Church, Part 2 of What We Believe, Part 37

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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ChumbaCasino .com You have some groups like Mormons or others that would claim that the church is an eternal entity.

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That it started before there was even an earth. You have that same kind of thinking in Islam, and you can even have that thinking in Jewish thought.

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I'm saying no, they had a beginning. The church started at Pentecost. I'm also saying that it has a completion.

01:34

Welcome to The Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

01:40

This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content, or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

01:51

Welcome to another edition of The Wrap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity Ministries and the

02:00

Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. Check out strivingforeternity .org

02:06

and christianpodcastcommunity .org to find out more. I am joined again by my guest co -host here,

02:13

Pastor Stephen Dew. He is a fellow podcaster on the Christian Foundry Podcast, which is him and, well,

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I think like every man in his church. He's got like eight guys in one podcast, and they talk theology, and it is really helpful.

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He's also with the Doctrine Matters podcast, so welcome again,

02:35

Stephen. I'm glad to have you here. Yeah, thanks for having me. I had a blast last time. Looking forward to our conversation this time.

02:42

Folks, what we're doing is we want to make sure that you guys hear some other voices from the Christian Podcast Community. Today we're going to continue our look into the church, and we're going to discuss the foundation of the church.

02:54

When did it start? That may not seem controversial, but it is. But we're going to talk about things like that.

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We're going to talk about what the church is. The church is something that many people take for granted, and I hope that you won't.

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I hope that this episode will encourage you to be part of a good local body, just saying that right up front.

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But this is a series that we're doing. We're doing this series, and you could go back and check the full series out.

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The series is What We Believe. If you want to follow along with us, go to strivingforeturning .org.

03:31

Go to the About section. Under there, click What We Believe. When you get there, open up the section on the church, and we're going to end up reading.

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Today, we're going to deal with at least the second paragraph under that section. Maybe even the third.

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We'll see. We're not in a rush, but why are we doing this? I keep saying this because I want you to understand we're doing this, well, one, to teach theology.

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That's helpful. But a second reason we're doing this is so you see what is in a doctrinal statement.

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When you read these doctrinal statements, if you're looking for a good church, you want to find a good doctrinal statement.

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If they have a one - or two -page doctrinal statement, that tells you pretty much nothing. You want to see several pages that gives detail, and the detail that we're showing here, so that you can see when someone says something, there's a lot they're saying they're against and what they're for.

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We talked about this last episode. Doctrine does divide, and that's a good thing, because it also unifies those of us who are in agreement with such as a doctrinal statement.

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So we would encourage you to go back, listen to the whole series. We're 30 -some episodes in, and I just looked,

04:39

Stephen, before we went live, we went and checked the numbers, because I don't do this often. I'm not a numbers kind of guy, but I did check the numbers, and looking in the charts that we have where they give you the stats, this podcast is still in the top 100 of all podcasts in the religion section or category in the

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U .S. There's no shortage of religious podcasts either, I've noticed, so that's pretty good to be in the top 100.

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It used to be the number one section in iTunes. Well, what was iTunes?

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But I think a lot of that was because every church had their own podcast, that was their sermons.

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But I think now that they've specified it a little bit more, but I'm saying that we're in the top 100, because we just fell to 99, so I could still say top 100.

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Now, I don't know if you know this, Stephen, because we have a lot of other

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Christian podcasters, and what you have people do is they say, write a review, because it helps to get up in the charts.

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And I always tell people, no, it doesn't, actually. What actually helps get in the charts is when people follow the podcast.

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That's one of the things that does. Reviews don't help, but you know what reviews help? Reviews help me or us to know what you're thinking about the show.

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And so I love reviews. We haven't gotten any in in a while. You can go to whichever app you use to listen, or in the show notes is a link to leave us a review at lovethepodcast .com

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slash rap report rap with two Ps, and you can leave us a review. So those reviews you're telling me do nothing.

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So not even when they hit the star, like I have an iPhone, and you can hit the star for however many stars you give it.

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So that does nothing. Yeah, it is something that you do that within the app, and they don't really have a way of knowing all the different apps don't always communicate.

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Now, podcast 2 .0, which is something new coming up, has some different features that may end up being more useful.

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But what does help is the number of people that follow. So when you look at like, say,

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Apple podcasts, they know how many people follow. And that's the big one that everyone looks at.

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But you have Spotify as well, and Spotify is a little bit more private in their numbers.

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So what you end up with is the, like I was actually, when I was in the

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Philippines, speaking to 1 ,500 people, and I mentioned to everyone to go and follow the podcast.

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Well, so many people did that in one hour that we were actually in the

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Philippines. For a little while, we were the number one podcast in the

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Philippines, in all categories. Because 1 ,500 people, well, actually not all 1 ,500 did, but a lot of them must have went in and followed it.

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And immediately, we shot up, we dropped back down really quick. But it's the number of people that follow.

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So folks, I'm saying that to say this, if you could do us a favor, share this. If you find things that you like in different episodes, share it and encourage others to follow.

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That does help. That's what helps people to see it in the charts and to go and find it.

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So that is helpful for us when you follow. So if you're streaming it, you found it online and you're just streaming it, if you follow, that helps.

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But sharing it with others is a big help. With that out of the way, that said, let's get into a great discussion on the church.

