and arguing over minutiae, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and they think that that is when somebody brings up the importance of doctrine, they think that we are talking about things that are secondary, tertiary, even lower in importance than just lifting up Jesus in song and praising him and telling people

Jesus loves you and died for you, which is something that as a

Calvinist I don't believe you should be saying indiscriminately to everybody you meet anyway. But that seems to be, if you really start to question people, which

I have, what do you mean by that? That doctrine is something that is only oppressive to God's people and we should really just be lifting up Jesus and loving people.

Don't you think that's primarily what people are thinking when they hear that?

I would imagine it is, and there are probably a couple of things behind that.

Maybe you're right, maybe they have an image in their mind of someone who is consumed with minor esoteric things that maybe even the

Bible doesn't speak to at all, and so they've got that kind of in their head.

But a lot of times I think it's also a symptom of a kind of intellectual laziness, where because they don't want to try to think through hard things, they don't want to study their

Bible with careful attention, that therefore it's convenient to say, no one should, and it's unimportant, because then that kind of lets you off the hook too.

So I think that's behind it. And then like I said, I think in some churches, when pastors say those kinds of things, or leaders of other

Christian organizations say those kinds of things, that really raises red flags for me, because then we're not just talking about potentially an intellectual laziness, but also maybe a kind of power play where, you know,

I'm not going to be questioned or pushed on any particular things. And the

Reverend Buzz Taylor has something else to say. Yeah, and it's not just that doctrine divides and all that stuff, or they have a theory of what doctrine is as far as, you know, the old, the pin thing and all.

But when you're talking to somebody, for example, who believes they have instant spirituality because they can babble, and you start to tell them why you don't believe from the scriptures in the perpetuity of spiritual gifts, that's doctrine that's actually coming against their views, and of course, in their opinion, that can't be right.

Yeah, I mean, that's a good point. I mean, if that's how you define spirituality, and you don't want anyone to kind of question you about that or about that, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

And that's a dangerous thing. I mean, we should, even as pastors and teachers, we should want people to do what the

Bereans did with Paul, and that is, you know, go and search the scriptures to see if these things are true, and we should want that level of accountability.

So when people push away that level of accountability, it really makes me nervous.

Yeah, and going back, though, to something that both Buzz and I mentioned, the fact that you will often hear as a slogan from those who have no desire to delve into the depths of theology and doctrine or raise it to a level of high importance, they will say that doctrine divides.

Well, it doesn't only divide, that's their intention by saying that, but it does divide, and it's supposed to divide.

Shouldn't it divide if it's supposed to be a declaration of truth, especially if it's salvific?

It most certainly should divide us from those, theologically, that have a false gospel.

I mean, Paul certainly preached a gospel that divided the true Christians from the Judaizers, for instance.

Well, that's exactly right. I mean, at its basic level, the gospel message itself is a doctrinal pronouncement.

It's a pronouncement of teaching about yourself, about sin, about God, about the world, about Jesus, about salvation, any number of other things that we might put under that.

So you're right, the gospel itself is divisive. Teaching about Christ is divisive.

Christ himself was divisive when he taught. You can just look at the reactions in John's gospel, and it's always mixed.

There are people who believe, there are people who turn their backs, there are people who are kind of curious. It's always divisive.

And then within the church, you know, you're right. Necessarily, one teaching of truth is going to rule out the opposite.

But I think what people tend to mean, and that phrase, when it gets used, I find it really troubling, just like you do, but I think what people mean is they mean kind of small or doctrines that are heavily debated and maybe even unknowable from the scriptures are used to create these great divisions.

Obviously, we don't want to do that. There's a proportionality that we need to have in our study of the Bible and in our theology.

But on the face of it, it's unavoidable that doctrine divides. Yes. And we must avoid, and some of us, perhaps even those of us who are

Reformed, might have a tendency to do this because Reformed Christians and Calvinists tend to be guilty of OCD at times when it comes to theology, where we might be overly harsh over areas in the

Bible that are secondary or tertiary and might even be things that can't be known with certainty from mere exegesis of the

Bible. And we wind up straining out gnats and swallowing cowbells.

I mean, there's a reason why those slogans became a part of the inspired

Word of God because there are people that are so caught up in minutia because it fuels their arrogance and pride that they are a unique, elite group of people that have knowledge that those outside their group don't have, and it can be a pride -exalting kind of a thing.

We, as Reformed people, I think especially have to be very leery of that and be on guard against that.

Don't you agree? I do. I mean, I think it's a besetting sin of a lot of different theological persuasions, and also of people who come to a conclusion through study or through teaching that they've received.

They tend to make that the main thing. But I would also just return to what

Paul says in 1 Timothy 4 .16, where he says, watch your life and doctrine closely.

And I think some of the issues that you brought up, some of them have to do maybe with an overemphasis or a rezealous attitude, but some of them also have to do with the fact that there can be people, and there sadly are

Christians, who are inattentive to their own life and their own

Christian witness and obedience to the Lord, and yet very attentive to their own doctrine.

And Paul, of course, says watch your life and doctrine. Right. Amen. We have a questioner from San Jose, California, Daniel, who says, could you ask

Dr. Master to explain the importance of doctrine in a church context, and how can members of a church encourage other members to study theology and doctrine?

I'm asking because I've heard of people saying that they do not want theology, they just want

Jesus. Yeah, that's a great question.

You know, the church is essentially a doctrinal body. It's a body that is united around certain teaching.

When Paul describes the church in 1 Timothy, he calls it the household of God, the church of the living

God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. And then he goes on to say, this is great indeed, we confess as the mystery of God, and then he talks about Christ.

And so that's teaching, that's doctrine, and in a sense it's inescapable in a true church, unless you want to have a club of people who try to behave a certain way.

But that's not a church. Churches are, and the Christian faith is, inextricably linked with doctrine.

Now, I mean, there's also a little bit of an absurdity to the statement, we don't want theology, we want

Jesus, because we only understand and know who

Jesus is because of the teaching we've received about Jesus, hopefully through the

Word of God, and through faithful teachers and preachers of the Word of God, but that, even our, in a sense, understanding of him, our knowledge of him is based on his revelation to us.

And so, you know, unless that person's saying, I just want the feelings that are created when

I think about Jesus, but then again, you know, that's not the Christian faith. Right.

Very often, when I am at a social gathering or something, and there are people of different religious groups or different so -called branches of Christianity, I have responded to the comment, perhaps someone has overheard me having a theological discussion, and they will say, why don't you guys just, you know, get with the program and just lift up Jesus.

I mean, what are you getting down, bringing us all down with this deep theological area that just divides people.

Just lift up Jesus. And I have said, which Jesus? And as soon as they just start to describe which

Jesus, I say, that's doctrine. You can't just eliminate or separate a true

Jesus with a true gospel from discussing doctrine. Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean, to talk about Jesus, to sing about Jesus, to meditate on Jesus is to engage in a kind of doctrinal activity.

