November 1, 2018 Show with Josh Buice on “The Local Church is God’s Will for Your Life”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy... what is today?

Today is Thursday, the first of November. I forgot yesterday's day and I forgot today's day. I got so much on my mind, I apologize. Today is Thursday, November 1st. Before I introduce my guest today and topic, I have a very serious prayer request.

It is really heartbreaking, actually. I just received yesterday the very sad news from my friend, Pastor Steve Stoler in New Jersey, that a mutual friend of ours, Lou Brancadora, suffered a massive stroke three days ago now and he is in a coma.

The MRI that was taken of his brain revealed that he had very serious brain damage and his family is now facing overwhelming decisions in regard to the pursuit of further medical treatment. So please pray for Lou Brancadora.

Pray for a miracle in regard to Lou Brancadora. Pray for his family, that his family receives wisdom from on high as to what they are to do in this situation. This is an extra sad time for me because Lou had been inviting me to events for the last two years with a lot of urgency and he really was almost on the verge of begging me to go to these events and only one of them I could attend about a year and a half ago.

But I now regret all those other times that I could have shared fellowship with him because the prognosis does not look likely that he is going to return to consciousness. So he was a strong Christian, Reformed Baptist, loved the Lord, loved the doctrines of Sovereign Grace.

So just please keep Lou and his family in your prayers and I will keep you updated. But today we have returning to the program one of my favorite guests, a brother who has become a friend of mine about three years ago and I look forward to our friendship growing and strengthening in the months and years to come.

His name is Josh Bice. He should be no stranger to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience. He's an author, a conference speaker, and pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia. And he's the founder and director of the G3 Conference where I will be manning an exhibitor's booth for the third year in a row.

And I hope many of you will join me there this coming January 17th through the 19th. Today we are going to be discussing The Local Church is God's Will for Your Life and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Josh Bice.

Good to be with you, Chris.

God bless you. And first of all, before we go into the theme again as we normally do, for the sake of those especially who have not heard you on this program before, why don't you tell our listeners about Praise Mill Baptist Church of Douglasville, Georgia.

Yeah, sure. Praise Mill Baptist Church is a Baptist church located just west of Atlanta, Georgia. It's a 176-year-old congregation. I grew up here as a boy. My wife did as a girl. We met here in the life of this church.

I went away to seminary and pastored out of state for about seven years. And in God's providence, about eight years ago, the Lord called me back home to serve my home church. So it's just a privilege to serve this church.

As always, just to consider the gift of the local church, as we're going to talk about today, is just a wonderful gift that the Lord gives to us all.

Well, we're going to be heavily promoting the G3 Conference throughout the day, as I have been doing for quite a number of months now. In fact, I do it every year for the last three years. But this particular G3, from January 17th through the 19th in 2019, why don't you tell our listeners about that?

And even tell our listeners a little bit about the history of G3, which I know stands for Gospel, Grace, and Glory.

Yeah, so the G3 Conference is a theology conference that is held in the Atlanta area each January. The entire goal in that first conference was to just be a...and others who would attend from those individual conferences.

We anticipated that there would be a few hundred people, maybe from various churches in the surrounding Atlanta area and beyond. But really, what happened was God turned it into a national conference that first year.

We had a standing room only, waiting list established. That was really the way things rolled for the first four years. We would sell out about a month early and had to, you know, establish that waiting list.

We decided, or it was actually in 16, we decided that the 17 Conference, we were over by the airport to facilitate a larger crowd for the Reformation Conference. 7, 5, 2 ,500, and we decided to stay there indefinitely.

A local church that tried to start a conference. God had bigger plans than we ever imagined, and God just continues to use the conference both through the online media. I think we've had sermons watched on YouTube.

Wow.

So you said that the first one that was at the Georgia International Convention Center.

Was in 2017?

That's correct.

Oh, so I've been at all of your Georgia International Convention Center conferences, then.

That's right, and that's probably one of the reasons for the success, Chris.

Well, I am eagerly looking forward to being there for my third G3 Conference, and just to let you know, even though we'll be repeating this, the lineup, as always, is absolutely phenomenal. The G3 Conference lineup this year includes names such as Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M. Bayway, who is my favorite preacher on the planet Earth, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of John MacArthur's Grace to You ministry, Josh Bice, who is our Stephen J. Nichols, the president of the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Reformation Bible College, and many more are on that roster.