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Stephen, I'm going to ask if you could read the second paragraph there under the church. And we've now given sufficient time for everyone to go to strivingforjourney .org,

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go to the website, get this reading along. As long as you're not driving, please, don't read and drive.

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Someone just sent me a picture from California, another guy in a Tesla, sound asleep, head back.

08:43

They could be self -driving, but they're not yet. Yeah, that's becoming a thing now.

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I've seen people just smooth out while those things are driving down the highway. Smooth out,

08:56

I've never heard that one before. Smooth out. Yeah, for our listeners, we have to remember I'm from Arkansas, originally from Mississippi, so deep south.

09:05

So, okay, this is how we define deep south. Do you say y 'all or do you say all y 'all?

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I've said both. Yeah, see, deep south is all y 'all. That's the deep south. Yeah, so I've used both y 'all and all y 'all.

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And I can tell you there's another saying that really will tell a lot if you say you -ins, all you -ins.

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Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I had a friend of mine that said, you -ins coming over for dinner tonight.

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I was like, what? Who are the you -ins? The new family in the church? He said, that means you and your family coming over.

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I was like, oh, okay. So, yeah, we'll be there. That's a new one for me.

09:56

See, folks, even I can learn things on my own show. Maybe that's deep, deep south.

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All right, paragraph two of the church. The formation of the church, the body of Christ, began on the day of Pentecost and will be completed at the coming of Christ for his own at the rapture.

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Okay, so this is a short, again, one paragraph, one sentence. Last time it took us a whole hour to go over one sentence.

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But right from the beginning, I'm making a distinction in this, and anyone who studies theology a lot may pick up on this right away, because what

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I'm delineating here in this is two things. One, we're talking about the body of Christ, which we spoke about last episode.

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But what we're doing is saying, when did it start? And what

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I'm doing is really identifying that for striving for eternity, we fit under a banner or a view known as dispensationalism.

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Now, there's two main camps called dispensationalism and covenant theology. And so right from the beginning,

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I'm saying that. Now, you say, well, wait a minute, Andrew, I don't see that anywhere in here. See, and this is what a doctrinal statement can do.

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To those who study deeply and know and have studied dispensationalism and covenant theology, they immediately pick up the difference, because I'm saying that the

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Church founded, started at the day of Pentecost. This is Acts chapter 2, when you see at Pentecost, Peter gives a sermon, and you end up seeing what is at that point referred to as the

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Church. Now, you see Jesus speaking of the Church, right? In Matthew 18, he refers to the

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Church. And so we know that the word ecclesia, which is the word that we get for Church, has changed over time.

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I'll say this, is that if you want more detailed than I'm going to give here,

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I'd encourage you to get my book, What Do We Believe? It's available at Striving for Eternity, but get that book, and I go through the history of the word

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Church and how it changed over time to be more and more specific. But in covenant theology, some, and notice the preference

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I'm making, not all, but some would say that the Church started, well, some would say it started with Abraham, and some will say it started all the way back to Adam and Eve.

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So you have some differences there. And so I'm saying that it starts with Pentecost, which means that I would see a distinction between Israel and the

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Church. Now, let me just say, there's a lot of people that get very heated when talking covenant theology and dispensationalism on both sides, and some that would say that, well, they would actually question someone's salvation if you don't hold to their view.

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I will say that I think if you're putting this up at the level of salvation, you're wrong.

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I think that both are, and both are misunderstood as an end -time system, and if you think that, you're wrong.

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Both of them have their end -times view as a byproduct of a hermeneutic, how you interpret the

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Bible. Both of them are a system of interpretation. That's what they are. They're rules that you're going to follow.

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So dispensationalism is going to follow rules that really we have for any other literature.

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You're going to look at the authorial intent. You're going to look at the context. When we speak of context, we're going to say that the context at the time it was written, the historical, cultural context, looking at what the author meant.

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And because we do that, we see that there's a distinction between the nation of Israel and the

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Church. And we're going to cover this several times throughout the section on the Church, because it's going to come up a lot. And I'm going to reiterate it a lot, because it's an important point for us to understand, because there's a lot of misrepresentation going on on both sides.

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And so I want to try to give kind of an overview and keep hitting it in different ways so that we can keep defining this and understanding it.

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So the thing is that when you have that hermeneutic, it's called a literal, or I would refer to it as a normal, because we don't take everything literally.

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If I said to you, Stephen, I'm so hungry, I can eat a cow. Do you believe that I can eat an entire cow?

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No. That's because you haven't seen me eat. That is true.

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That is true. Maybe not in one sitting, but maybe over time you could eat a whole cow. But you understand what that idiom is.

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And so when you understand the idiom, now you can say, oh, he just means he's super hungry.

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And so that's interpretation. When I use those idioms, you understand. If you don't understand those idioms, you don't get it.

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For example, this is a true story, Stephen. This is a warning, you know, as a pastor when you do marriage counseling, this is a warning for you.

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But my pastor was giving marriage counseling to my bride and I. Now, my bride wasn't born in America.

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And so she doesn't understand idioms because she spoke Chinese. And she really didn't really speak

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English outside of school other than with me and work. So she didn't know, she really stayed to other

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Chinese and didn't know a lot of English idioms. And so my pastor said to her, made a comment and said, you know, you could be doing that until the cows come home.

