Adult Sunday School - The Congregation’s Authority

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Lesson: The Congregation’s Authority Date: Oct. 20, 2024 Teacher: Pastor Conley Owens

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Dear Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless our Sunday school this morning, that you would bless also the children as they study your word.
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I pray that you would make us more like your son as you teach us his ways. In Jesus' name, Amen. Alright, well,
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I've got a sheet of verses, as Tim did last week. Just pass those back there.
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Alright, so we're doing a number of lessons on ecclesiology, on how the church ought to operate, and yeah, other things related to the teaching ministry of the word.
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For those who have recently been in my orientation class, a lot of this will look familiar, but hopefully you're up for going through a lot of this a second time.
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Also, Pastor Tim last week went through a number of things about the elders' authority.
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There will be a bit of overlap this week, not necessarily because there's anything lacking in what he was teaching.
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But yeah, today we're going to be talking not just about the congregation's authority, but how it interacts with the elders' authority.
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So, just beginning with that, and considering, and once again, feel free to ask questions at any point.
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This is the setup for how congregationalism works in that first line.
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You see, there's authority, it has been delegated from God to Christ, to the congregation, to pastors, to deacons.
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Alright, so, first,
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God to Christ. It might seem odd that authority would need to be delegated to Christ. Isn't he God?
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Doesn't he have authority over all things? Well, as man, he does not take these positions for himself.
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He must be appointed to them, as it says in Hebrews 5, that no man takes that position for himself, as high priest or even as king.
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It's not right for someone to do that. And so, all authority is given to Jesus. Matthew 28, 18 says it, and Jesus came and said to them,
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All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So, God has all authority, naturally.
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And he grants all authority to the God -man, Jesus Christ. And then,
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Christ grants his authority to the congregation. Now, we're going to talk about what the scope of that authority is, and what it looks like.
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But, every church has to answer this question. And even if they don't consider the relevance of the passage, they end up answering this.
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And it is, who holds the keys of the kingdom? That's not just a phrase you hear stated as,
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I don't know, I hear people say that occasionally when they hand people keys, right? Or something like that. I hear the keys of the kingdom. But no, this is a biblical phrase.
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It talks about the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Let's read some of Matthew 16.
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So, if you go ahead and turn to Matthew 16, I want us to read through a larger passage than just what's written down here.
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All right, we're going to read Matthew 16, verses 13 to 20. Now, when
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Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the
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Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.
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He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, You are the
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Christ, the Son of the living God. For Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar -Jonah.
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For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock
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I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
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Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then he strictly charged his disciples to tell no one that he was the
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Christ. It's at this event that Peter is given the keys of the kingdom, it's authority in the church.
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Now, why is it Peter who is given the keys? Usually, this is phrased as, Peter is given the keys of the kingdom as first of, and then you insert something there, as first of blank.
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For example, in Roman Catholicism, he would be first of popes.
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You could say, he's first of apostles, first of bishops, he's first of presbyters.
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You could change this to be whatever you want. That's why different churches, once again, not necessarily looking at this passage and answering the question explicitly, but this is implicitly what's going on.
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They are answering, or however they run the church, is answering the question of who holds the keys of the kingdom?
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Who, under Christ, has the authority to be wielded?
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What would you say, someone who hasn't heard me answer this question before, I know almost all of you have, but maybe someone who doesn't remember me answering this question.
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What is Peter first of here? First of. Not first of popes, not first of bishops, not first of apostles.
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Why this context? Why here? Why does he say this here? Yes. Sure.
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Right. That's a good question. I've honestly seen enough answers on this that I don't feel absolutely confident of what the right way of phrasing it is, but definitely his confession is a significant part of that.
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For those who don't know, Peter's name, he names him Peter, which means rock.
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Then he says, on this rock. These are different words. Some people phrase it as, oh,
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Jesus is talking about himself. He's saying, you're Peter, and on this rock, I'm holding my church.
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Or he's saying rock is a confession, etc. I think it must involve something about the confession.
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That's the whole point of this event, is that Peter has made the confession that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
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So Peter is the first of confessors. This is why Peter, in particular,
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Jesus says to him, I will give you the keys of the kingdom. It's because he's not first among popes, not first among apostles, but first among confessors, since he has just confessed that Jesus Christ is the
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Son of God. So that tells you the, I don't want to overuse the word scope here, because I'm using it in a different sense, but the scope of those who could possibly wield the keys includes all confessors.
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Okay? Yes. It's singular.
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It's singular. Singular, okay. He is just talking plural. So, yeah, one thing, this is the reason why a lot of people like King James, is because it distinguishes the you's and ye's, so that one is plural, one is singular.
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You don't really have that in English, naturally. But you do in King James, so that's nice to have.
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All right. So yeah, he is talking Peter, so it's a question of, yeah, what is Peter first of?
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He's first of confessors. That's the whole reason for this. Otherwise, why didn't he say this at some other time? Why this event? All right.
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So Peter is giving the keys. Now, you don't really know what the keys are here. It doesn't really explain it here, right?
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And there's a mixed metaphor going on. There is loosing and binding being talked about, but keys don't typically loose and bind, right?