So go to G3conference .com to register. Just out of curiosity, do you have any more room for exhibitors' booths? Because with between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people coming, there may be people listening who own a business or have a parachurch ministry or church that they want to promote amongst that large crowd.

So is there any more exhibitors' booth space left?

Yeah, we do have, from this point, we don't have a lot of space, but we do have space available. So I would just encourage someone, if they're interested, to go online, and there's a website, and you can go ahead, and that'll send it right to our office in the...

Great. Well, that's G3conference .com, G3conference .com. Well, this is an interesting subject that we are talking about today. It's a subject that I have addressed in the past, but it is such an important subject that I don't think that I could exhaust the number of repetitions of this topic, especially when they involve different men addressing this issue.

One of the reasons I say it's such an important topic is that I think it is a frequently overlooked or even, dare I say, rejected truth by many who profess faith in Christ. There seems to be an overreaction to the superstitious and even heretical understanding of the importance of the Church that the Roman Catholic Church has held to for centuries, where you cannot receive eternal life without the Roman Catholic Church and its sacraments and so on.

But, that does not mean that the Church is not commanded to be a part of our lives, a vital part of our lives as Christians. There is no discussion in the Scriptures about the legitimacy of lone wolf, maverick, lone ranger Christians wandering around, bouncing around from church to church and never really establishing membership in any of them and not having the oversight of elders over them.

So, tell us why in particular you wanted to speak on the local church as God's will for your life today.

I just think it's extremely important. We are called out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ, as the Scriptures teach. You know, what we must understand from the very beginning is that God is to be that lone ranger.

You know, from the very beginning of our new birth until we enter the gates of glory, God has been a part of a community of believers. Salvation, but for us to be united together with and a part of and under the oversight of leaders within a congregation that's known by the term Church in the New Testament.

So, this is not the idea of a theologian. This is not the idea that emerges from, say, systematic theology or some seminary classroom study. This is the idea of God himself, and we see that Jesus is said to give his life.

I think that if Jesus is dying for the church, and we see that the church is in the New Testament.

Now, how do you react to people, and I know some, I've met some, and I know some who are my friends and I've had discussions with them where I have strongly disagreed with them. They will say, well, since the Bible doesn't mention membership in a local church, I am not going to be involved in that because I have no authority enforcing that rule upon my life.

How do you respond to that kind of a statement?

Because by that same type of logic, are they willing to, because the Bible doesn't specify the definition of the Trinity. The Bible provides us the definition of our God who reveals himself to us in the pages of the Bible, but we don't necessarily have the definition of the Trinity.

We see, as we see our triune God put on display in the pages of the Bible, we also see membership in the pages of the Bible. We see in the early part who it was that was being baptized. Apparently there was a record that was being held.

We see that type of language. Someone had to oversee those, seriously, the shepherding of those individuals. And that early on was the apostles and then would have eventually been, but the point is, if they're, if it's being baptized, that's how we know certain and who's out, who's under the oversight of something that they're not a part of or that they're not involved in.

And so just by the clear definition of abilities, the counting of those who were baptized, and then church discipline, the command to put someone out of a congregation demonstrates throughout the New Testament.

Yeah. As in very clearly stated in Hebrews chapter 13, verse 17, obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief for this would be unprofitable for you.

Now, if someone were to say to me, Chris, did you know that you have to obey Pastor Smith at the United Methodist Church down the road? I'd say, what are you talking about? I'm not a member of that church.

He's not my leader. I don't have to submit to him. So obviously the idea that this isn't speaking about congregation members in a specific local church with elders over them, it would lead to nonsensical ideas.

There's obviously specific elders that have been appointed by God over us in our local church, and we are to submit to them and they watch over our souls. The pastor of the United Methodist Church down the road does not watch over my soul.

He doesn't even know who I am. So therefore, let them do this with joy and not with grief. It obviously is reflecting a personal relationship, and that can only be said of your local elder who knows you and actually counsels you and prays for you and helps you and laughs with you and cries with you and visits your family when they're sick.

And on and on and on we could go.

That's correct. You know, just like in the New Testament when you have Paul giving a command to wives that they're to submit to their husbands as unto the Lord, again, they would have understood that to be their own husband, not to just any husband.