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And she just stared at him with this inquisitive look, puzzled. And he's like, what's wrong?

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She goes, I'm trying to figure out what does this have to do with cows? And he suddenly realized he's using all these idioms because he used a lot of idioms.

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And they didn't, like, she totally didn't get it. He had to explain every idiom. Well, as pastors, that's what we do when we're preaching, right?

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We come to passages with idioms, we explain them. Now, covenant theology. Let me give an overview with that.

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Covenant theology is going to say the Bible is a special book.

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It is a spiritual book. And because it is a spiritual book, you're not going to employ all of the same rules that you would have with other types of literature.

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And therefore, we would have to look at this with a spiritual meaning.

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So therefore, when you see things that maybe seem like they're literal, you may be looking for something more.

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So some of the arguments they're going to make is that they're going to have everything in the

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Bible pointing back to Jesus Christ. So you come to a book like Song of Solomon. They're going to say that's

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Christ and the Church, the marriage that we talked about last episode, that the Church is referred to as the

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Bride of Christ. And they're going to look at this and say, well, that's what that is. Now, as we do that, here's the thing.

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I would say that Song of Solomon, from my way of interpreting, is about marriage. And that glorifies

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God. So I see everything in Scripture is about the glory of God. When you bring it from a covenantal view, they're going to see everything about Christ, and they're going to see a lot of similarities between things that happened in the

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Old Testament with Israelis, who were God's people, they were elect, and Christians in the

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Church that are also God's elect. Is there similarities? Yes. But there's also distinctions.

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And so where you fall in this gamut is going to be how much similarity or distinction, or what we refer to as continuity and discontinuity, you see between Israel and the

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Church. And so there's moves where, even within covenant theology, they would have

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New Covenant theology, which sees more distinction or discontinuity between Israel and the

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Church. And there's kind of some moves in dispensationalism, where I would be, which is more of,

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I guess it's called a progressive dispensationalism, but I don't like the word progressive in our culture at all, and also,

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I prefer MacArthur's term of leaky dispensational, maybe. But there's a lot of similarities in the way we're going to handle

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Scripture between a New Covenant theologian and what I would be as a dispensationalist.

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Now, all that is a preface to say this. When I'm saying the formation of the

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Church began on the day of Pentecost, I'm saying that there was a transition period between the nation of Israel and the

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Church. So I'm seeing that distinction. And so I recognize that anyone that's a covenant theologian may, and I'm saying may, disagree with me, because there is some differences

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I've seen within covenant theology, where some will say that the Church started with Adam, some that say it started with Abraham, some that will see that what we call the

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Church started at Pentecost. But I'd even argue that what we call Church today isn't what they called

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Church in Pentecost. Because we use a more specific term. As we said last week, we talked about the uniting of the spiritual body, which brings in that there's a universal

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Church and a local Church. Universal Church includes both Pastor Stephen and I.

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We're part of the universal Church because we're both in Christ, but we don't attend the same local Church. But in both of our local churches, there's probably unbelievers, where there's no unbelievers in the universal

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Church. I'm going to say, when we discuss dispensationalism and covenant theology, and we're going to cover it a bunch, here's my way of explaining it.

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If you understand the terms universal, local Church, or what's sometimes called invisible, visible

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Church, I want to use those same things for the nation of Israel. And so I refer to the nation of Israel and believing

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Israel. So you have people that were part of the nation, but the nation's made up of believers and unbelievers, where those that are the elect, those that are the regenerated, those are the saved.

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So those would be the universal or invisible Israel. So I know that's kind of a new way of thinking for folks.

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So as we discuss things, I just want you to think about that. I'm going to repeat it a bunch because it's a new concept for folks.

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But it has helped me to really understand some of the distinctions because I can agree with many covenant theologians when we look at the similarities between universal

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Israel and universal Church. It's there because it is, in that sense, you have a body of believers.

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So I can agree with that. See, now, I have some dispensationalists that are freaking out right now, and this is why

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I don't fit perfectly in any camp. You know, Stephen and I was once asked, you know, what theological camp are you?

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Like, where do you fit in? And I said, well, if you want to know, I firmly believe in Rappaportianism.

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And he stared at me. I said, my last name is Rappaport. If you want to know what I believe, you got to ask me, right?

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Because I don't, like, this is the difference. When we get our theology from the Bible, it doesn't always fit.

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Like, I don't care what theological system you are in, we're not going to agree everything with what some other man has said.

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I mean, look, I'm influenced a lot by John MacArthur. But there's areas

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I disagree with him. There's areas I think that he makes mistakes in his interpretation. Ah, no, you can't say that about the evangelical pope.

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No, you can. We have to be able to do that. Yeah, I mean, you're right.

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It's hard to fit in any camp when you read the

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Bible in its entirety. Because like you said, I mean, let's just take names people know.

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John MacArthur, I'm with you. I agree and disagree with some of his things. R .C.

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Sproul, the list can go on. We all have varying degrees of differences, which would not really put us in one particular camp or the other.

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So I think that's a good point you've made, though, is that if we pigeonhole ourselves into one camp over another,

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I think we're leaving a lot of stuff on the table biblically that we could really believe in.