We don't always think of it that way, and again, sometimes it's done very poorly, very sloppily, very kind of haphazardly, but it shouldn't be.

And the other thing that I would keep coming back to again is when the Apostle Paul instructs

Timothy, he just keeps coming back to doctrine over and over again. He says in 1

Timothy 4, if you put these things before the brothers, you'll be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

And, you know, train yourself for godliness. And so, you know, this doctrinal component of ministry and of teaching and of discipleship and of growth in the faith is just something that is part of the irreducible minimum of Christianity.

Yeah, and the naivete of people who will rebuke

Christians for being, in their minds, preoccupied with doctrine, if they would themselves be opposed to very oppressive, cultic religion, religion that is cruel, religion that is merciless and unforgiving and harsh, and a religion that micromanages people's lives and strips them of all freedom and peace, the way that you would expose these cultic religions for their error and dismiss them as being a counterfeit of Christianity or a counterfeit of a true religion of God is by using doctrine.

That's the way you're going to do it. You're not going to refute them by using feelings. It's not going to be impressive to these people or persuade them in any way if you just said, you hurt my feelings or what you're saying is bringing me down or why don't you just be joyful and lift up Jesus.

You have to open up your Bible and you have to prove doctrinally that these oppressive cultic religions are false.

Am I right? Absolutely right. And so there's that element of it as well, which is our outward witness as Christians and the witness that we have as a church is dependent upon the clarity of our doctrine because that is the answer that we give to cults, but not just cults, to anything that denies the truth of the

Christian faith. Any kind of worldview or system or religion that denies the truths of the faith and the truths of the

Bible, we engage with that on a doctrinal level.

And so you're right. For the witness of the church, for the distinctiveness of the church, for the possibility that the church can give answers, we need to think doctrinally.

And then I also think just for the growth of Christians, we need to be thinking doctrinally. But you're absolutely right about that outward apologetic necessity for doctrine.

And even in order to rebuke and chastise those who are in theologically sound religions, denominations, churches, fellowships, who have developed cultic practices or who have succumbed to an authoritarian, oppressive way of operation, the way that you would even correct brothers in Christ who have drifted into those eras would be through doctrine once again, showing from the scriptures that the church leaders are not the lord over the flock and other things.

And of course the humility that must be present in leaders and all kinds of things that you would find from the scriptures that just your own personal feelings or gut reactions to things could never counteract.

Yeah, I mean that verse I quoted just a few minutes ago from 1 Timothy 4 where Paul mentions being trained in the words of the faith and the good doctrine, that comes in the context of just the kind of thing you talked about where Paul says that the

Spirit says that in later times some will depart from the faith and devote themselves to myths and all kinds of legalistic rules and things like that, the kinds of things you're describing.

And what's the answer? Well, the answer is continue to teach sound doctrine. That's how that stuff gets refuted, and that's how we're supposed to tackle it.

We're going to go to our first break right now, and if you would like to join us on the air, we are only going to be interviewing

Jonathan Master for another half hour, so I would strongly urge you to submit your question if you have a question in mind that you'd like him to answer.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter over which you are asking, and I could obviously see that this subject would readily lend itself to a question like that.

Perhaps you're in a church where you are becoming more certain that the doctrine of the church is false or something like that, and you don't want to publicly identify yourself yet.

I can fully understand why you'd want to remain anonymous. But other than that, please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages with Dr.

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And we are back to our discussion today with Jonathan Master, and we are discussing for the first hour

Doctrine Matters. Coming up in the second hour, we will have Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church and host of the

River of Life radio program who will be on to discuss the Church family matters.

But if you'd like to join us now with a question of your own for Jonathan Master, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. We have Joe in Slovenia who has a question for you,

Jonathan. And I don't know if he made a typo, but he says, Dear Brother Chris, Thanks so much for having

Mr. Theology on the program. So I'm not sure if that's a typo.

That's a nice nickname to have, though. Yeah, I need to copyright that.

Maybe Joe needs to be my publicity agent. Yeah, I receive that. I guess it would be more appropriately

Dr. Theology, right? But he says, I was shocked today to receive a newsletter from a young man in our church who attended an ecumenical conference with Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and a smattering of liberal

Protestants who gathered for a week of dialogue. And I'm not sure how to pronounce this, but it's

T as in Thomas, A -I -Z as in Zebra -E, worship in Siberia. I'm sorry, in Serbia.

Thays or Thais worship in Serbia. He returned agnostic about transubstantiation, the use of icons, and all things mystical.

What should a pastor be doing regularly and systematically in preaching, teaching, and discipling of his flock to prevent this type of travesty?

Thank you for any advice that you can pass on to help me shepherd others. So, I don't know a tremendous amount about this

Thais or Thais worship. I'm not even sure if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but I think it's something to do with a kind of contemplative tradition that has a lot of silence built in, and there are icons that are used, and it's not centered around the preached word at all.

It's sort of this contemplative practice. But in any case, that's not the main part of the question.

The main part of the question involves how to help and train people. I think what you do is you just patiently continue to teach and preach the word of God, and as a pastor or as a

Christian friend, you're not just teaching the text and failing to apply it.

You're consistently showing in both your own life and in your teaching that the word of God has significant application for the people of God today, and so I think, you know, you never know what kinds of challenges someone's going to face.

It's kind of like the question people have about, you know, what does my son or daughter need to know before they go to college if they're going to maybe be faced in a secular environment for the first time?

Well, it's hard to give a comprehensive answer, but what you want to do is you want to establish them in the major truths of the faith, and you want to establish them in a posture of confidence and submission to the word of God.

So those are the things you keep coming back to, and then as issues arise in your own life, as people ask you questions, that's who you're going back to.

You know, incidentally, I was thinking about this on the break, and I remember in the first pastorate that I served,

I had a whole lot of people who would come to me with questions, as often happens with pastors, and the questions weren't typical sort of quote -unquote doctrinal or theological questions.

In other words, I didn't have too many people who would come to me and say, hey, why don't you talk to me a little bit more about the hypostatic union or something like that.

what I realized pretty quickly was that almost every question they were asking me, whether it was about their marriage or about their kids or about worship or something like that, was essentially a theological and doctrinal question, and what they were really asking me, even though they wouldn't put it in these terms, is can you take the teaching of Scripture and can you show me how it fits together and guides me in this particular area?

So you just want to keep doing that, keep modeling that, and then whatever it is that an individual faces, whatever false teaching they face, what you hope and you pray is that they will be able to sniff that out.

And again, we're just going straight back to 1 Timothy where he tells them to just continue on in the teaching and the doctrine that he's already heard.

We have R .J. in White Plains, New York. Who says, hold on a second, could you please list the bare bones of what essential doctrines are that must be believed universally by all

Christians? I am not saying that we should just stick to the bare bones in our everyday

Christian lives and in our teaching and preaching. I am just saying what you think are the core non -essential, non -negotiable, non -debatable issues that must be within the hearts and minds of every

Christian? Well, you know, I want to be careful in the way

I answer this. I'm not saying that all of these things someone needs to understand in order to be a

Christian believer, in order to be saved. I don't know what the thief on the cross knew except that he knew that Jesus was unjustly being killed and that he was the one to whom he needed to turn for forgiveness of sins.