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Keys, well, I mean, I guess they could if they're for manacles or something, but keys open and close, ropes loose and bind.
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The point is we're going to need more context in order to know what the keys do.
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Also, most of what I'm saying, I very much like the book by Jonathan Lehman called
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Don't Fire Your Church Members. If you want to know more about this, I would recommend that book, Don't Fire Your Church Members.
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Okay. Matthew 18 speaks to these keys again.
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If you look at Matthew 18. Okay. Matthew 18. We're going to look at verse 15.
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Also, I would highly recommend that you memorize those chapter numbers. Memorize 16, 18, and then 28 because this is the chain to show what the keys of the kingdom are.
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Okay. 16, 18, and then 28. There's only one digit that changes each time. First time it's a six, it turns to an eight.
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Second time, the one turns to a two. 16, 18, 28. All right,
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Matthew 18, verse 15. If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.
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If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
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If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a
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Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.
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Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. This is the same phrase, right? Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my
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Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. All right, so what is...
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This is at least one example, if not the main thing that the keys are for here, right?
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What's happening here? What's the context? What is the loosing and binding doing? Right, excommunication.
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So it's an authoritative declaration on Christ's behalf that this person is not to be identified as one of his people, right?
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It is... You know, you think about it. A lot of people think about the authority that they have from Christ as something, especially when we get into Matthew 28.
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It's, you know, it's like the authority to proclaim his word, etc. You know, on one hand,
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I'm not sure there's anything, any special authority that someone would need just to read his word to another person, right?
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He's given his word. Someone can say what it says to that other person, right? They can declare that.
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But you do not have authority to say on Christ's behalf who belongs to his kingdom and who doesn't belong to his kingdom.
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Like, you know, people can make all kinds of claims. Those claims are meaningless unless they have that authority in order to say this.
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So who has authority to say this? It is the one who exercised the keys or the ones who exercised the keys.
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Now, here in Matthew 18, it describes those who exercised the keys, right?
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If your brother sins against you, you go show him his fault. If he doesn't listen to you, take one or two others.
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If he doesn't listen to them, tell it to the church. And this is interesting because this is all pre -Pentecost and everything, right?
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But Jesus is still talking about the church, the gathering of the saints. That's what the word ekklesia means, right?
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It's the gathering of the church. A lot of people over -etymologize it and say, oh, ekklesia means called out, so it's the ones who are called out.
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There's some significance to that, but really that's... You know, one example is a butterfly is not a fly made of butter, right?
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You can make way too much of the etymology there, right? You can make way too much of the etymology of ekklesia. It is a congregation.
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Like, that is what a church is, is a gathered people. So he says, tell it to the church.
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If he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.
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So this is something the church does. So a lot of times you'll have many churches who say, okay, well, it's the church, but it's the...
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But it's, yeah, it's some representative acting on behalf of the church rather than the church itself being the one who needs to hear, the one who needs to do this.
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And so at the end when it says, for where two or three are gathered in my aim, they are among them. When do they even have this authority?
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Okay, this authority is not an authority that's possessed when they are not gathered. It's authority that's possessed when they are gathered.
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Also, you've probably heard this used in, like, workplace prayer meetings and stuff like that, right? Where someone says, ah, wherever two or three are gathered, their
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Jesus is among us, as though their prayers are specially heard when there's two or three of them together.
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Hopefully there's not four, because then maybe he won't hear you as well. No, that's not the point of this passage.
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Now, you know, God's always with us in that other sense, but this is talking about having his authority, right?
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A couple of people gathered at work in a prayer meeting do not have the authority to excommunicate someone unless they've decided they are a church, you know, and they're going to operate as a church.
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But that would be pretty unwise on a number of accounts. But there is not, yeah, to appeal to this verse is to say too much, right, for those workplace prayer meetings or whatever, because these are not people who would take into their hand the keys of the kingdom to excommunicate anyone.
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All right, moving on to Matthew 28. Matthew 28, verse, let's see, start with verse 16.
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Now, the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.
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And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. That's the verse we just read a minute ago. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
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So once again, this is very similar to Matthew 18. It's kind of hard to catch it on your first pass, but notice the similarities.
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Matthew 18 ended with the statement, or at least that passage ended with the statement that Christ is with his people, wherever two or three are gathered, to make a declaration about who belongs to his church, right, or who doesn't belong to his church.
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Okay, here it says, I am with you always to the end of the age to do what? To authoritatively declare who belongs to the church.
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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, right?
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Baptism is an authoritative declaration about someone belonging to the church.
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And so Jesus doesn't go through the keys of the kingdom here. He doesn't talk about whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven, etc.
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But he talks about his authoritative presence to make a declaration about who does or does not belong to his church.
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Okay, so the context is very similar to Matthew 18. And so if Jesus doesn't explain how we are to, how these decisions are to be made, etc.
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Here, he's already told us in Matthew 18, wherever two or three are gathered, etc., okay?
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So you see the loosing and binding is primarily found in the authoritative declarations on Christ's behalf about who his people are, okay?
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Is everybody on board with that? Yes. Yeah, so if you are not gathered together with the others, that's how you are being admitted.