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Or we have to do something with these things. We have to do something with Israel. And kind of like you,

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I don't fit in one camp or the other very well. I'm kind of like you just asked me what

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I believe, and we can talk through it. But I think that's a great point to make is that you don't have to fit into one camp over another.

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I can say one thing for sure. John MacArthur, R .C. Sproul disagreed on things.

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We would disagree with both of them on things. But I can say one thing for sure. You and I and John MacArthur will be 100 % agreement with what

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R .C. Sproul believes today when we get to glory. That's right. We're all going to be in agreement then.

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R .C. just beat us there. I saw somebody the other day said

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R .C. is a Baptist now. Yeah, and you know, there's plenty of Presbyterians that are going to say when we get there we'll be

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Presbyterians. Exactly. In one sense, it's going to be fun to see how wrong we are in certain areas.

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Because we're finally going to know where we're wrong, like absolutely.

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It was a thing, Matt Slick and I, that would be the one thing you and I could use our last names.

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I could say I'm a reportian, but for Matt Slick, he's a slick -a -teen.

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That doesn't matter what you do with his last name. It's not going to sound good. But he and I debate a lot.

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We've actually been invited to conferences so that we could debate different topics. Because like R .C. Sproul and John MacArthur, they could get along and yet have so much disagreements.

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And so we've done debates. And someone once asked him after a debate why it is that we do these debates.

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And they noticed that we kind of, both of us, didn't plan it. But we tend to argue, like in this case, the debate that I'm referring to was covenant theology versus dispensationalism.

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So I was answering the strawman arguments that dispensationalists make against covenant theologians. And he was doing the same with covenant theologians.

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And the person noticed that we're both kind of trying to protect the other's side from bad arguments.

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We would answer it. And Matt had a really good answer to that that I appreciated.

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He said, you know, Andrew and I both know we're wrong theologically. We don't know where, because if we did, we would change.

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But we both know that when we sit at the feet of Christ, he's going to correct both of us.

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And so we can't be too prideful about our theology. And that was really helpful for me to hear him say and think about, because I realize he really is right.

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The people who are dogmatic, I mean, there's some people that may have tuned us out just because I said the word dispensational.

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Right? I mean, or maybe the dispensationalists tuned out because I actually said positive things about covenant theology.

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Well, those people probably should have listened to this. Maybe we should have started with this point. But this is the issue. We have to realize that we cannot be prideful about our theological system.

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We have to understand where someone's coming from. When I was in the UK, we were doing some ministry there, and I was with someone who is a covenant theologian.

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He's amillennial. He knew I wasn't. He's asking me questions. I'm asking him questions. And there was another person who

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I didn't know, hadn't met before, but he was there listening to our conversation. And as we discussed this,

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I asked him some questions about how he interpreted things. And I ended up saying, well, you know,

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I disagree with you, but I can see that you're consistent in your interpretation. The rules you're following, you're being consistent.

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And so I can see where you come to that conclusion. And from your position, it makes sense. This guy looked at me and says,

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I've never seen two people disagree so much on a topic, and yet you show such grace.

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And it really was, I said, well, because he's being consistent. If he's just being ad hoc with I interpret this this way and this that way, then it's a problem.

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And so when we look at this, I mean, all of this is a lot of preface, because what

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I'm trying to say is we shouldn't be fighting over the issue of when the church formed. But I am stating that I think it started at Pentecost.

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Now, does this mean that I think that those who may believe that Old Testament Israel is

27:03

Old Testament church, I'm not going to make a fight over it. I'm going to interpret the scriptures differently than them because of that view.

27:11

We're going to come to different conclusions. Infant baptism would be one. You're not going to see someone that's dispensational coming to that conclusion, because you need to understand that infant baptism is within an interpretation system of covenants, where the family is part of a covenant relationship with God.

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And if you interpret it that way, then you're going to end up saying, well, there's got to be that covenant sign in the church.

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Baptism is it, then. So we have those things that we have to recognize. I'm stating where we believe at striving for eternity.

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So does this mean we can't work with people that are covenant theologians? No, actually, we can.

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It's not going to limit it. But I'm saying that to say that there's one clear thing that though I'm going to say is wrong, and that this statement really makes abundantly clear, and that is groups like, well, you have some groups like Mormons or others that would claim that the church is an eternal entity, that it started before there was even an earth.

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You have that same kind of thinking in Islam, and you can even have that thinking in Jewish thought.

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They will have that to the scriptures, and say the scriptures were somehow like an eternal thing. It was given down in time.

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I'm saying, no, they had a beginning. The church started at Pentecost. I'm also saying that it has a completion, and I think everyone will come to the agreement that the church has an end.

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Covenant theologians would say that the end is with the second coming. And because I'm from a dispensational background, and I'm going to be interpreting the

28:59

Bible in that way, I'm going to have a different view of end times, because I'm going to interpret those not in a spiritual sense, but more in a literal sense, and therefore

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I see there's a future for Israel. I see that those land promises to Israel are going to be brought back in, and because of that, because they weren't fulfilled literally, and they were explained literally,

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I believe they will be literal. And therefore, what I'm saying is that the church is going to be done with, completed, at the rapture.