So in a sense, that was a very minimal set of things that the thief on the cross knew and yet Jesus said today you'll be with me in paradise.

He also said that remember me in your kingdom. You're right. Yes, you're right, you're right.

So I think there were messianic and certainly messianic overtones, overtones of him being

God in the flesh, but, you know, so there's that answer that I would give to the question, but I think too that this is actually where some of the historic creeds really help us because certainly every

Protestant creed is very clear that it is in line with the confession of the doctrines of the ecumenical creeds that have come before.

The Second Helvetic Confession says this explicitly. The creeds of the four councils received we believe and freely confess with an open mouth and so that's a helpful guide sometimes to look back and to say what are the things that Christians have always confessed and then if you want to go a little broader than that, those

Reformed Confessions themselves are very useful for kind of distilling the essence of what's necessary to unite a church together.

So those are some places I would go, but again, you know, I would want to start by thinking about what it is that Christ commands at a base level someone to understand and believe for salvation.

Now do you think that there is a difference between the secret things that belong to God, like for instance for us to be absolutely 100 % certain that somebody that we know who has aberrant teaching to declare with certainty that person is hell when they die.

Where we are in some senses delving into the secret realm because we don't really know everything that was going on in the heart and mind of that person and we don't really know with that much certainty what forgiveness is going to be extended in regard to the aberrant views of the person.

Well, there is a difference between that and churches and religions that rise up with leaders who establish a teaching and are by their own definition and by their own religious documents whether they want to call them creeds and confessions or not, but they are denying the deity of Christ, they are denying the

Trinity, they are denying the bodily resurrection of Christ, they are denying the virgin birth of Christ, they are denying salvation by grace alone through faith alone.

Isn't that where we really a Christian in his attitude towards those types of individuals there is a far different approach where we must expose them as being false, we must warn them about their teachings being damnable as the

Apostle Paul did with the Judaizers. Isn't that a whole different matter when you are talking about established people or people who are even as individuals professing a declaration

I do not believe Jesus is God, I do not believe in the Trinity. Isn't that a difference between somebody who might have muddled thinking and so on where their belief system has not been educated especially when you are talking about a deathbed or near -death experience like the one that the thief on the cross experienced.

Yeah, absolutely. The more public and well -articulated the teachings are, the more you can say pretty definitive things about them.

When you are talking about one individual and maybe some muddled comments that seem to go in contradictory directions it's harder to make definitive statements.

The Bible of course makes those kinds of statements. You mentioned Paul's words to the Galatians, but also in John chapter 3 this is just a kind of shorthand, but it says whoever believes in the

Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains in him.

So if someone is denying who Jesus is or denying His claims or denying the central truths about God and who

He is and His triune nature, then we know what to say because the

Bible told us what to say. But the more public and articulated it is the easier it is to make those statements, and the more private and muddled and personal it is, the harder it is for us to say those kinds of things.

One of the things that has troubled me personally is when I have met people recently and perhaps some of the same things could have been said with people that I have met long ago and just don't recall, but I have heard

Christians, even professedly Reformed Christians say like for instance when

I've asked them who do you count among true brothers in Christ?

Who do you count among those that you would view as genuine born from above believers?

And I have heard the answer on occasion, those who embrace the

Apostles' Creed. Now, the Apostles' Creed we would agree with the contents of it, but it is really insufficient when it comes to soteriology.

The issue of soteriology isn't really addressed in the Apostles' Creed. That's why the Reformers and Reformed groups that arose later in history after the

Reformation hammered out the Westminster Confession and the 1689 London Baptist Confession and the

Savoy Declaration and the 39 Articles of Religion and other creeds and confessions, the three forms of unity.

They hammered out those creeds and confessions because of the fact that the Apostles' Creed, while being true, is not really a sufficient article of faith to just cling to on its own.

Yeah, I'm all for robust statements of doctrine. I mean, I think that the smaller and more bare -bones it is, the more it is open to misunderstanding and miscommunication.

So while, as you say, the Apostles' Creed talks about Jesus' suffering and death and burial and resurrection, all of which is obviously central to our salvation, there are some gaps in terms of the truths of the

Gospel that exist there. So I agree with you that Protestant Reformers were really working hard for the good of the

Church and for the good of Christians to spell some of those things out in a way that is far, far more helpful.

Let's see. We have Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, who says,

What do you make of the claim that Protestants are in no position to tell

Roman Catholics what to believe when it is the Roman Catholic Church that gave us the

Bible to begin with? Well, you know, I would just dispute the whole notion.

One of the things is, a couple things to say. One is the people of God do not create the

Word of God. The Word of God creates the people of God. In fact, even in your own life and in your own salvation, it's the

Word of God that James says is used by God's Spirit to bring forth life.

So that's one thing, at a theological level, it's always the Word of God who creates the people of God.

At a historical level, though, I think that's groundless, too, because what we see happening in the early

Church is not a process of the Church deciding what's supposed to be the

Bible and what's not. It's a process of them recognizing what is apostolic teaching in line with the

Scriptures of the Old Testament. So that's what they were doing. They never used the word, they never used the language of deciding.

They used the language of recognizing. And then furthermore, to add kind of another argument against that,

I think to call the early Church, the early centuries of the Church the

Roman Catholic Church is also profoundly misleading, because the

Roman Catholic Church in the shape and form that we know it today is not something that is that we see in the first centuries of the

Church. In fact, actually, you know, the primacy of Rome and the primacy of the

Roman bishop isn't something that comes until much, much later. So at a number of levels, at a broad theological level,

I think it's misguided at a historical level in terms of actually what happened. I think it's wrong.

And then even ascribing to what happened credit to the Roman Catholic Church is a kind of anachronism, because the

Roman Catholic Church wasn't you know, that wasn't what was how things were structured.

Right. And it's also very interesting that the Roman Catholic Church has dogmatically declared the apocryphal books, or as they call them, the

Deuterocanonical books. Deuterocanonical books. They have declared them to be part of the

Old Testament canon, and yet the Jews have never recognized them as part of their canon.

And that's one of the main reasons that that is actually the primary reason that the

Protestants and the Reformers have never embraced. There have been some

Anglicans for a period that embraced, I think, to some degree the apocrypher, but the consensus of the

Reformers is that these were not to be embraced. In fact, Jerome who brought the

Latin Vulgate to being, into being, he did not believe that the apocrypha should have been included in the

Vulgate because he knew that the Jews never recognized the apocrypha or the

Deuterocanonical books as God breathed Jewish canon, and yet he was pressured by the

Vatican to include them. So, it's kind of interesting that they would be declaring that they gave us our

Bible when they've given us a Bible that is not completely accurate. Yeah, and that whole process is interesting too, because you're right, that the declared canonicity of the apocryphal books is something that's far different,

I think, from what you see in the early Church with the recognition of the New Testament canon. Again, that was a recognition process.