Right.

And so when it comes to the church, when it says that the members of that church are to and to follow their leaders, it was understood it was their leaders within the context. All through the New Testament, we see the language of church.

Church is not some sort of option that we, you know, can gravitate towards. We have free time. We're not so busy with other things in our, you know, personal lives or whatever else. But the church is absolutely God's will for our lives, and it's not that it's salvific in the sense of when we enter the church, it's that as a result of God saving us, we are to life and also how we worship God.

I mean, that's just what we see in the pages of the New Testament.

Now, this phenomenon of maverick Lone Ranger Christians wandering around is not exclusive to the passive pew-sitting hearer of the word. There are, as you know, some who are involved in parachurch ministry, who are leaders of parachurch ministries that are not members of a local church.

They just, all they do is travel all over the place from place to place to place, preaching, teaching, selling their wares, their books, their CDs, their DVDs, and then they move on, and they are not accountable to any elders over them.

That is really an unbiblical model for even a parachurch ministry, is it not?

Yeah, absolutely so. I mean, when you think about parachurches today, tell us that their revenue exceeds a billion dollars a year. Just by definition itself, Chris, means that you are to come alongside the church.

Parachurch, alongside the church. But for far too long, parachurch ministries have really been the equivalent. What that means is you have so many exciting websites that have exciting ministry, and they present themselves as being really on the front lines of the battle.

And so a lot of the young people say, well, if I really want to get involved in ministry, if I really want to get involved in some sort of mission work, then I need to ditch the local church, and I need to really give myself to the fact that the church today has really given over much to church ministries.

I'm not saying that, for instance, as we've already noted at the G3 conference, there's going to be a lot of really solid, vibrant parachurch ministries presented at. What we must understand is that if you think that being a Christian means that you've got to go give yourself to that parachurch ministry and somehow walk away from the local church, then that's a misguided approach to what God's will is for a person's life.

And as you mentioned that, really, I just started, you know, earlier today, I was thinking about and reflecting upon my time at seminary, and I think about these professors, sometimes even professors, they give themselves fully and wholly to making that institution, making that, you know, that they're teaching to be, you know, very much vibrant and healthy and successful.

It's a sideshow Bible college, and that's also a tragedy. We need to keep those things.

Yes, as much as I remember to give my listeners this warning, I typically every day remind them, if they are not a member of a local Bible-believing church, and they are not prayerfully seeking for one, if they're not already a member, that they are living in rebellion against God.

And I ask them, my listeners, to send me an email with something like, I need a church in the subject line, and I have lists of faithful churches all over the world where I can direct them to. I don't know how close each and every church in their particular city, state, or country I can get them to, but at least I can start them at some kind of a point where they can contact that church and find out from there how close they can find one that is biblically faithful to their exact location.

And I have been able to lead a number of people in all parts of the United States and the world, even in Perth, Australia, to churches. Now, do you think I am going overboard, saying that if you're not a member of a local Bible-believing church or prayerfully seeking for one, you're living in rebellion?

No, I don't think so at all. In fact, if you don't have any desire, in the context of a local church, to have a relationship of faithfulness to feed you, then you really need to examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

You know, a lot of times people claim to be Christians, and they're more eager to join a local ball club or some sort of civic organization than they are the local church, and that's troublesome. In fact, when we think about the attention that Jesus gives to the Bible, when we see the attention of the Apostle Paul as he gave him joy at the local church, I mean, this is not something that's top of our...

Now, what would you say are things that identify a biblically faithful local church, those things that are primary on a list of identification marks, so that our listeners can know exactly what we're talking about?

Because someone might say, OK, well, I know that St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church is a two-minute walk from my house, so I'll go there. But we would not, you and I would not say that that is a biblically faithful church.

So if you could, tell our listeners what you mean.

Yes, I think that there are different marks that you might say that would identify what a healthy church looks like, and I think that they would fall under these general marks or banners. The first one would be the right preaching of the Word of God, and I would say that that's expositional preaching, which means verse-by-verse proclamation of the Word of God at the steady diet of the church.

That's not stating that you can't have some systematic theology study on Wednesday evenings or something of that nature, but as a steady diet on the Lord's Day, that Sunday sermon needs to be a verse-by-verse approach in bringing out before the people what's actual right preaching of the Word.