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Now, that's an end times thing. I get it. So let me explain a little bit of end times. Even though we're not there yet, we're going to get there, and that'll be a fun episode.

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I should probably get some, like, I should find an Amillennialist co -host to do that one with me, because it'd be a lot better, a lot more fun discussion.

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I'm saying that the church is going to end. What I believe will happen is that Christ will rapture the church.

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Those who are believers will be, as the Scripture would say, caught up in the air, and that at that point we're going to see another transition.

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It's going to be a transition back to national Israel, but there's going to be many of those people that would have been in the church.

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Now, I believe at the rapture, everybody who's saved will go up to be with Christ, and therefore, even though I was from a

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Jewish background, I won't be here. This is called Left Behind. Oh, wait, no, that's a horrible book and series.

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No, like, don't, don't, don't, don't. Please, don't base your theology of end times off of that series of books, okay?

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It's a fictional book. And some of their theology, I think, is somewhat fictional as well.

30:46

But what I'm saying is that when the church goes up, the entity that we call the church won't be here.

30:52

And when God will then transition, just like I think there was a transition between the nation of Israel as God's focus after Christ died, he starts changing that into the church, and that period, there was a transition period.

31:06

Well, I think that's going to happen. When the church is gone, there's going to be Jewish people start getting saved.

31:12

And I don't think that it's going to be just Jewish people. So it's not for the dispensationalists to try to make it like it's all or nothing.

31:19

It wasn't that way in the Old Testament. I believe Nebuchadnezzar I'll see in heaven.

31:25

I think that Daniel makes that clear, but he wasn't Jewish. There's plenty of people who were followers of God that weren't

31:34

Jewish in the Old Testament. Even in the New Testament, we see the centurion. He wasn't Jewish, but under the

31:41

Old Testament system, he would have been saved. And so I don't think it's as clear cut as some try to make it.

31:47

But this one is saying, I do believe there's a beginning and an end for the church, that this period of time, what dispensationalists would call a dispensation or an economy, how

31:58

God works with his people at this time. By the way,

32:04

I'm just going to put this out there for folks who may be listening in Covenantal. Just so you know, when dispensationalists speak of dispensations, those dispensations are defined by a covenant.

32:15

Every one of them has a covenant relationship, and that's essential to the dispensation because God's giving new instructions for that group of people.

32:26

And so you have him giving a covenant. That covenant is the covenant relationship for that group of people, that period of time, a dispensation.

32:37

It's progressive. I think there's some covenant theologians going, well, yeah, we believe that. There's a lot more agreement than you think.

32:46

So this is a short sentence here that is just trying to really lay out the distinction here that we'd have a striving fraternity between covenant theology and dispensationalism.

33:00

Now, it doesn't mention any of that, but like I said, for people that study, they're going to pick up on this. I mean, especially when they see that word rapture.

33:07

A lot of amillennialists pick up on that right away. Like, no, no, no, no, there's no rapture. This second sentence here is going to flow right into really the third paragraph that is coming up.

33:20

But from listening to what all you're saying, I think there's probably a lot of folks that may be listening that never realized that the church, in and of itself, has a lot of eschatological tones to it, right?

33:39

Because even in what you were talking about, beginning of the church, when that is, I mean, we can debate and discuss that anytime, but also the end and when that is, and whatever your eschatology is, it's going to really play on what you believe about the church as far as the beginning and the end.

33:59

But I think it's an important statement to make because we have to realize the church had to begin, and then again, it ends.

34:09

If the church doesn't end, and we talked about this last episode, the churches are those who place their faith in Jesus Christ.

34:20

So if the church doesn't end, then that would seemingly say that the church goes on for eternity, and then even that has eschatological tones to it because if the church continues on, then is there a number to the elect?

34:41

Or, I mean, are people just going to get saved all from now to eternity?

34:47

So I think this is, you know, a lot of people overlook a simple sentence like this and not really think about what it really means and how much more there is to a statement like this, which is very important because we have to believe something about the end times.

35:07

We have to believe something about the church and its beginning and end. I think, you know, as easy as it could be overlooked, it shouldn't be because it's very important.

35:17

Yeah, and the thing is, first off, for folks, eschatological just means end times, for those who may not be familiar with the terminology.

35:25

Those things, they're in the future. Now, you're right because I would argue, and, you know, my covenant brothers would say to me that the church will be in heaven, and that would be the church.

35:38

And you know what? Maybe I can agree. But you know what I'm going to ask? What do you mean by church?

35:45

You mean the universal church? I agree. The local church? I'm not going to agree, right?

35:52

Because that separation, that distinction that we had to make when everybody in the

35:57

Roman Catholic church was forced to go to church, when there was a Roman Catholic empire, right, and people were forced to go to church, there needed to be a distinction between what church means.

36:09

You mean where I go on Sunday? Well, that's filled with believers and unbelievers. Or do you mean those that elect the body of Christ?

36:17

That's the distinction. And so I'm going to, throughout this series, as we talk about the church, try to be specific when

36:23

I'm referring to local church or universal church. I may not get it perfect, but let's get a quick word from our sponsor, and then we'll pick up on this next sentence.

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38:58

Let me ask, as we return to the statement, if you could read this third paragraph here. Again, it's one sentence long.

39:06

We'll see how far we can get, though. Now, there's two sentences there. Oh, okay. Two, two whole sentences.