They were saying just what you said, is this in agreement with the Old Testament Scriptures? Is this apostolic?

And the apocrypha was a much different kind of process. It was much more of a decision and a declaration than a recognition.

Now, even if you want to bring into the equation of that argument that the Roman Catholic Church gave us the

Bible, even if you want to intend to mean by that statement that Roman Catholic scribes who received the texts down through the ages were a part of the physical preservation of the

Word of God, and then you have Erasmus translating the Bible into Greek and so on, but even if you want to include that part of it, that they physically were a main and a vital and important part of the preservation of the

Word of God that was handed down eventually to Protestants who took much advantage of it and had it translated into the common native tongue of peoples all over the world, the fact of the matter is that does not give some kind of a seal of approval on the

Church of Rome, just like the fact that the Jewish scribes are to be accredited for preserving the

Old Covenant teachings, the Hebrew Scriptures, they were to be accredited and are to be accredited for preserving, meticulously preserving obviously by God's sovereignty and providence, that Word which was passed on all the way through the

New Covenant, and yet those very people cried out for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and they in majority denied

Christ. So you can't use the fact that the Jews could just as easily say, how could you say that we're not saved?

We gave you the Bible, at least half of it, or at least what you would call the

Old Testament. How can you say that we are to be rejected? We gave you your Old Testament. Well obviously that doesn't give one a pedigree that makes them deserving of some special status, does it?

No, but doesn't, I mean, all of these things were used by God in His providence to preserve His Word, and we should be grateful to the

Lord for that, but just because something or someone is used by God in His providence doesn't mean that person,

A, deserves any credit or necessarily is even right with God Himself. And so, yeah,

I mean, absolutely. There are all kinds of ways in which God has used unbelievers to accomplish

His ends, including the preservation of the Scriptures, and that doesn't necessarily give them any special spiritual claim to a knowledge of God.

Well, we are out of time, Jonathan. It was such a joy to have you back on the program, and we are looking forward to your return.

Hopefully next time you can be on with us for two hours again. But I know that some important websites are for Cairn University, c -a -i -r -n dot e -d -u c -a -i -r -n dot e -d -u and also alliancenet .org

alliancenet .org and also placefortruth .org placefortruth .org

Do you have any other contact information you care to share? No, those are the big ones. That's helpful.

Also, if people are interested in theology on the go, they can download that at placefortruth .org or go on iTunes and subscribe to it, and that will just come to your iTunes account every two weeks.

Great. Well, God bless you, brother, and thank you once again for being on the show. We look forward to your return. Thanks, guys.

Always good to talk with you. You too, brother. And coming up next, don't go away, because we have Pastor Ron Glass, one of my dearest friends, one of the most vital sponsors and supporters of Iron Sherpins Iron Radio, is coming on for our second hour to complement the first topic, which was

Doctrine Matters, the second half of the program will be focused on the church family matters.

And so, if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Pastor Ron Glass, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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That's 866 -403 -3768. Or go to BatteryDepot .com. That's BatteryDepot .com. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just joined us, our second guest for the second hour of Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio is going to be

Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York.

He's also host of the River of Life radio program heard Saturdays at 9 .30am

Eastern Time and Sundays at 7 .30pm Eastern Time. It's heard globally via live streaming at EastgateBroadcasting .com.

EastgateBroadcasting .com EastgateBroadcasting .com You can also hear Ron Glass on the radio on the

FM dial in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island. You can find out the frequencies where you can tune in to that program at EastgateBroadcasting .com

EastgateBroadcasting .com EastgateBroadcasting .com We are going to be discussing for the second hour the church family matters.

But before we get to Pastor Ron and our discussion, first of all, make sure you send in your emails if you have a question that you'd like to ask.

The sooner the better because we only have one hour to go to discuss these things with Pastor Ron.

Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. But before we get to the topic, we have some important announcements to make.

First of all, the Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island, New York, in cooperation with the

Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship, are very honored to announce that they will be hosting the

Gospel of the Reformation 500th Anniversary Celebration, featuring my dear friend Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary, where he serves as a professor of apologetics and Islam.

The event will be held on Friday, September 29th and Saturday, September 30th at the

Word of Truth Church in Farmingville, Long Island. If you would like to register for this event, which is absolutely free by the way, it's absolutely free of charge, a love offering will be taken, but you can register at the

Word of Truth website wotchurch .com wotchurch .com

or call them at 631 -806 -0614 631 -806 -0614 631 -806 -0614

Then after that, the Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Medford, Long Island, New York, will also be featuring

Dr. Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary at their Sunday morning worship. That will be

Sunday, October 1st, the day after the Reformation anniversary celebration.

Sunday, October 1st at 11 a .m. at the Hope Reformed Baptist Church of Medford, New York. If you would like to attend that event, go to hopereformedli .net,

hopereformedli, standing for longisland .net, and you can also call them at 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711.

Then after that, in November from the 17th through the 18th, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals is having their conference on the theme,

For Still Our Ancient Foe. This is a part of the Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology series,

November 17th through the 18th at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The speakers are

Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant. And the theme, For Still Our Ancient Foe, is obviously a reference to Satan from the classic hymn,

A Mighty Fortress, by Martin Luther. If you would like to register for that event, go to alliancenet .org,

alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology.

And then, last but not least, we have the G3 Conference coming up in January. They return to Atlanta, Georgia for this wonderful event.

I intend to be there as well with an Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth. January 17th is exclusively a

Spanish -speaking edition of the conference. From the 18th through the 20th of January is exclusively an

English -speaking edition of the conference on the theme, Knowing God, A Biblical Understanding of Discipleship.

And the speakers include Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Phil Johnson, Keith Getty, H .B.

Charles Jr., Tim Chalies, Josh Bice, James White, Tom Askle, Anthony Methenia, Michael Kruger, David Miller, Paul Tripp, Todd Friel, Derek Thomas, Martha Peace, and Justin Peters.

And if you'd like to join me at that conference, go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com,

click on events, and then, actually, you don't have to do that, you just have to click on G3 Conference 2018, that's what you click on.

And if you go to any of these events, please make sure that you tell all of the ministries and the churches and the parachurch organizations that are running these events that you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

Excuse me for being a bit distracted, but our guest is not yet called Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church.

So I am now, let me first make my daily grub for money, and then we'll call

Pastor Ron Glass during another station break if he has not called us yet. But if you are blessed by Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, if you love the program, if you really hope that it remains on the air, you don't want it to go off the air, please consider donating to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio with a gift of any amount.

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And if you'd like to advertise with us, as long as what you are advertising is compatible with the theology expressed on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

One example would be my guest today, Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, who is a dear friend and who loves this program and is probably not only one of the biggest financial supporters to this program, but also one of the biggest encouragements to me personally in regard to this program.