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You're being baptized into the body, right? You can't be baptized and remain out of the body.
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That's not a possible option here. So, yeah, if you were to be identified as his people, as part of his church, that would then mean that you would then become one of the participants in this process, right?
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Because now you are one of those who is deciding who belongs to his people. And that's a really key thing.
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A lot of people want to divorce church membership from baptism or divorce baptism and communion from any kind of responsibility to each other or to the church as a whole to deal with anything with excommunication, to deal with anything with membership, right?
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This is a very frequent thing. And especially depending on how a church wants to involve children, right?
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So Presbyterians do it where, okay, their child's a member of the church, but then it's not until he's a communed member that there's some other responsibilities and privileges, right?
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But this is what the nature of being a member is, is to be part of that body that is making these declarations on Christ's behalf.
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If someone is not capable of making these declarations on Christ's behalf, he's not capable of membership in any formal sense, right?
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Like, no, I'm not denying that someone could be saved by the Spirit at a very young age.
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You see that with John the Baptist, right? But anyone who's, you know,
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I believe I was saved at a very young age. Anyone who's saved at a young age, what we're not talking about is citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.
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We're talking about recognition of that citizenship on earth. So one of the analogies that Lehman uses that I really like is the church is like an embassy, right, that stamps passports.
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Okay, so you can be a citizen of a nation and not have a passport. Like, you're still a citizen of the U .S. if you lose your passport.
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But you can't expect anyone to recognize you as a citizen. You're not gonna have the rights of a citizen, at least not outside of your country, right?
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You're not going to experience his rights. And that's what we are. We're all sojourners, right, in this world. It's not our ultimate home.
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Not that, I mean, obviously, there will be new heavens and a new earth. I'm not denying that the earth is part of the ultimate, is part of God's ultimate plan here.
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But I'm just saying that right now we are sojourners in a hostile world. And so the way it works with these embassies, right, is that those embassies have certain rules that Christ has established for recognizing who the citizens of that foreign land are, right, that land that is our home elsewhere.
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Okay, so hopefully that makes sense. All right, any questions about that?
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All right, this comes out in a few places. You see the church using the keys to make declarations about the church's identity and what it is, right?
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1 Corinthians 5, 4 through 5. This is another passage that might as well go ahead and read a larger context if you want to turn there to 1
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Corinthians 5. All right,
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I'll begin in verse one. It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife.
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Are you arrogant? Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
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For though absent in body, I am present in spirit. And as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing.
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When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
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Lord. All right, so he's telling them that this person who's identified as part of the body, later on he calls him a so -called brother, is to be removed.
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What is the process for doing that? It says, when you are assembled, very, very similar to Matthew 18, wherever two or three of you are gathering, when you are assembled in the name of our
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Lord Jesus, and so in the name of our Lord Jesus, you're not just assembled, but assembled for the particular purpose of being the church, right?
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And my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh.
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Okay, so this is something that is only accomplished when people are gathered together in the name of the
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Lord as a church and it is there that they have his power, his authority, once again, to make these declarations and remove him from the blessings of church membership.
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Later on, when it says not even to eat with such a one, there's a number of papers that have been written about this.
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I am of the thought that this might be better translated, simply do not eat with such a one.
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The focus being on the Lord's table rather than on fellowship. Now, obviously, there's going to be an impact on your relations to anyone who is excommunicated, but I believe this is talking primarily about the
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Lord's Supper rather than those relationships. Okay, so removed from the benefits of church membership, he's delivered over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, no longer able to benefit from church membership in that way.
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Okay, so you see that in 1 Corinthians 5. Also, 1 Corinthians 5, who's it written to? This is not one of the pastoral epistles.
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Okay, it's written to the church, right? So it's not telling the elders when you gather together, right? He's telling the church, when you gather together, you all are supposed to be in agreement about what the church is, right?
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About who belongs, who does not belong. 2
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Corinthians 2 .6 likely refers to the same person. That's the traditional position.
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It kind of fell out of popularity and it's regaining popularity. But it says, for such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough.
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Okay, so it's talking about someone who had been excommunicated, right? And it is talking about him needing to be restored.
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And it speaks to this as the punishment of a majority. Now, it's not that a majority are treating him as one excommunicated and the other half of the church is treating him as one who is still part of the body.
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That's not really something that's possible, right? You're either part of the Lord's Supper or you are not part of the
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Lord's Supper, right? You're either part of the Lord's Church or you're not part of his church. It's not possible for there to be a split on those things when it comes down to that formal recognition that exists in things like the
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Lord's Supper. So when it says this punishment by the majority, what it's talking about is the fact that suffrage, you know, voting, maybe not with ballots, but with a general sense of church agreement is what decides the matter that this man was brought out, okay?
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Was taken out of the congregation. A lot of people will say that, you know, there's a lot of disunity that ends up happening in church voting and so a lot of, most church models don't necessarily have that, right?
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And so a lot of people look at that and say, well, that seems real unbiblical. I don't see anywhere in the Bible that talks about church voting.
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I believe you have it right here. For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so they are voting on who belongs to the church.
