Session 7: Question and Answer

Kootenai Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

All right, so we're going to begin with a question on which you and I might disagree, we shall see, because we have a bit of a different view on the ordinances, particularly baptism.

00:09

You are a paedo -baptist, I'm a credo -baptist. So here's the question. Is there any biblical mandate that requires both regeneration, salvation, and baptism before one can participate in communion?

00:22

I think it depends on the local church, if that's what they require, yes.

00:28

Is there a biblical mandate? If there is, I'm not aware of it.

00:33

There is a biblical norm for it, but I'm not aware that it's a mandate.

00:39

Yeah, I would agree. No, not a mandate. I think the argument could be made that if you know that you ought to be baptized in obedience to the

00:47

Lord's commands, and you're refusing to do that, being disobedient to the Lord, then you shouldn't participate in communion because you are actively living in disobedience.

00:55

Plus, you're not even a Christian. If you're willing to actively say no to God, and you know it's what

01:00

He wants, how could you think you're a Christian? Living in persistence. That's right. All right.

01:05

See, we don't disagree on these things. No, maybe not. All it means is I'm at least as smart as He is.

01:12

All right, what are some recommended writers or literature that hold true to the gospel and Reformation spirit, or I would probably say

01:19

Reformation doctrines or truths, but that predate the time of Luther and the Reformation era?

01:27

Augustine. And here's the deal. People say, where is

01:32

Augustine? No, Augustine is in Florida. Augustine is in heaven. I think

01:41

Luther rediscovered the gospel. It had been lost for quite a long time.

01:48

I mean, it's never completely lost. But there was a Cambridge scholar who did a two -volume set called

01:55

Justitia Dei, the Justification of God. And he quoted church figure after church figure after church figure who got the gospel wrong.

02:07

And I said, I can't remember his name, but I said, you're saying that for 400 years, nobody had the gospel.

02:17

He said, Don, for 2 ,000 years, very few have had the gospel, but we've got it now.

02:24

And it took a while even from Luther to refine that into the capsulized version that we have now.

02:33

I can't think of a name from before Luther. I have a pamphlet at home from the 1600s that says, it was a

02:41

Roman Catholic pamphlet. Where was your gospel before Luther? And that's why

02:47

I did the Jesus teaching justification by faith alone. That was before Luther. And Paul.

02:53

There's another name. Jesus and Paul. How are those two names? Tyndale, Wycliffe.

02:59

Did they write anything on justification that you're aware of? I don't know if they wrote specifically on justification, but I'm not well -versed in those men.

03:07

Okay. See, this is the problem with Q and A. Q is a given, but the

03:13

A is being presumptive. Just because you have a Q does not mean we have an

03:18

A, as we've just shown. If you had 60 seconds to persuade a strong, non -reformed, but Bible -believing

03:25

Christian of the doctrine of God's sovereignty in election versus free will, what would you say? I'd say 60 seconds isn't enough.

03:34

You can't do it. 60 seconds. Plus, to me, there's a contradiction of terms.

03:40

A Bible -believing Christian who's an Arminian. I don't see how that can be. But it can be capsulized.

03:51

Christ saves sinners who repent and trust Him for their salvation.

03:56

That's 20 seconds. But it would take more than 60 seconds to flesh that out. I think it could be done in less than 20 seconds.

04:04

Jonah said, salvation is of the Lord. That is the most concise statement on the sovereignty of God and salvation that I think you could give.

04:10

Salvation is of the Lord. Not part of it, but all of it. It is in its entirety a gift from God. Well, like John says, it's not of him who willeth or him who runs, but of God who wills.

04:21

Yeah. You made the statement that seems contradictory.

04:27

So a Bible -believing Christian who is non -reformed, you're not suggesting by that that Arminian brothers are unbelievers, but just that you would question the salvation of somebody who clearly saw something in Scripture and yet rejected that truth outright.

04:42

If he says the Bible teaches it, but I don't believe it, I say, I don't know how you can be a Christian.

04:49

Dr. Gershner was asked one time in a Q &A, do you believe that there will be Arminians in heaven?

04:56

He goes, no. You don't believe there are any Arminians who were saved? And by the way, it's

05:01

Arminian, not Armenian. That's an ethnic race of people in Turkey. We don't know if they're saved or not, but they say, you don't believe that Arminians can be saved?

05:13

He said, that wasn't what you asked me. There are Arminians who are on their way to heaven, but when they get to heaven, they won't be

05:20

Arminians anymore. There you go. How would you practically recommend for believers to remind themselves of the gospel?