He saw in the importance of this program, like few others have, and has been beating a drum even before we relaunched the program, has been beating the drum that Iron Sharpens Iron needed to return to the airwaves, and now that it has returned to the airwaves, he has been such an unmatchable encourager, a

Barnabas to me in regard to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. But Pastor Ron Glass, you hear his advertisements every day on Iron Sharpens Iron, and although we do have some differences on eschatology and other things, we agree on the most vital things and we are both believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

So as long as what you are advertising is compatible, it doesn't have to be identical, but it needs to be compatible with what we stand for on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, we would love to hear from you.

If you want to send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com, put advertising in the subject line, we will be more than happy to discuss advertising with you.

And now we return to the program, and we are going to begin the topic for the second hour,

The Church Family Matters, with Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church in Wading River, Long Island, New York.

And as I said, he is also host of the River of Life radio program, where it's Saturdays at 9 .30 a .m.

eastern time and Sundays at 7 .30 p .m. eastern time at eastgatebroadcasting .com,

eastgatebroadcasting .com, where you can hear via streaming anywhere in the world. And if you live in Suffolk County, Long Island, you can go to eastgatebroadcasting .com,

eastgatebroadcasting .com, and find out the frequencies, because they have a couple of them, where you can tune into the

River of Life program on the FM dial. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend

Pastor Ron Glass. Glad to be with you again, Chris, thank you. And our topic, as I just mentioned, is

The Church Family Matters. Now, the church, as you were saying to me before we went on the air, seems to have become something that is almost just like an obligation, where someone perhaps just goes once a week to the worship service, they fulfill their obligation, and then they leave, and many people rarely, and perhaps never, have any interaction with the people there, or members there.

They don't really view it as a family. They don't really view themselves as a member of a family.

And sometimes, to be perfectly honest, you may have churches that perpetuate that feeling in the hearts and minds of people, because they don't function as a family, they don't act like a family.

But if you could just comment on the issue of the church as a family, and why it matters.

Well, I thought that today we probably ought to go back to basics. This is nothing that most of your listeners haven't heard before, but as a pastor speaking from about 40 years of church life and ministry,

I think these things need to be said over and over again, particularly in light of the situations that we find ourselves in today.

What I had thought maybe we could do is examine why Christians should be committed to a local church, and you'll notice that I said why they should be committed, not just why they should go, or why they should attend, or even why they should be a member of a local church, but why they should be committed.

I know that I and my wife and some others, we refer sometimes to the C word, you know, this is the word that everybody dreads, commitment, in a local church.

And certainly there are some very persuasive biblical reasons, actually

I have, I thought I would share, if it's okay with you, share nine different reasons why

Christians should be committed to a local church, and that whole family thing is certainly one of them.

And so I would just begin by saying that scripture commands it. Why should Christians be committed to a local church?

Scripture commands it. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 23, which says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as the habit of some is, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

There's a whole lot in those verses, but it's interesting that he ties holding fast the confession of our hope, that is, maintaining sound doctrine without wavering, which was a problem in the

Jerusalem church in the first century, he attaches that to a couple of things.

One, considering how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, which implies that in order for us to stay faithful to the truth, we have to be living that truth, and we need each other in order to stimulate each other to demonstrate love to one another and to do good deeds, and the secret of that is not forsaking our own assembling together.

And he makes it very clear that in that first century, it was already the habit of some of the Christians to do that.

And he says, all the more as you see the day drawing near, as conditions worsen and worsen, we see the end of the age approaching, it's more important than ever that we be together.

I know church members are tired of hearing Hebrews 10, but the repetition doesn't seem to make much of an impression on some, and the reasons here,

I think, are compelling. The central idea, the central command imperative in this is, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, and I would simply ask our listeners today, how long has it been since you encouraged anyone or stimulated anyone to do good deeds or to love another brother, sister, or friend?

Well, you brought up a very important word in that, a word that is used a lot, misused to the point where it's banal and doesn't even really jump into our consciousness when we hear the word love, and we use it flippantly, but the fact of the matter is, going back to the word family, the gathered assembly to which we belong, the body of Christ locally, that is a spiritual family that we are to be attached to that in many significant ways is even more serious and more important and more vital than the blood family that we were born into, isn't it?

Yes, and in fact that comment is made many times. I've heard that in my pastoral ministries, not just here on Long Island, but elsewhere.

That remark is often made, that I have a closer relationship with my brothers and sisters in Christ and this church than I do with my blood relatives, particularly blood relatives who are not believers.

So the Lord expects us to live and to love as a family, provoking one another to love and good deeds.

Well, we're to love each other as a family would love each other, which means we need to build friendships and relationships, and it also implies very clearly that we need each other.

Now one of the things that I find very counterproductive, certainly disturbing in a way, and maybe you've had this experience, maybe the listeners have had this experience,

I've had this experience. You walk into a new church, you walk in the door, and not necessarily at the last minute, you might be a few minutes early for the service, you walk in the door and nobody greets you, nobody talks to you.

You sit down and you either enjoy or endure the worship service, and then you get up and you walk out and nobody talks to you.

Now if I could encourage those who are listening today, if your church is like that, if you basically don't pay much attention to visitors or maybe the people who aren't the beautiful people or the rich people or whatever, you don't pay attention, make yourself a committee of one or a committee of one couple to stand at the door and greet people and tell them that they're welcome and you hope they come back, and if there's something we can do to help you, call upon us, get to know their names, their faces, and demonstrate to these people that love is something we believe in in this church, and we do want to reach out to you and to stimulate you to love and good deeds and to come back here and visit with us again.

And you have to be prepared to back those things up that you tell the people, otherwise you'll be just like those that James condemns in his epistle that can say, be warm and filled, be warm and filled, and they do absolutely nothing when the person actually has need.

And I think that part of the responsibility, major part of the responsibility for that lies on the pastor.

The pastor has to do some public preaching and some private teaching and encouraging on this point.

And that's something I had to do when I first came to Wading River was to stress over and over again. We need to reach out to others.

We had a church that was described by people as a religious country club, and people kind of looked, members of the church kind of looked up and down the person, were they wearing the right clothes, did they drive the right kind of car, did they live in the right neighborhood, and that whole thing had to be just shattered, destroyed.

And gratefully, the Lord took care of that, largely by taking those people out of the church, but also through teaching, and we have developed a very warm and welcoming atmosphere.

And I think every church needs to have that. Well, I want to make sure, since you had nine things, that you go through some of the others, because we are going to a break in 10 minutes, and then we have just about 20 minutes after that.

All right. Well, second, third thing, actually, we've said that the Scripture commands it.

That's one reason to be committed to the church. Secondly, that the Lord expects us to live in love as a family. Thirdly, I would say that the

Lord expects us to worship him corporately. We know the Scriptures, for example, in Ephesians chapter 5, which says in verse 18, don't get drunk with wine, that's dissipation, but be filled with the

Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the

Lord. In the book of Colossians, the same point is made, although the language is a little different, because he says, let the

Word of Christ dwell richly within you with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs.