Second of all, administration of the ordinances or the sacraments, which is the proper administration of that. So in other words, you need to have a right definition, a framework of understanding of what that actually is, and then there must be the regular and the works that states that, by definition, that baptism is the washing away of someone's sin.

Well, then that's not the right administration of the sacraments or the ordinances. And so, again, the right preaching of the Word, the right administration of the ordinances. And then number three, I would simply state the practice of this unwilling to do what Jesus commanded in Matthew chapter 18 and hold people accountable to a pursuit of holiness, not fall under the definition of those are the three primary markers that I would say I would use as a grid to figure out whether or not you can actually join or lead your family to join a specific congregation.

All right, I'm going to pick up on a couple of those when we return from our first break. If you'd like to join us yourself with a question of your own, our e-mail address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Josh Peiss right after these messages from our sponsors.

Hi, Phil Johnson here. I'm executive director of John MacArthur's media ministry, Grace to You, and I'm also an occasional guest on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. So I'm delighted that my friend Chris Arnzen and I will be heading down to Atlanta for the G3 conference where I'll be joining James White, Steve Lawson, Votie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Todd Friel, Josh Peiss, and a host of other speakers to address the topic of biblical understanding of missions.

Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you all at this very important conference from January 17th through the 19th. Make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpen's Iron exhibitors booth to say hi to Chris. For more details, go to g3conference .com.

That's g3conference .com. See you there.

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Again, their information can be found at www .ncc .nyc. Have a great day.

And that was the voice of Steve Lawson, who is one of the speakers at the upcoming G3 Conference that we hope you attend, along with myself and our guest, Josh Bice, pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church and founder and director of the G3 Conference.

We are discussing a very important topic today. The local church is God's will for your life. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And, by the way, I just want to repeat that website for the G3 Conference this January 17th through the 19th, with a Spanish-speaking edition on January 16th.

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. And, by the way, Praise Mill Baptist Church, where our guest serves as the pastor, is in Douglasville, Georgia, if I fail to mention that. Pastor Josh, you were talking about the correct administration of the ordinances.

Now, immediately, you're going to have some sweating Presbyterians listening to two Reformed Baptists talk about that. And, you know, there are many circumstances where you will have a committed and dedicated and thoroughly convinced Reformed Baptist who has no question that baptism is only for repentant believers, that infants are not to receive the ordinance.

But, these dedicated Reformed Baptists may live in a town, there may be five Baptist churches that all hate the doctrines of Sovereign Grace. I know a church on Long Island, I don't know if they still do, but they used to even have in their tract rack a tract that said, Calvinism, the doctrines of demons.

And so, you have that situation, but there's an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or a faithful PCA, Presbyterian Church in America Church, or a Reformed Presbyterian Church, or an ARP Church, or another Presbyterian, or United Reformed Church, another Reformed congregation that believes, even strongly, in paedo-baptism.

What do you do?

Yeah, well, I think that you're going to have to leave two things. Number one, you're going to have to leave it up to the leadership and the context of the local church a particular individual might be visiting.

And then, number two, you're going to have to leave it up to the conscience of the one who is visiting, if that makes sense. So, you might find a church that would state that this is what they might consider to be a closed communion.

So, only the membership of this particular church can partake in the Lord's table, or, you know, engage in this form of worship. And so, that's called closed communion. And, you know, in the fencing of the table, they're going to make that abundantly clear.

They're not going to welcome any guest that's there that's not a member of that church to worship at the Lord's table. And then you might have a church that would practice communion. And so, if it's a member of a church of like faith and practice that's in good standing within their own local church, then they're welcome to, you know, partake in the Lord's supper and to worship with that particular congregation.

So, you have some nuances that you have to work through, but I think that the proper fencing of the table is going to make it abundantly clear as to who is and who is not welcome to the...

So, you're saying that you think there are Pado-Baptist congregations that would fence a Credo-Baptist or a Believer-Only Baptist from the Lord's table?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there probably are. I mean, I think that there are some individuals that would do that. But I don't think... Again, I think that you're just going to have to listen to the language and listen to how that particular minister is fencing the table.