39:13

You're right. You have been proven wrong again, Andrew. That didn't take long. All right, paragraph three.

39:22

The church is thus a unique spiritual organism designed by Christ, made up of all born -again believers in this present age.

39:30

The church is distinct from Israel, a mystery not revealed until this age.

39:36

Okay, so now everything that we've been talking about leads into this. This is why we had to do so much of the kind of prep work, so you understand how

39:44

I'm using the terminology. So saying that the establishment of the local church, right, we talk about this being a spiritual organism.

39:58

So it is an entity. This is an organization that God has created, just like marriage is an organization, just like he had the nation of Israel as an organization.

40:09

Why call it an organism? The idea that we see in Romans 12, we're to be a living sacrifice.

40:16

The church is not something that's dead. And so there's three words I'm using to describe the church here.

40:23

And clearly I'm speaking of the universal or invisible church, because I'm saying it's made up of all born -again believers.

40:30

So those born -again believers, and I'm saying in this present age. Well, what's the present age? Well, from the last paragraph, it's between Pentecost until Rapture.

40:40

That's what I'm referring to as present age. That would be what we call dispensation.

40:46

So I'm saying that the church is alive. It's made up of living people.

40:53

That means people think of it as just, oh, this is just an organization. We're trying to get the idea that this is supposed to be a living body.

41:02

It's a spiritual body. It has a spiritual purpose. And so it's not a denomination.

41:09

By saying that it's a spiritual organism, it's not some denomination. It's not a group of churches that come together.

41:16

It's not an empire, right? So you have the Roman Catholic Church was part of a political system.

41:25

It's not that. It's a spiritual. And therefore, we deal with things at the spiritual level.

41:32

We're going to address things. So does that mean we don't address political things? No, we do, but we address it from a political perspective, not a secular one.

41:41

So we as a church are going to have a different focus. But I'm also saying it's unique. I'm saying that it's different than Israel.

41:49

I'm saying it's different than any man -made system. The church is different.

41:55

And what makes us unique and different, and what sets the biblical church apart from every man -made church is going to be the fact that every man -made system is based on human effort, of works, a works -based system.

42:12

And therefore, what they're teaching is nothing more than morality, not spirituality.

42:19

And so the church, we enter the church, as we spent a lot of time discussing when we went through salvation, we enter the church by repenting.

42:28

We enter the church, God regenerates us. And so we do that because of a specific person,

42:37

Jesus Christ, who's truly God and truly man. And so what do we preach? We preach

42:42

Christ, not moralism, because they're not based on works, we're based on a person.

42:48

Just to add to that, for those that may be listening and just thinking about words, when you said those that are regenerated, that God regenerates, it's right there.

42:57

What that means is in that first line, made up of all born -again believers. So for those that may say, well, what is regeneration?

43:05

It just simply means to be born again. And that's absolutely right, is the church is made up of born -again believers, and those believers are now alive in Christ.

43:17

And we also gather together as a living organism.

43:23

And I'd like to point this out quickly, is we have the word of God that's not dead. It's not antiquated.

43:29

It's not just some old dusty book on the shelf. As a matter of fact, the writer of Hebrews in chapter 4, verse 12, says the word of God is living and active.

43:37

So not only is the church a living organism, but the word is too, which is central in the foundation to the church.

43:46

Yeah. The thing is, is that we're trying to be specific here, because now

43:53

I'm not speaking local church, clearly, because I'm saying local church has unbelievers in it. This is the born -again believers.

44:01

This is the universal church. And so all of that leads to this next sentence here, and this is where we're going to end up wrapping up this episode, is because this is all going to this, what

44:13

I've talked about with this distinction between the church and Israel. So we say here the church is distinct from Israel.

44:20

It's a mystery not revealed until this age. And that's the language we would see in Ephesians chapter 3, and even referenced in chapter 5 when it comes to marriage, is that the church is something that is separate from the nation of Israel.

44:40

Now, when I say nation of Israel, I'm speaking of the local Israel or visible

44:45

Israel. When it comes to Israel, it makes better sense to use visible and invisible, because they're not local there, but it's the same concept, right?

44:54

So that's why I use nation of Israel versus spiritual Israel. But it's the idea that you have this nation, that there were rules to the nation, even though there were unbelievers that were there.

45:07

I would argue there's instructions that we have that apply to local church, even if you have unbelievers there.

45:16

You have instructions of how to deal with people that are in sin in the church.

45:22

They may be an unbeliever, but guess what? Their being in that organization, being part of that local church, puts them under the instructions of God's word.

45:35

And so we apply God's word to them until they're unrepentant in some sin. And then when they're unrepentant in that sin, we have to put them out of the church.

45:45

Well, what is that doing? That's saying, you're not following our rules, the rules that God has laid out. And so you're out of the church, and now we assume you're not a believer, so we start sharing the gospel with you.

45:56

We don't just put them out and forget about them. There's a command to continue reaching out to them.

46:03

First, it's to restore them to the body, because you're assuming they're a believer, and you're looking to restore them.

46:11

But if they go to the point that you have to send the entire church out to restore them, and they refuse that, they're that arrogant, that prideful in their rejection.