This worship has to be done congregationally, corporately. We speak to each other, we teach each other, we admonish each other through our singing and through the

Word of God dwelling richly. And then our singing is to express thankfulness from the heart to God.

We cannot worship the Lord, I mean, we can worship the Lord individually, yes, in our devotional lives, our family worship, and so on, but the

Lord clearly expects us to worship him corporately, and we can't do that if we're not there.

Yeah, going back to the family aspect of that, that reminds me, if I were to give an analogy, if you live within, you know, five to twenty minutes from your own family, your physical blood relatives, and year after year, when they gather for Christmas, when they gather for Thanksgiving, when they gather for birthdays, and when they gather for all kinds of special family unions, if you were to just say, well,

I'm not going to any of those things, people in your family would be perhaps even crushed, saying, you're a part of our family, why aren't you here with us, why are you dismissing us, why are you avoiding us, why are you shunning us?

Well, it is infinitely even more important that if you are a member of a church, or even if you're not a member of a church, this is more compelling that you should be and must be, you live within a reasonable distance from a gathered assembly of God's people, you must connect yourself to them, because God has a family, and he nowhere in the scriptures identifies these lone wolf maverick people roaming around in isolation, not attaching themselves to a local assembly of Bible believers, those kinds of people are not identified in the scriptures as genuine

Christians. Yeah, and I would suggest that our listeners, if they're guilty of this, that you don't find convenient excuses for not going to church or participating in church activities.

I mean, some of these are sort of standard, like, I was too tired, I woke up,

I rolled back over in bed and went to sleep, so I just couldn't make it to service, I mean, there's that kind of thing.

But some of them are rather creative. I just had a letter from a member of our church resigning his membership this week, saying, well,

I know I can't probably get teaching, any better teaching anywhere else, and the people are really nice and all, but I just want to be free to go from church to church, just visit around, and he says,

I guess this is because of my ADHD, and that's the first time I've had to flip around from church to church with ADHD.

But you see, people can come up with these creative reasons. In fact, you may remember that at one of your

Conservative Baptist Association dinner parties, you had me do an

MC, you had me MC the event, and I sang a comical song called

The Wanderer about a Christian that does that. Yeah, so we have to be clear that, or we have to be careful that we don't get involved in that.

And then that leads to another thing, which is that the Lord expects us not only to worship him together, but he expects us to learn the

Word together, and that's the purpose of the teaching and equipping ministry of the

Church. God has given pastor -teachers to the Church, in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11, for the purpose of building up the saints, right?

He says, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, building up the body of Christ, so that we attain to the unity of the faith, and the knowledge of the

Son of God, a mature man, and so on. I mean, there's so much there, I haven't got time to expound on it, but you can see the importance to the individual

Christian of being exposed to the teaching ministry of the

Church. In 2 Timothy 3 .17, it says that, you know, the Word of God, the purpose of the

Word of God is that we might be equipped for every good work, and in the next chapter he goes on to tell

Timothy to preach the Word. Well this can't happen in isolation, and frankly it's not good enough to say, well

I can stay home and I can watch my favorite TV preacher. You're not worshipping with the people of God, and there is something missing.

I can tell you what it is, it's the influence of the Holy Spirit. When you are sitting in the congregation, and you are listening to spiritual anointed preaching, it is very different from sort of listening with one ear to the television in your living room, while you're probably thinking and doing other things as well.

It's not a substitute for going to church. Yes, and if you aren't aware of a church that is within traveling distance to you, then you really have to move.

If you're going to be an obedient Christian, you either have to move, or you have to somehow get in contact with churches that will plant a church near you, but you can't just remain in isolation and use where you live as an excuse.

Or if you're convinced that the church where you need to be is a long way off, you're willing to drive.

We have one family in particular, one couple that drives an hour from Nassau County here on Long Island to come and worship with us, and we have other people making long distance trips.

They've just decided that this is where they want to be. It makes it more difficult to be committed, so it's a serious decision to make to do that, because there are meetings you're not going to make, and so on, because you're just too far.

Ideally, you should find a church in your community and be faithful.

Now, of course, if by some providential means there are people who are listening in countries where it's impossible, they will be under the penalty of death.

If they're living in a Muslim theocracy somewhere, well, obviously, we understand that they're not necessarily going to be able to join a church unless they escape where they are somehow, but when we're talking about people, many people, millions of people who have the means to easily get to church or even just relocate.

Right. Go ahead. Even in a country like China, where it's forbidden, they still will get together in places where the authorities are being very strict on this.

They'll still find a way for a couple of couples or whatever to get together as a small group and worship together.

Where there's a will, there's a way, and then the fortunate thing about it is when it's a matter of obedience to the

Word of God, God's the one who makes the way. So I think Christians should be, at all costs, unless it's absolutely impossible, don't neglect to be a part of a local church.

We're going to our final break right now, and now is the time to send in your emails if you haven't already done it before we run out of time.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the remaining 25 minutes is

Pastor Ron Glass of Wading River Baptist Church, Wading River, Long Island, New York, and host of the

River of Life radio program, heard every Saturday at 9 .30 a .m. Eastern Time and every

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We're discussing the church family matters. If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Before you go on to some of the other areas, Pastor Ron, in your list regarding why the church family matters, wouldn't you say it is applicable to cite 1

John chapter 420? If someone says, I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar.

For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love

God whom he has not seen. Now, people might say, well,

I don't hate those people. I just don't want to be around them. I mean, that is really a sign that they do not love those people, and they are really in very serious jeopardy if they do not realize that the genuine love of God's people would be to be connected to them.

Am I off base here? Right. No, and this is an excuse some people use to avoid church because they simply don't like these people.

Now, we know, everybody knows from experience, there are people who are hard to get along with.

And we also know that in a body of believers who are united spiritually, they are united on the basis of what they believe, their relationship to Christ, there are going to be people in that fellowship that in any other context they probably would not gravitate to.

So we understand that. So maybe there's a person in the church that's just not your favorite person in the world.

That's all right, because the love aspect, this love of which

John speaks, and the love of God is defined by the word agape, which is a word that implies self -sacrifice for the good of others.

It's not a feeling word. It's a doing word. And you can genuinely love a person that may not be your favorite person in the world.

But you know what? The more you live with people like this, the more you work with them, the more you serve them, the more apt you are to eventually love them.

In fact, I just was speaking to a brother in Christ. I'm not going to identify him, but I was speaking to a brother in Christ today when we were talking about a mutual friend.

And he said, you know something? When I first met this guy, I could not stand him.

I hated his guts. I thought he was the most arrogant, self -absorbed, proud person I met.

But I've really grown to love this brother and have fun with him and enjoy his company.

So it's just interesting what patience can accomplish. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Now, there are Christians. I mean, I have never been hurt as deeply as I have been by professing

Christians. And a lot of people can repeat that story. I have never had my life as dramatically affected negatively, whether it comes to financially or cruel remarks or a whole myriad of things.

As much, I have never been negatively affected as much by the people of the world as I have by professing

Christians. But that doesn't give us a license to abandon Christians or the church.