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Like I said, even if it's not ballots, it is suffrage that is happening here.
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Okay, consider also how this applies to teachers, not just the identification of members, but the identification of teachers within God's church.
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Galatians 1 .9, also written to churches, not written to an elder body, but to churches as a whole.
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As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you receive, let him be accursed.
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Okay, so if it is the responsibility of members of churches to recognize false teachers and let them be accursed, let them be anathematized, remove them.
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And I think this is a, I do consider this to be something more than simply discipline.
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This is something that's a greater declaration of this person not belonging.
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There are things said about false teachers that demand more of a permanent status, whereas the excommunication is something that people can come back from, like in 2
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Corinthians 2, 6, but anathematizing is a statement of this person is an enemy.
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Yes? Yeah, so I think
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I'll do that, but I'm also planning on doing that as we get to elders because I think that's where it becomes more obvious once you see the interplay.
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Like last week, we saw all the things the elders are responsible for. So that shows you what the congregations should be delegating to the church.
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But the congregation has the authority under Christ. However, the primary way that this is exercised in a direct way is through identifying who the body is, who the members are, who the teachers are, who the officers and members of the church are.
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I'll hold off on negative statements because I'm going to make some more of those later. Okay, but yeah, in the event, but it's interesting though because if they're not officers, then it really is everything.
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Like the congregation is the one underneath Christ and so it has to worry about everything.
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It's funny, even Presbyterians acknowledge this. They have a very different church structure, but even they will acknowledge that the authority of the elders is derived from the congregation if you look at their more formal works like James Bannerman or others.
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But we'll talk about what those distinctions look like in practice in a moment. Okay, so elders' authority.
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This verse we went over last week. Hebrews 13, 17. Obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account.
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Let them do this with joy and not with groaning for that would be of no advantage to you. The fact that churches are appointing elders, the fact that elders have authority to teach, et cetera, demonstrates what the congregation should be delegating to elders.
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So if the elders are to teach them, then that is at least one thing.
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It's not necessarily the only thing, but at least one thing that is to be delegated to them. I'll say a few words about the words that are used here.
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The word for obey, peseste. So that is a word that means be persuaded by or heed.
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Okay, so you have a, the primary way that you are obeying your elders is to heed them.
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Now if you've ever thought about it, it's interesting because the authority the elders have to teach is not to force you to believe, and you do not have an obligation to believe every single thing that is taught, right?
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You have an obligation like the Bereans to compare it to God's word so that you know whether or not it truly is
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God's word. So what this authority is is not to make you believe something or not to make you do a particular application, but that you, above what you might do for anyone else who tells you what
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God's word says or tries to apply to your life, heed them. Okay, so it means hearing out the teaching.
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Now that's your disposition to the teaching itself. It is a coming to those meetings that the elders would call people to in order to hear the teaching.
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Right, and so, heeding, if the kind of obedience that is to be done is heeding, it is primarily found in submission to both the teaching itself, hearing out the teaching itself, and all that would be implied with hearing out the teaching.
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You know, if the elders want to go through a certain book for a Sunday school series, right, it would be to hear out what that book has to say.
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Or if the elders want to start doing a, I don't know, if we, now there are things that could be like too burdensome for schedules for it to be wise for elders to do, but if they wanted to call people to some special Thanksgiving meeting, some special meeting for mourning where we would lament over our sins, you know, if there was something recent that happened, these could all be instances of the elders calling people to hear the teaching of God's word, right, where it would not be appropriate to say, oh, well that's, yeah,
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I don't have to listen to that. No, if you were to heed the elders, that's how you're to do it.
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Now the other word is, oh, upekete, which means, which means submit, right, be submissive, have a spirit that is, once again, these words just are playing off each other, you know, to obey and submit, to heed and to, yeah, and to submit.
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These words give you a posture of listening to the elders' teaching, yeah, and allowing them to teach as they see fit.
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Now, of course, there are limits to that, like we saw in Galatians 1 .9, right, the limits being, okay, well, a false gospel needs to be corrected, that's in the congregation's responsibility.
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Okay, elders to deacons, and I will say more about where these boundaries are in a moment, but elders to deacons, so elders, it is not just the, so I said that teaching is one thing, right, that's being delegated to them, it's not the only thing that's delegated to them.
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Acts 4, 34 through 35 says, there was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet and was distributed to each as he had any need.
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Okay, so, the elders here, the apostles functioning as elders at the church in Jerusalem, are also being delegated authority and administration over the material, the material assets of the church, right?
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So, you know, every church is going to have resources that it has at its disposal. These things are also delegated from the congregation as they give them to the elders to have authority over those things.
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Now, the elders then delegate authority of those things to deacons.
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It says in Acts 6, 2 through 4, and the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said,
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It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
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But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. Alright, so see what's happening there.
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The elders are, they want to delegate some of the authority over the assets of the church, particularly those that would be redistributed to the widows.
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And they're still directing it. They're still saying where those resources are to go. They're still supposed to go to the widows.
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If the deacons decide, Actually, I think it should go to a new church building or something. This would be outside of what's being delegated.
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So the elders are still directing this. And it is something that is still identified by the people.