05:27

I'm sorry, read it again, please. How would you practically remind believers or recommend for believers to remind themselves of the gospel?

05:35

Oh. You made the statement, we ought to preach the gospel to ourselves every day. How do we do that? Remind ourselves that we are sinners, and the only difference between us and the people in hell is the grace of God.

05:48

In Bunyan's book, Sighs from Hell, he mentions how that the people in heaven can see the sinners in hell, and that will reinforce what we've been saved from.

06:01

Part of this, I would say, is don't ever forget what you've been saved from, and that's why hell is an important doctrine.

06:10

Every revival of note has had two major factors in agreement, preaching justification by faith alone and the judgment of God against sin.

06:23

And again, people need to know what they need to be saved from. If their theology is,

06:29

I'm not that bad and God's not that mad, they need to know that it is. In fact, you're worse than you think you are.

06:38

And what is the benefit of preaching the gospel to ourselves? Is it just a matter of reminding ourselves that we're sinners? Well, one,

06:46

I think it's like marriage vows. Sometimes people do their marriage vows again just to remind them of, you know, their love for one another.

06:56

I'm not in favor of it as a general service or redoing the whole thing, but we need to be reminded that this is all about God.

07:06

It's all about what Christ has done. Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to the cross I cling, and I need to hear that every day.

07:14

Along with Christ is a better Savior than I am a sinner. I need to hear that every day too, which

07:20

I think is part of the gospel. You made a point about not compromising the truth, saying why should

07:27

Jesus suffer so someone else isn't offended or why should God be offended so that those clowns won't be. How broad does this extend?

07:35

Does this extend into the political realm when we have conversations with people in that realm, for instance? If political issues call for us to compromise the gospel, we may not compromise the gospel.

07:50

But, again, for me, if it's not a salvation issue,

07:55

I'm staying out of it. I mean, I have preference, but this is something we need to be careful of.

08:02

We can't make our personal preferences the same level as God's divine precepts.

08:10

Just because you don't like something doesn't make it wrong. If God doesn't like it, now it's wrong.

08:17

In Deuteronomy, he talks about homosexuality and bestiality and things like that.

08:24

And God says, you shall not lie with a man as a man lies with a woman. And then he gives the reason why.

08:32

Because I'm the Lord. That's the only reason he gives. And he says it is an abomination.

08:39

An abomination to who? To God. That's all that matters. If God says it's wrong, it's wrong.

08:48

And so we must oppose it because God opposes it. But not because we don't like it, or we find it personally repulsive, but because the

08:57

Bible says it's wrong, and that's where we stand. I'm not running for any office, by the way.

09:07

This is not a question so much as a statement. This is reminding me of this. I already talked to you about this earlier, but I want everybody else here to know.

09:13

That song that you talked about, and can it be that thou my God, just die for me. I want everybody to know that is the first opening song tomorrow morning for the worship service.

09:22

That's how much I am appreciated. But as I pointed out, it is true to say that Christ is

09:30

God. And it is true to say that the one who is the God man died and suffered physical death in my stead.

09:38

Because we would never, for instance, affirm that divinity died in the sense of ceasing to exist.

09:44

But one in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form can suffer bodily death, which we affirm as part of the gospel.

09:53

So just to clarify, you weren't saying that God did not die, or that the God man did not die, because Christ is both

10:00

God and man. The divine being did not die. The divine being, yeah. And it would be error then to say, for clarification, that the

10:07

Father died for me, that is patripassionism, which is a heresy. When I wrote a book about Christopher Love, I had to research the education at Cambridge and Oxford in the 1600s.

10:22

And they took as much logic and debate as they did Bible and theology. Because they said a man ought to be able to defend his position against all gainsayers.

10:34

And debate was a big part of it. So at the end of your first term, you usually went for three years, at the end of your first term you watched a debate.

10:42

At the end of your second year, you engaged a fellow student in debate in front of the

10:48

Oxford faculty and staff and your other classmates, who were free to boo and throw things at you if they didn't agree with what you were saying.

10:59

And so say the topic was, can God feel pain?

11:05

Jim, you will argue it in the affirmative, Don, you will argue it in the negative. Okay, so you went and prepared and you came back and did the debate.

11:15

And then for your final debate, you debated your professor.

11:22

You didn't know the topic till you got there. And they says, all right, today, we will argue this,

11:30

Mr. Kishler, you will argue that God indeed did die on the cross, because Jesus is

11:37

God. Jim, you will argue that God did not die on the cross, and we will argue it in Aramaic.