46:21

Because keep in mind, folks, when you look at Matthew 18, a lot of people don't realize this. A lot of people misapply

46:28

Matthew 18. This is why I do pastor seminars on this, because so many people misunderstand this.

46:33

But when you look at Matthew 18, the context of Matthew 18 is dealing with pride and humility. Jesus is addressing the pride of the disciples, and they have a tendency of being prideful.

46:46

In fact, Matthew 18, verse 1, tells us what the whole chapter is about. It says,

46:52

Matthew 18, verse 1, At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and said, Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

47:00

They're arguing. They want to be the best. They want to know which one of them is going to be greatest. They want some rank.

47:06

They want some position. And Jesus is basically telling them, be like a child.

47:12

You know, he's talking about humility. He's talking about pride. And so then he gets into talking about this whole thing in verses 15 to 20 about discipline.

47:24

But notice what he's talking about. If you go to a brother, and so the issue is that the person knows they're in sin, but they are unwilling to repent.

47:34

That's the whole issue of that passage, is someone who's unwilling to repent. So it doesn't mean because I said something to Stephen here, and I hurt his feelings, that he's got to go through church.

47:47

He's got to call me up and be like, hey, you need to fix this. You're in sin. And I go, oh, yeah, come on, man.

47:52

That's not a big deal. Oh, I'm going to get in two or three people. I need witnesses to call you out.

47:59

That's how a lot of people do it. I mean, look, I don't know if you've experienced this, Stephen. Maybe you've experienced this as a pastor.

48:05

But have you had where someone contacts you because of what someone in your church said online?

48:11

They go right to you, because I see this. I've had people say, who's your pastor? I'm going to your pastor.

48:17

Well, you know, you skipped a couple steps of church discipline there. Show me my own repentance first.

48:25

Right. What are you going to do about this? What are you going to do about it first? They sinned against you, not me.

48:33

Well, have they sinned or is it just, hey, I disagree with what you're saying.

48:38

You're talking dispensationalism. That's wrong. I want to talk to your pastor. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that too.

48:44

I mean, I've seen that. That's frustrating and a little bit comical at times, because a lot of people want to say what sin is when it really is not.

48:56

Like you said, disagreements are not necessarily sin. And a lot of people, I've seen it like you online,

49:03

Facebook posts, disagreements. Do you belong to a local church? Who's your pastor? I'm going to go talk to them.

49:10

And I think there may be a time and place for that. Maybe, but so many people are, they got a hair trigger.

49:18

I mean, who's your pastor? Who's your elders? Who do you submit to? And man, calm down, you know, slow down.

49:27

Recognize what is sin and what is not, what is just a disagreement. Because, man, you can start a whole forest fire with a disagreement that's gone to somebody's pastor.

49:37

And man, it's just not helpful. Yeah, you know, I used to go to a church where it was funny because I had someone, and I'm not going to use a name, but very, very well -known person in some circles.

49:50

And we disagreed over doctrine, disagreed over theonomy. I was saying that theonomy is wrong, and he was saying that I was slandering people.

49:59

And I was like, that's not slander. You know, if I said that, you know, they're all going to hell and they're lying about it, maybe that would be, but it was like, it doesn't fit to that level.

50:10

He wanted my pastor's name. All right, sure, I'll let him know to expect the call.

50:15

And so he called my pastor up and said, you know, I'm going to give you, here's all the, you know, give you all the communication we had so you have it.

50:23

And he just laughed and he says, Andrew, first off, I would not want to be the person who is, you know, on the other side of debating you.

50:31

He's like, he goes, when you think through issues, you just keep turning things over until you have a thorough understanding of something before you speak.

50:39

He's like, debating you is like a no -win situation. He goes, oh, what am

50:45

I going to say to the person when he calls? I said, say whatever you want. I'm like, you know, he wants to talk to you. He goes, so, you know, he's like, what's the person going to do?

50:52

Call me for what? To say that you're wrong? Because he goes, I don't even understand theonomy.

51:00

So I said, ask him what it means and see if you agree with him, you know. And so that guy never called, but I did have someone that did call.

51:07

Because I would tell people they would want to, oh, yeah, I need your pastor's name. Okay. I'll give it to you.

51:13

Not a problem. Have fun with it. You know, that's the thing I've seen lately is everybody's quick to call slander.

51:21

You're slandering me or you slandered, you know, that group of people. And we have to get the right definition of slander.

51:29

But when that happens, for instance, in your case, think about, I mean, when we think, we're talking about the church, and you had to go to your pastor and say, here's all the communication.

51:41

Here's what's happened. And I mean, obviously, it was a lighthearted moment. But think about the time it takes to just to do that in and of itself, you know, because people don't understand the church.

51:55

They don't understand what our role is within the church, not only the universal, but the local, as we see scripture.

52:04

I think a lot of these things happen because of feelings and emotions. But when you have these things that come,

52:11

I mean, think about you had to go take time out of your pastor's day. I mean, he could have been deep in study.

52:17

He could have been in prayer or whatever. He said, maybe we need to have a meeting. And you get it. You look at it.

52:23

And it's just ultimately, at the end of the day, a waste of time, not only his, but yours as well.

52:29

And then the guy didn't even call the pastor like he said he was. But, you know, that's a lot of the things, especially that I've seen as a pastor in the church is when it comes to discipline.