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Pick out from among you seven men of good repute. It's still the congregation's job, just like with members, with elders, and with deacons, the congregation's job is to identify who meets the criteria either for membership, for teaching, or for being a deacon, according to 1
35:07
Timothy 3 and other passages that apply to these offices. Okay, so once again, we see the ways that the congregation is directly exercising authority and not delegating.
35:20
Okay, delegation is very healthy for a lot of this, but the way that they are directly exercising authority is in identifying the who of the church.
35:28
Right, that's what, once again, I'm getting a lot of these phrases from Jonathan Lehman. He says, he calls it the who and the what of the church.
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The congregation is directly using its authority on identifying who belongs to the church and who its officers are.
35:44
Now, what the elders are doing is directing the congregation in its use of authority. Okay, so they are, they're selected for their ability to rule and teach.
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1 Timothy 5, 17 says, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.
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Once again, this is a verse that was talked about last week, but I will point out that once again, there is a notion of ruling, there is a notion of teaching.
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Remember, we're talking about material assets. We're also talking about administration of, excuse me, administration of the teaching of the church.
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A lot of people get hung up and see ruling as different than teaching. Sorry, not they are different, but they see the body, the elder body that is ruling and the elder body that is teaching as distinct.
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I think a lot of times people read this with something like this in mind.
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Let the elders who rule will be considered worthy of honor, double honor to those who labor in preaching and teaching.
36:50
But that's not what it says, right? It says they're all worthy of double honor, yes. Okay, first I'm going to ask you, what is double honor compared to?
37:06
Once again, someone who hasn't heard me answer this question before, what is double honor in that passage compared to?
37:12
Go ahead and turn there and try to look it up. 1 Timothy 5. Something in the preceding context.
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There was single honor spoken of. That's right, yeah.
37:52
It starts off by saying honor the widows. And then later, let the elders be worthy of double honor.
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And so the context about the widows is financially supporting those who are truly widows.
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So you financially give them a living, make sure they're not living in dire need or shame.
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Let the elders be considered worthy of double honor. Now that doesn't have to be an exact double dollar amount.
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But the idea is, okay, if the widows are supposed to be elevated from shame, let the elders be worthy of double honor.
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Okay, that's the idea. Especially those who labor in preaching and teaching, right?
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Especially those who are most engaged in the teaching ministry of the church. But given the requirement for all elders is to be able to teach, that is a job that all of them should be engaged in.
38:40
Okay, so if they're selected for their ability to rule and teach, that means that that is what they're supposed to be doing. They're supposed to be ruling and teaching.
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I know a lot of this was going over last week, but I wanted to say it all here because I'm going to put this together with the congregation in a moment.
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Elders direct the congregation in identifying members, right? So, Titus 3 .10,
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as for a person who stirs up division after warning him once and then twice have nothing more to do with him. Now depending on what that looks like, like we just saw what the, who it is that's supposed to be removing something from the body, right?
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If this person's not a member of the church, it might be a different story. But if this person's a member of the church, how is he supposed to be removed?
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We looked at Matthew 18, we looked at 1 Corinthians 5, it's when the church is gathered together, when there are two or three of you gathered, when you have the power of the
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Lord Jesus and my spirit is with you, et cetera, right? If that is to happen and this is being written to, those passages being written to congregations, this passage being written to an elder, what does that mean if Titus is supposed to do this?
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Titus is supposed to direct the church in doing this, he's supposed to teach the church, tell them what the right answer to this question of should this person belong or not?
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Third John 1 .10, so if I come I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us, not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.
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Now this is talking about diatrophies, not a lot is said about him, but what does it mean to put someone out of the church and to not welcome someone?
40:19
I mean these are essentially, this is essentially talking about recognizing members and removing members and diatrophies appears to be this church leader who is doing these things, he is, now he is doing this all wrongly, but he is still having some action so it's not something that the congregation does apart from any kind of elder direction, the elders are involved in directing the congregation to put people out, to welcome people et cetera, and this one is doing a wicked job of it.
40:52
All right, elders direct the congregation identifying officers, remember
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Acts 6, 3, therefore brothers pick out from among you seven men of good repute. Acts 14, 23, when they appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, right, these people acting as, you know,
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Paul acting as a you know, a church planner, like a temporary elder on this.
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Titus 1, 5, this is why I left you in Crete, that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.
41:30
Right, so if the congregation is to identify these things, but then, right, if it's saddled with the burden of doing that, but then individuals who are church leaders who are elders or apostles are also saddled with the burden of doing that, how do those two work together?
41:45
Well, the one is directing the other in that. You see Paul say that too at the end of 2 Corinthians where he talks about coming and using his authority, right, he's basically talking about, you know, using his apostolic authority to direct the church, this is what you will do, you will do this, just like he did in 1
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Corinthians 5, right, it's not, now he says, you know, I've already handed him over, but it's something the church still needs to do, and so, the elders and the apostles who are functioning as elders in a sense, are directing the church in how to use their authority, which, think about what that means, directing the church in how to use its authority, that is teaching, they are teaching what they should do.