11:45

Could have been Greek, Latin, Hebrew, English, French, Italian, Aramaic.

11:52

And that's all your learning came into focus, your languages, your Bible, your theology, your logic, your debate skills and things.

12:00

And if you didn't pass, you were no longer allowed to use the library. That's basically like the public school system today.

12:09

Yes. What is the difference between the Puritans and the Pilgrims?

12:14

All the Puritans were Pilgrims. All the Pilgrims were not Puritans. Make sense?

12:21

Anybody who left, now the Puritans were kicked out of England. They didn't come voluntarily. 2 ,000

12:28

Puritans were kicked out of the schools, the churches, and except John Owen, the king would not let him leave because he was a national treasure.

12:38

But 2 ,000, some went to South America, some to Central America, and a lot of them came to North America.

12:45

So in that sense, they were Pilgrims. But they got here, and they started over, and they were still

12:52

Puritans. So all the Pilgrims were Puritans? No, vice versa. All the

12:57

Puritans were Pilgrims, but not all the Pilgrims were Puritans. Some came for mercenary reasons.

13:05

Who knows why? And by Pilgrims, we're talking about the

13:11

Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth, right? Okay. Since we're talking about differences and distinctions, we sometimes talk about Reformers, and we also talk about Puritans.

13:24

So is there overlap between those two? What are the similarities, or are they the same thing? About 100 years difference separated them.

13:32

Reformers was the early 1500s. The Puritans was the very late 1500s to the late 1600s.

13:40

And Puritans really refined what the Reformers started. Okay, so did the Puritans then, were all of the

13:47

Puritans Reformed? Well, they were all members of the Church of England. That's why you really can't call

13:54

John Bunyan a Puritan, because he was never a member of the Church of England. But they accepted him and embraced him because of his theology.

14:05

But a Puritan was someone, we'll talk about this tomorrow morning in Sunday School, someone who wanted to purify the

14:11

Church of England from its embracing of Roman Catholic doctrine. That's where the name

14:17

Puritan came from. It was a term of derision. They accepted it as a badge of honor.

14:24

Okay, the last question for those who are here or watching online and who may not know, can you share how it is that one may be saved from the wrath of God?

14:33

Give us a concise, straightforward gospel presentation. Elevator pitch. Proverbs 28, 13,

14:40

He who confesses his sin and forsakes them shall find mercy. It has to be at least your intention to quit the sin that God hates.

14:51

You must embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, not Savior and Lord and Savior.

14:57

And you must be willing to say, Lord, I'll do whatever you ask. I won't do it perfectly, but I'll do it with everything

15:05

I know within me. And I'm trusting you for that. It's as simple as I know how to make.

15:11

You could go on the internet, by the way, and a book I published years ago named Gospel Conversation by Jeremiah Burroughs.

15:20

I think Ligonier Ministries has published it as a summary of the gospel by Jeremiah Burroughs, just about two paragraphs.

15:27

And it's as succinct as anything I've ever read. I recommend it. All right.

15:34

That is all we have for the questions. I would just remind you before we dismiss today that we have in three weeks, the cessationist conference coming up.

15:43

If you want to be part of that, you can go onto the website and register for that. We have seven speakers that will be here for seven different sessions on the doctrine of cessationism and as well as a roundtable discussion after that.

15:55

And then tomorrow for Sunday school, Dr. Kistler is going to be talking about who the Puritans were, describing the history of the

16:00

Puritans and the book table available out in the foyer tomorrow. And then after we're done here today, any volunteers who would be willing to help clean off the tables and fold them up and stack them against the wall, that would be greatly appreciated.

16:15

So let's give Dr. Kistler a round of applause for being here and thank him for coming. Thank you. Thank you.

16:23

All right. I will close us in prayer and then we'll be dismissed. Bow our heads. Our father, we are grateful for what we have learned here today.

16:30

And again, a great reminder of the gospel and its power, its simplicity. We pray that you would strengthen our hearts to be defenders of the gospel, lovers of the gospel, and that you would be glorified as we live our lives in obedience to it.

16:43

We thank you for your word and its clarity. We thank you for the men and women who have labored throughout church history to preserve the gospel for us and to deliver it to us so that we might have that understanding.

16:53

And we pray that you would use these truths to cement in our lives and in our hearts, our obedience to you and our love for you.

17:01

And we look forward to that day when we will praise you and glorify you face to face for all that you have done.

17:06

And we will sing your praises forevermore to the lamb whose blood was slain for us so that we might have life.