52:39

Like I said, there's people that are hair triggers, that they want to discipline everything from disagreements to, you know, what somebody wore to church that day.

52:47

But they never look at the real issues of why we should be discipling people because they're breaking God's law and they're in unrepentant sin and they don't want to repent.

52:56

But, again, I want to come back to statements like this. And you said it at the beginning of the show is if you're looking for a church or you're in a church, look for one that's got an extensive doctrinal statement because this is going to help us understand the church, who they are, who they're not.

53:14

And then it's going to help us fit into this church or fit into this body.

53:21

And that's where we can really help ourselves, I think, so we can have less of these frustrating little moments that we think everything is, you know, the world's fallen because Kathy disagreed with my haircut or, you know,

53:36

I mean, that's silly, but it happens all the way to saying somebody slandered you and it really didn't happen.

53:43

But I think this kind of thing helps us know who we are as well and how we fit in to the church.

53:51

So I just appreciate a doctrinal statement that's not two pages long like I've seen because it really helps, and it's really helpful, and I think it helps bring people under the leadership of that church.

54:10

You're right because of this. I spoke to two pastors this week who had people in their church that they thought were fully in line with them and discovered that they were teaching

54:24

Bible studies in their home. One was teaching a Bible study and was a full preterist, and the church is not.

54:32

And then they just kind of picked up and left because... And this is... the pastor said,

54:37

I didn't know it. Another church, similar thing, different doctrinal issue, but someone...

54:44

he's like, this person's been in the church for years, I thought he was fully... he's like, I spoke to this person more than anyone else in my church.

54:52

And all of a sudden, he's off in a totally different tangent from what we believe. Now, see, the doctrinal statement becomes something, and what that second pastor, he said, you know, after that incident, he goes, we're making it a requirement, you have to sign the doctrinal statement before you teach at any level, right?

55:10

Because this guy was teaching things that the church doesn't hold to, and he didn't know it.

55:16

And that's the thing I say, it brings unity. Yeah, I actually...

55:21

there's going to be a lot of people pushed back to say, well, I don't... why should we have to sign doctrinal statements? But that is very important, because now they realize what they're signing, or at least hopefully they should.

55:33

And you can use that document to hold them accountable. When they start teaching things contrary to what the church believes, you can say, here's where you sign this, and here's where you fill into these beliefs.

55:46

And we're going to hold you accountable for teaching, you know, or believing X, Y, Z, or doing whatever outside of this.

55:53

And I think, you know, a lot of people don't understand the severity of it. But when you truly have a doctrinal statement that somebody spent time on, and really gone through the

56:03

Word and combed through all these things, I believe we can use not only the Scriptures, but a well -done doctrinal statement like this.

56:10

If anybody's there looking at it, there are tons of Scripture references. So the doctrinal statements,

56:17

I would add, should come from the Scripture. They shouldn't be emotion -driven, or what you think, or what people think, and this one is not that.

56:26

This one is scripturally based. So now this is a document that can hold church members accountable.

56:33

Yeah. And, you know, you are familiar with the doctrinal statement we have at the Christian Podcast Community. So when people come in, we require them to check off, yes,

56:42

I'm in agreement with the doctrinal statement. That's part of the very first step to join the Christian Podcast Community.

56:48

And we don't have a very... Because we know that we're going to have at the Christian Podcast Community a wide range, we have

56:54

Presbyterians, we have... I don't think we have any Lutherans yet, but we have a lot of different folks.

57:00

And there's going to be that disagreement. So we want to make it wide enough that we can have that disagreement, but specific enough that we're going to cancel some people out and say no.

57:10

And one of them is you cannot believe... You have to see the difference roles of men and women in the church.

57:17

And we're going to close with this, just this last story, because it plays so well to what you're saying. We had someone who checked off, yes,

57:24

I'm in agreement. And then he had a podcast where he interviewed a woman pastor.

57:30

And the doctrinal statement we have would speak against that. And it was a friend of his, and he didn't...

57:36

She said she was a pastor. God called her to be a pastor. He never corrected it.

57:41

He never said anything. And so because of that, we rejected that podcast. And he went online for months saying that we slandered a guest of his.

57:53

And I had to say, look, the definition of slander, you mentioned it earlier, we should define it. So the definition of slander is when you say something that's knowingly false to ruin someone's reputation.

58:04

And so I said to this person, did she admit she's a pastor? Yes. That's not slander.

58:10

Okay? It doesn't fit the definition. I didn't say anything about her that ruined her reputation.

58:17

I just said that doesn't fit with our doctrinal statement. That's why we rejected him.

58:22

And so now we don't even say why we reject because of him, because he, you know, it's just like we just say, you know, rejected.

58:31

We just ask that, you know, we're not going to give you the reason. So just like businesses would do.

58:36

They don't tell you why you didn't get the job interview. So with that, next week, next episode we're going to cover will be the next part of this, which is now going to, you know, we're going to move away from some of this dispensational covenant stuff, and we're going to get into some other things.

58:53

We're going to start talking about the local assemblies. We're going to talk about gifts in the church, leadership in the church, things like that.

59:00

So I really hope that you'll come back and listen for that. And with that, that's a wrap.

59:07

This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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