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Elders direct the deacons in administering church resources, in 12, some in the full number of disciples said it's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables,
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I already mentioned the elders are directing those seven who will be chosen to serve tables, right, it's not, here you can do whatever you want with these resources, they are teaching what is right, and then allowing a particular subgroup of the church to administer within those parameters.
42:56
Yeah, so the question was asked last week about, I don't know if you all know this, everybody was here for that, the question was asked last week about the budget of the church, shouldn't the deacons if they are in charge of the physical resources of the church, shouldn't they be the ones determining the budget, well that's not what you see here, you see the elders saying what the resources are supposed to go to, and the deacons are just administering within those parameters, it's not that the deacons are deciding at the high level what the resources are to be used for.
43:28
Okay, Bible commands unity of judgment and spiritual things, all right, so now we're going to get into, like okay, we still haven't quite answered the question, all right, where is the boundary between what is right for the church to directly decide and what should they have fully delegated to the elders, right?
43:47
So it commands unity and judgment and spiritual things, 1 Corinthians 110, I appeal to you brothers by the name of our
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Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.
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So that means anything that is a matter to be, anything that does become a matter of congregational suffrage needs to be something where there would be a reasonable expectation that on the basis of scripture we could judge something as biblical or unbiblical, right, this is not going to be a matter of preference, this is going to be a matter of whether or not something accords with the
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Bible. Philippians 2, 3 through 4 says do nothing from selfishness or selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
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Let each of you look not only to his own interest but also to the interest of others. Now my point in quoting that verse or those verses is that there is an expectation that we are not going to have the same preferences.
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There's an expectation we're not going to have the same preferences, but there is an expectation that we will have one judgment and anything that is formally decided by the church, right, is formally a matter of suffrage even.
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What does that mean for what kind of things would be voted on? The things that would be voted on would not be matters of preference.
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It's not, first of all, they're not multiple choice questions, right? It's not like which one of these is best.
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It would be a recommendation from the elders and the question is, is this biblical or not?
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Is this person a member or are they not? Is this person equipped to be a teacher or are they not? Is this person equipped to be a deacon or are they not?
45:25
Right? Those are the kinds of things that the church can be expected to have a single judgment on.
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Questions of, I remember there's, yeah, there was one time we were talking about like which company is going to pay at the parking lot, right, and there were like three different bids.
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It's like, you know, there's going to be different, there's going to be different opinions on those things. That's not something where we're all going to like all agree.
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I mean, we can concede to each other and we can, we can say, okay, that's fine. We can consent to it but we're not actually going to have necessarily one judgment about which the right contractor is to do the parking lot or something like that.
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So what the church is voting on are things that it can have in truth one judgment, not just consent to the matter but truly one judgment on this being right and that is, that is this, this who and what of the church.
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So, let me, so yeah, what are the, when I say the who and the what of the church, this would be things like, yeah, the members, the officers, also the constitution.
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The constitution is deciding the what of the church. That's why we vote on constitutional items. Now, it's interesting because a lot of constitutional items kind of border between the what and the how.
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So the alternative is the how. Okay, that's the other thing that I haven't quite said that where the, where the elders and the congregation where you find that distinction.
46:55
Okay, if the congregation is responsible in direct use of authority over the who and the what, the elders have been delegated authority over the how.
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You know, okay, we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper. Okay, that's in the constitution.
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This is something the congregation has decided. Okay, how are we going to do that? Like, during what hour, right, during which, during which meetings we are, the constitution, you know, says that there,
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I think it says there must be preaching. I forget if it does or not. But, you know, this is something that we are as a church and the elders decide how are we going to do the preaching.
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Right, how are we going to do the teaching, et cetera. These are, these are things that are not the who and the what of the church.
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They are the how of the church. The things where there's going to be a number of opinions, a number of preferences, and there cannot be an expectation of a, of a single judgment.
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There can be, you know, consent, but there cannot be a, there cannot be a single judgment for any, any reasonably sized body.
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All right. Now, one thing that is very borderline, and this always gets mentioned as a borderline item for churches to vote on, is, is the budget itself.
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When we present the budget and we vote on that on a yearly basis, it's not, the question isn't, you know, are we, are we putting enough money in the particular category that you want to see money in?
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Right? It's, is this, is this a biblical direction for the church? Like that's the, that's the question because once again, you know, the use of the money that some of it should be given to the widows, et cetera, are things that have been delegated to the elders.
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Those are all, were all laid at the apostles' feet and asked for. And, and it is, the church is operating healthiest when it is permitting the elders to, to do that direction in teaching.
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And then the elders are coming back to them to teach them to use their authority directly when it comes to identifying the who and what of the church, right?
48:56
Who are the members? Who are the teachers? Who are the deacons? Okay, so, let me put some other things.
49:05
Okay, so I mentioned, so that's why when we vote, we don't vote on multiple choice items. We vote on binary decisions and the question is, is this biblical or not?
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These things are framed by the elders so the elders can advocate for why this is good.
49:22
Yeah, and then, of course, the things that we're voting on are, you know, members, officers, constitution, and then as a borderline item, you know, once a year at the budget just to, just to make sure, yeah, just for the congregation to affirm that this is, this is a biblical direction for the church.