Now, if a committed Reformed Baptist is welcomed into a Bible-believing Presbyterian church and they have an agreement where we are not going to enforce Pado-Baptism as being mandatory if you have infants and young children who are not yet of an age where they can convincingly believe, would that be acceptable in your understanding of joining a local Bible-believing church?

Yes, I think so. The fencing of baptism is not going to allow me, personally, to lead my family to join a Presbyterian church. That's the thing at all, that I think that Presbyterians are not going to be in Heaven or that they're not our brothers and sisters in Christ.

You've had Presbyterians preach at the G3 Conference.

Oh, absolutely, and from year number one we have. I mean, we had Joel Beakey preach in the first conference. We had Michael Kruger at the last conference this past year. And so we, on purpose, invite and partner with Presbyterians.

In fact, Ligonier Ministries, they've become increasingly so friends of mine and partners in the G3 Conference. Chris Larson. These brothers are great brothers. Differences here, when we say that there might be someone who holds to our understanding of baptism, more of a Reformed Baptist position, that would find themselves in the context of a particular city or small community where there's not a good, solid church for them to join, so they feel led to join a solid and healthy and vibrant and that type of thing, then, again, I just think that we need to not be so quickly to cross those lines.

I think that we need to think through what it means, this ordinance of baptism. And so, as for me, it's going to be the but at the same time. Just to get on YouTube, for instance, and you were to listen to the conversation, debate, whatever you want to call it, between John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul, you're going to find that was a healthy, fun conversation, their convictions, and would not be joining one another's churches.

Yes, it does. And obviously, since I do not have any children, and it is very unlikely I'm going to have an infant at the age of 56, if God were to ever lead me to remarry, but I have much more confidence that I could easily join a Presbyterian church if I could not find a solid Reformed Baptist one near me, because of the fact that I know that this will never be an issue in my personal life.

I would not be at all in an uncomfortable position of perhaps being pressured to violate my conscience in that area, or whatever.

Right.

And we do have an anonymous listener. This anonymous listener says, My spouse was a faithful, church-going Christian for many years. When my spouse became seriously depressed, she ceased attending church with me, and this went on for approximately a decade.

She eventually developed a serious illness and passed away. Should I have confidence that she is in glory with Christ? She never wavered in her belief in Christ. She never renounced Christ. The depression just kept her from attending, no matter how frequently and how passionately I urged her to attend.

Yes. So what are your thoughts on that? That's a very heart-wrenching situation. And I think that one thing that immediately goes to my mind is that we who are Reformed Baptists typically look upon A .W. Pink as a hero of the faith, and we glean much benefit from his writings, but A .W. Pink had the same situation with himself.

I mean, he became a hermit towards the end of his life, and from my knowledge, he disassociated himself from any connection to the church. Now, that was a sin, but I don't think that too many of us who are Reformed Baptists would question whether or not we're going to meet A .W. Pink in glory.

What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah. But to my brother, I do believe that you can have reasonable confidence that you're going to see your wife in glory. I think that we should not be too quick to provide. I think that I would classify that and categorize that as sinful.

But when we think about the fact that Christ died for all of her sins, not just some confidence that she is with the Lord. But another example we can also go to from church history would be the case of William Cooper.

And you think about really wonderful hymns, and you have John Newton who is really just trying his best. This individual who was, yet at times and seasons, it was almost as if he was just completely isolated, and for many years was, from the local church.

Again, I think that if I were talking to someone, I would just be very cautious living in open sin. In the case of this, an illness at the end of her life and then passed away, it's sad in many ways. But we do have, as I stated before, the hope and the confidence that Christ dies for all of our sins.

And that's why when we sing that song, it is well. We talk about the fact that our sin, not in part, but the whole was nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. And so not some of our sins, but all of our sins, are paid for in the atonement of Jesus Christ.

Praise God. We have a gentleman from Canada, and I believe he is from the Toronto area because he's written to us before. His name is Sika Lee. And remember, Sika Lee, try to remember to include your city and state as well as your country when you write in, because my memory is not that great that I can recall exactly where you're from.

But I do remember he is a Canadian brother because he's written in frequently enough. And he has an unusual name to boot, Sika Lee. He says, Hi, Chris and Josh. What would you say to relatively new churches where there may be three churches that look good on paper, but one or a couple may seem legalistic, or another may seem to be loose in leadership?