Yeah, and I've heard that excuse quite a few times. And it's a sad thing, and I'm sure it's true, sad.

And I think all of us in the church need to be very, very cautious lest we treat each other poorly.

I don't want anybody saying that about me. We can't abandon

Jesus because of Judas. No, no. But give us some of these other reasons.

The Lord also expects us to serve him. Here's the thing.

We don't go to church just to hear a sermon. A lot of people seem to go for that reason. But if you look at passages like, well, one of the ones that really impresses me is concluding chapter in Romans, Romans 16, verses 3 through 16.

He goes through a whole catalog of people. They're in the church of Rome.

He's greeting. And he talks about them as workers and those who work hard.

And in 1 Corinthians 16, verses 15 and 16, he talks about a family that was very committed to worship, excuse me, to work.

In fact, some have even said that they have even translated that this way.

It's the household of Stephanas. And they have devoted themselves to ministry. Some have translated that they have addicted themselves to ministry.

Now, there are a lot of jobs that need to be done in the church. And frankly, many of them are distinctly unglamorous.

I mean, we're talking about ushering. We're talking about keeping the nursery. We're talking about cleaning the church.

I mean, there are a lot of jobs that may not be too glamorous. But if you do them as unto the

Lord, you can do them joyfully. And I believe the Lord will reward us for those.

So the Lord expects us to serve him. Another thing the Lord expects us to do is to pray together.

Again, because of the shortness of the time, I won't look at these passages specifically. But if our readers are interested, turn to Acts chapter 4, where the church is being persecuted for the first time.

And what do they do? They have a prayer meeting. I think particularly of the case in which

Peter was put in prison. And we're told that prayer for him was being made fervently by the church to God.

The church was praying when the Spirit of God spoke to them and said, apart from me,

Barnabas and Saul, for the work for which I have called them. Prayer is such an important thing in the church.

We may pray together as families and individually, but we also need to unite in prayer as a congregation.

There's power in united prayer. But I am convinced few of our people seem to get this. And that's why our prayer meetings are dismally attended.

And in many churches today, they've been canceled altogether. I think back a number of years ago when

I was attending one of America's best -known big churches, evangelical churches, with a superstar pastor.

And I went to prayer meetings on Wednesday night. They actually did have prayer meetings.

Now, on average Lord's Day, you would probably have 10 ,000 people on the campus of that church at one time or another.

They had multiple services, but 10 ,000 people. Prayer meeting on Wednesday night was essentially senior citizens, and there were only about 60.

Now, when you consider the percentage of 60 to 10 ,000, you can see the problem. And the senior pastor teacher in that church did not attend prayer meetings.

So that set an example for the people. We need, however, to be together. Your church has a prayer meeting.

Go, and go regularly. Be a part of it. And by all means, pray. I'm shocked sometimes at how people who've been attending even our church for years still seem not to want to pray publicly.

You know, it's a matter of just talking to God. And we ought to be willing to pray together.

Another thing that I think is critical is that the Lord expects us to be under the discipline of the corporate body.

He's laid out a plan for church discipline. Look, sometimes we mess up. Sometimes we are in sin, and we need to be corrected.

There's a process for that. I know that the reformers saw discipline as one of the distinguishing marks of the church.

Calvin, in particular, made that a major point. And so if you're not a part of the church body, if you're not a member of a local church, and I do want to stress that I think every

Christian ought to be a member, not just an attender, but a member of a local church, part of the reason for that is placing yourself under the discipline of the church body.

And right at the beginning, going in, you need to understand that if you are going to live in sin, the church leaders are going to confront you over that.

And that should be something that actually does happen in our church. Yes, and I, for one, who has personally experienced church discipline, can actually praise

God for it, because it may have saved my life. And this is not supposed to be viewed as some ugly, hateful thing, even though, of course, we know that there are perhaps churches, in fact, not even perhaps, there are certainly churches and cults and other things that do discipline people in very unbiblical and mean -spirited and hateful ways.

But when it's done properly, it is supposed to be an act of love, and it's supposed to be done with the intention of restoring someone to the family.

Absolutely. Now, we're not talking about conducting an inquisition. We're talking about loving a person back into fellowship with Christ and with the church.

The Lord also expects us to regularly support the ministry of the church financially, 1

Corinthians 16, too. And let me say this to our listeners.

I think that if we as Christians are doing less than tithing, we're in disobedience.

Now, the tithe is not the standard for the New Testament church. It was an Old Testament principle, but it predated the law.

So we have to understand that to do less than a tithe is to do less than those who were under the law or in the

Old Testament. We are to be giving generously. The Lord loves a cheerful, generous giver.

We're to give as God has prospered us. We have missionaries. In our church, we have a substantial support obligation for our missionaries, and we need our people to give regularly for that.

The ministry, you know, it is a real hindrance when the ministry suffers for lack of money.

You can't pay your ministerial staff. You can't pay your bills. You can't supply the kinds of equipment and so on that are needed.

And certainly, many churches have retracted, if not totally eliminated, their foreign missionary giving.

This is sad. And if you don't show up on a regular basis, my guess is you're not giving on a regular basis.

And there have been a number of surveys that have been conducted of religious people and church people with regard to their level of giving, and it comes out roughly the same almost every one of them.

And it's come up to somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of their income is the average giving.

That is sad. My conviction is that if every member of a church regularly attends and regularly gives, the church will have the resources it needs.

Amen. We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says,

I know that this could take a whole episode, but what would you say are the only reasons that a person can legitimately and biblically leave a faithful church?

Leave? Yeah. Leave a faithful church? Right. I'm assuming you would include the necessity to move.

I mean, there are people that do have a necessity to relocate to another state, country, etc.

But anything else other than that? Well, I think sometimes there are churches, the pulpit ministries of which are essentially evangelistic.

And once you become a Christian, you're a believer, and you have become enthusiastically involved in the church, you may find that it gets to a point where hearing the same basic evangelistic message every week is not feeding you.

And it may be legitimate to find a ministry where the pulpit ministry or the teaching ministry of the church is more substantial.

But I would not be leaving for frivolous reasons. Things like, I don't like the chairman of the board of elders, or I don't like the color they painted the walls, or I don't like to be...

You know, somebody looked at me cross -eyed. I'll tell you, I've been accused of, you know, if I walk through the foyer going from Sunday school to my office before church, and I've had people say, oh, he didn't even speak to me, you know, and get very indignant over that.

Well, I've got a lot of other things on my mind right at that moment. So, I mean, things like that, people can get their noses out of joint and then walk out of a church, and I think those are not legitimate reasons.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. I think the problem with that question is it didn't give enough information.

I would say he would leave a faithful church to go to another faithful church, or I would leave a faithful church to go plant another faithful church.

And that would imply also that you were leaving that faithful church in a respectful way and not in a way that was causing further damage, you know.

I mean, there are people that leave flippantly. They don't even ever contact the church that they left again.