49:43
Okay, so, consider, so some things to consider in voting is a lot of times there are going to be, well, first of all, like, the question is just, is this biblical?
49:56
Right, so if we're voting on a new member, we don't, you don't ask the question, do
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I like this new person? Right, like that's not, that's not the question. Do I think they'd be a good culture fit for our church?
50:07
Right, that's not, that's not the question. The question is, does this person meet the, the biblical description of what a born again member of Christ's body is?
50:18
Right, there are some questions that end up bordering that, right, like the budget.
50:27
So, I just mentioned the budget. So, in as much as it has to do with like the, the administration of material resources, it is good to delegate those things to those, who the church has already delegated these things to, right, to pastors and elders and not to, not to, yeah, expect to exercise direct authority in every dollar or anything like that.
50:54
Another example, something that would be borderline, or not necessarily borderline, but where there's, a lot of times the things we vote on, especially when the constitution changes, the question, a lot of people will be tempted to ask the question about preferences, right, so like, when we voted on the name change, right, so this is, this is a question of, is this, is this a biblical name for the church?
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We're changing the constitution, we're changing our formal declaration of what the church is. You know, this is something we have to, we have to come to the congregation for.
51:26
The question is, is this a biblical name? The question is not, do you like the old name more than the new name? Do you like the new name more than the old name?
51:32
Like, that's not the question. The question is, is this a biblical name? in as much as things have been delegated, or, sorry, in as much as something isn't a matter of, does this meet scripture's requirements, the decision should be delegated.
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In as much as it is a question of, does this meet scripture's requirements, that is where the congregation needs to be exercising its authority directly and delegating all else to those who are particularly gifted and equipped for, you know, for it.
52:04
All the, all the hows of the church, right, and not the who and what. It's very similar to, if you're familiar with the theology of the regular principle of worship, regular principle of worship, there's elements and there's forms, right, so the elements are, you know, preaching the word of God, reading the scriptures, praying, singing, right, these are things that the church must have.
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Now, the how of those things, the forms, well, do you stand while we're reading the word?
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Well, we stand for one of our readings, we don't stand for the other one, you know. Do we have pews or chairs?
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Do we meet in the morning and the evening and the afternoon? You know, these are all, these are all form questions, they aren't element questions and so the, and so you see in the regular principle of worship, there's a, there's a distinction between the what and the how, right, and so the what is inflexible, right, and then the how is, is not, not that all decisions are equal, but the how is flexible.
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So it's the same thing with, with the church, right, the who and the what of the church is where the congregation exercises its direct authority, or exercises its authority directly and asks the question, does this line up with scripture or does it not line up with scripture?
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And then the rest of the how is delegated to those who are equipped to, to make those decisions who have met the, the special requirements outlined in 1
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Timothy 3 and other passages about what, what elders or deacons are supposed to be.
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Obviously, primarily elders, so since we're talking about authority, both over teaching and the material resources at a high level.
53:44
All right. Several benefits of this. The first benefit of this is that it is a model of discipleship.
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So in a lot of churches, because the congregation doesn't exercise its authority directly and it's just, it's just handed over to the elders for all circumstances, even the who and the what of the church.
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There doesn't have to be an agreement of, on, you know, very important spiritual matters.
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You're going to remove someone, you're going to excommunicate them over this particular sin. There's not necessarily any teaching that needs to happen over this is what the sin is, this is not a quarter of scripture, this is not a quarter of the
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Christian life, et cetera. Right? And so it's a model of discipleship that, that the church be set up in a way where the elders must teach the congregation to assess these things biblically.
54:36
Right? So that's the first part. At the same time, it's a, it's a model for inter -church unity.
54:43
So one of the implications of this is that churches are independent, right, if they're run by the congregations. I, I grew up always fairly stressed about the, the idea that the
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Bible requires unity and it just seemed like church unity was impossible because I belonged when
55:05
I was a kid to the Assemblies of God and later on I was part of a Wesleyan church and it just seemed impossible that you know, like all churches could conglomerate under a single denomination.
55:17
Right? That just, there's just no way it just gets worse and worse every year in terms of like the number of denominations or something like that.
55:24
Why would, but, but if that's, if the denominations and the, and the connectionalism between churches aren't, are kind of meaningless, like they're not biblical things, then the expectation for unity is not in sharing the same labels.
55:43
Right? It is in just the church interactions with one another. And so you have, you know, false churches who are not united and then you have other churches who are united and there's ways that we can act more or less united.
55:53
But the, the labels and the denominations are not actually, those aren't biblical categories.
55:58
Right? They don't, the connectional structures like the bishop over, over multiple churches or whatever, that's not like a thing that scripture describes.
56:06
So, I believe this is a model for inter -church unity. It's also a model for intra -church unity and this would be as opposed to the raw democracy version of congregationalism that a lot of people have in mind when they, when they think about the concept of congregationalism.
56:22
And it's interesting in Lehman's book he talks about that quite a bit because a lot of people either just assume that's what it is or maybe they come from a context where that's what it was.
56:32
Right? And they think that it's where the congregation is deciding everything and nothing's truly delegated to the elders.
56:38
The elders are just the people who, who stand up and teach but everything else is being decided by, by the congregation.
56:45
If you have that and you are frequently putting forward items that are matters of, of preference.
56:52
Right? Matters where you cannot according to 1 Corinthians 1 10 right? You cannot be of one judgment. You are just, yeah, you're just presenting items for division over and over and over.
57:04
Right? And naturally there, there will be. So, this is also a model for intra, for within the church.
57:12
I don't know if I'm using that prefix. Right? I think I am. But unity within, within a single church. All right.
57:21
Did I answer your question? Okay. Yes. That's right.
57:48
Yeah, and I would, yeah, and not to, not to overstate it but it's not that the congregation has authority for one thing and the elders have authority for the other and it's mutually exclusive.
57:57
It's like the congregation has, has this authority from Christ and they are to delegate it and not, not, and heed.
58:08
Right? They are to, they are to delegate it to elders who they then heed and submit to. So it's, it's, their authority is in selecting them.
58:16
Right? To then exercise authority in teaching them. Right?
58:21
So there's like a, it's interesting because most other authority structures don't quite work this way where they go back and forward.
58:28
You do have some like that like doctors. Right? So like on one hand you have the authority to select the doctor.
58:34
Right? But then doctor, once you get in that surgery room, you know, you've given him authority over your body and it's best that you let him have that authority.
58:42
Right? It's best that you're not like say don't put me all the way under because I need to be able to check on each scapel you're using.
58:48
Right? Or something like that. Right? And so this is, this is something where yeah the authority is coming from the congregation but then he is submitting, but then the congregation is submitting itself to the authority of the elders which, you know, in the case of a false teacher like in Galatians who is teaching a false gospel, it uses its authority to remove that one from authority.
59:09
so yeah. The healthy situation, the congregation is only using its authority directly for the who and the what and delegating all the how.
59:19
Right? Yeah. And that's, and that's of course not to say that there, yeah it can't be any kind of discussions or whatever.
59:25
Right? About like, about like why the how or whatever. You know. but the, but the question is, yeah but the question is how does a church operate in a healthy manner and that it operates in a healthy manner by truly delegating, by truly heeding and obeying and submitting.
59:42
Right? According to 1 Corinthians, or excuse me, Hebrews 13, 17. Yes. Yeah I mean there are going to be times when it's, yeah.
01:00:16
I mean there are going to be times when someone's delegated a particular thing like I might ask someone, hey could you, you know, organize,
01:00:25
I don't know. I'm just trying to think. Like, hey the annex is always a mess. Would you, could you be kind of in charge of that?
01:00:31
Make sure it stays clean or whatever. Like that would be, that would be, you know, here's like a few extra keys that you'll need to access all the rooms or something.
01:00:38
Like that could be the kind of example where yeah it's not, it's not the elders are necessarily doing everything.
01:00:45
And it's not like there's no like softer, smaller delegations that are happening below that.
01:00:51
Right? But, but yeah. Yeah, and so it's interesting because yeah there's these different types of delegations, right?
01:01:01
There's the, there's the one with the doctor where I mentioned where yes you are, it's your authority that you're handing over to the doctor but then it's truly delegated and you don't want to, you don't want to interfere with that.
01:01:13
Like, except for in extreme, you know, cases of huge medical malpractice, whatever, right? There are other kinds of authority that are, they're delegated where like more interference would be warranted and so like the, you know,
01:01:28
I think about like husband and wife, you know, he's, he puts her over his home, his home, he has authority over, he delegates authority to her over the home.
01:01:37
She, you know, is responsible for the kitchen. You know, he doesn't want to necessarily interfere with the kitchen, et cetera.
01:01:43
But, you know, there are times when I'm like, you know, I'd really like if all the spoons matched. Could you, could you order the spoons?
01:01:51
And she says, well, the spoons are pretty close. I'm like, no, just order the spoons. So that's something where like more, where more interference is appropriate, right?
01:02:02
And so that would be like an example between the elders and the deacons, right? Because the elders are directing the high level stuff, right?
01:02:07
And the deacons are implementing, right? And so it's, it's less a delegation of you are, right?
01:02:13
So with the doctor, the delegation is happening because he is more equipped to make those decisions, right?
01:02:19
With the, with the husband and wife or with the elders, deacons, it's not a delegation of one being more equipped to do decision making.
01:02:29
It's one being more equipped to do the work. Okay? Does that make sense?
01:02:35
So, so in that, that's going to dictate to the elders the times when it would be appropriate for the one who has the, the higher, you know, authority that got delegated to interfere with what he had delegated, right?
01:02:50
Are you delegating it because this person is more equipped to make the decisions or are you delegating it because this person is more equipped with time and ability to do the work, right?
01:02:59
Okay. Any other questions? Any comments,
01:03:05
Tim, that you want to throw in there? Okay. All right.
01:03:13
Let's go ahead and pray. Let's go ahead Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you today for your mercies, for giving these youth of Canaan.
01:03:21
What a wonderful privilege it is to exercise them. Pray that we would exercise them well with, with joy and gladness.