You know, they don't even give them a reason or a notice. Right. That's a good point. I think there's another thing, too, that we need to think about here, and that is that the

Lord expects us as Christians to set an example for our children and for younger believers.

And, you know, the reality is that if you are not regularly, faithfully involved, and I mean attending the services of the church, making sure that your family is there with you, if you are not involved in ministry, in various aspects of ministry, the chances are that your children are not going to follow, well, they're going to follow your example, and they're not going to be involved either.

I mean, I can look back on my upbringing. My parents, my father was not in ministry, but my parents were extremely involved in our small little

Baptist church back in Illinois. And, I mean, teaching Sunday school,

Sunday school superintendent, board of deacons, involved in working on the church building, conducting the annual

Christmas program. I mean, you know, and my mother was a teacher, and my whole heritage was of a mother and father who were intimately, and almost,

I mean, this was where they, this was where their friends were, this is where their family was, this is their life.

And that, I think, is so critical, because I learned from that. My brothers and sister learned from that.

And my children are learning from us the same thing, and all of our children are active in churches.

So it's important that you set that example. And let's see here, we have

B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania.

And B .B. says, there are times when being a member of a family, just like being a member of a church family, can involve very deep wounds.

We tend to have inflict deeper wounds and be inflicted by them the closer we are to people.

How do we overcome the bitterness, perhaps even hatred, to those in the family that we have been hurt by, even in the church family, without taking it out on the church as a whole?

Well, a couple of things I would say. First of all, let's remember what we're all about as Christians.

It's a word called grace. And grace is undeserved kindness.

So they said something evil about you, or double -crossed you, or somehow hurt you.

Well, they don't deserve your kindness. Fine, show it to them anyway. That's grace.

That's what Christ did for us. And you can do it for someone else as well. In addition to that,

I had an incident recently where I had some tension in a situation.

And one of the church members said to me, I just want to be treated fairly.

And I said, hold on. First of all, life isn't fair. And you have to realize that.

I mean, you encounter this stuff in the work world. Life isn't fair.

So don't expect things to be fair in the church. You might not be treated fairly. And second of all, realize that the

Lord Jesus Christ was supremely treated in an unfair way. The Son of God was crucified.

Now, if he could do that for us, we can do this for others. What we have to do is take our eyes off ourselves.

And then we have to put our eyes on Christ and then seek to obediently serve the person, persons who are hurting us.

Now, in some cases, these tensions will never be resolved perfectly. We understand that.

But if there's a parting of the ways, it should be amicable. And, you know, some cases,

I've had cases where it wasn't amicable. But you do whatever you can. You try to restore the relationship, reconcile the relationship.

And sometimes it can't be done. That's why Paul says, as much as lies within you live peaceably with all men, sometimes you can't.

But it should be, if you can't, it shouldn't be your fault. It should be the fault of the other person.

And I assume that you have no problem with certain circumstances compelling a person to leave a church because of some really severe affliction that they have received from somebody in that congregation, as long as they are, like I said earlier, doing it respectfully to the leaders of that church and going on.

For instance, I know of a situation where a pastor was in an adulterous relationship with a woman in the church.

And then when those two people came to a repentant faith, and as far as the church leaders could see that these two individuals, the pastor and the woman committing adultery with them, they regretted what they did.

They repented. But they were attending worship in the same church. And that caused a conflict amongst the assembled brethren.

And it probably would have been, in fact, certainly would have been a much better situation were the pastor or the woman involved go to a different church.

I'm assuming you would agree with that. Yeah. And we actually had a situation like that in this church.

And we did ask one of the parties to leave graciously, kindly, but we asked them to leave for the good of the situation.

Well, if you have anything you want to finalize the program with. A couple of points, just a couple of random thoughts that I would leave.

One is do everything in your power not to have to work on Sunday.

It becomes an excuse for a lot of people.

And they get into that mold. They get into that mode. What you need to do is, if at all possible, let your employer know that you are a

Christian, you are a member of a church, and it's your desire to be there on the

Lord's day, and you don't want to work. That would be my counsel.

Matthew 6 .33, you know, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you.

Second thing I would say is, if your spouse won't go with you, don't use that as an excuse to stay home.

I mean, unless you have an unsaved husband saying he is barring the door. You know, as long as he doesn't become angry and forbid you outright, go to church anyway.

As long as he doesn't object or she doesn't object, you should be in the Lord's house.

Don't just say, well, he doesn't go, she doesn't go, so I'm not going to go either. I would also say another point.

Your loyalty in the church is to the Lord first and to that church body.

It is not primarily to the pastor. And so I hear this kind of thing.

Well, if the pastor leaves, I'm leaving too. No, it's not.

You're not loyal to the pastor. I mean, you should be loyal to the pastor, but he is not the reason you're in that church.

You're in that church because this is your family, and you can't walk out on your family.

And then finally, I would just say, realize in so many churches today, too much responsibility is being placed on too few people.

So to all of the listeners today, I just want to say, get your priorities straightened out.

Be in church every week and every time the doors are open, if you can. And by all means, join the church, get involved, serve in whatever capacity

God has gifted you to serve, and you will be an encouragement to your pastor.

And above all, you'll be obedient to your Lord. We have room for one more of your points.

That's it. Oh, you got to all nine of them? I got them all in. Oh, wow. Well, I want to make sure that our listeners have all of the information.

Again, the Wading River Baptist Church's website is wrbc .us, which stands for wadingriverbaptistchurch .us.

And also, the website where you can hear the River of Life program hosted by Ron Glass every

Saturday at 9 .30 a .m. Eastern time and Sunday at 7 .30 p .m. Eastern time is eastgatebroadcasting .com,

eastgatebroadcasting .com. And you can also go to that website to find out where on the

FM dial you can listen to that program if you do indeed live in the

Suffolk County area of New York. And in fact, I have the frequencies right here.

90 .7 FM, 93 .3 FM, and 91 .7

FM. That's 90 .7 FM, 93 .3 FM, and 91 .7

FM. That's Faith FM Radio, the network of Eastgate Broadcasting. And I hope that you all, whichever way is more convenient for you, whether you live locally on Long Island or whether you live anywhere in the world where you need to listen by live streaming or by streaming,

I should say, please take advantage of Eastgate Broadcasting's website and their

FM stations to listen to the River of Life program, a program that the Reverend Buzz Taylor and I edit every week for the time restraints of a half -hour program.

And I can tell you that, Pastor Ron Glass, I can tell you without exaggeration or without flattery that he is one of the finest preachers

I have ever heard in my life. And if you are without a church home, I seriously urge you to consider visiting and perhaps even joining

Wading River Baptist Church at Wading River, Long Island, New York. Thank you so much, Pastor Ron Glass, for being our guest today.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write in. Thank you, Buzz Taylor, which is, it's

Buzz Taylor's, it's his birthday today. Yes. So wish a happy birthday to Buzz Taylor, perhaps on Facebook or by email or whatever.

And in fact, I'm going to go treat Reverend Buzz Taylor to dinner for his birthday right now. Amen. But I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater