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

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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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.

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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.

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy, what is today?

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Today is Thursday, the 1st of November. I forgot yesterday's day and I forgot today's day.

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I got so much on my mind, I apologize. Today is Thursday, November 1st. Before I introduce my guest today and topic,

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I have a very serious prayer request. It is really heartbreaking actually.

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I just received yesterday the very sad news from my friend Pastor Steve Stoler in New Jersey that a mutual friend of ours,

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Lou Brancadora, suffered a massive stroke three days ago now and he is in a coma.

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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.

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So please pray for Lou Brancadora. Pray for a miracle in regard to Lou Brancadora.

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Pray for his family, that his family receives wisdom from on high as to what they are to do in this situation.

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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

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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.

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So he was a strong Christian, Reformed Baptist, loved the Lord, loved the doctrines of Sovereign Grace.

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So just please keep Lou and his family in your prayers and I will keep you updated.

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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.

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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

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G3 Conference where I will be manning an exhibitors booth for the third year in a row and I hope many of you will join me there this coming

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January 17th through the 19th. Today we are going to be discussing the local church is

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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.

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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?

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Yeah sure. Praise Mill Baptist Church is a Baptist church located just west of Atlanta, Georgia.

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It's a 176 year old congregation. I grew up here as a boy. My wife did as a girl.

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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

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Lord called me back home to serve my home church. So just a privilege to serve this church and 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

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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.

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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

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I know stands for gospel, grace, and glory. Yes, so the

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G3 conference is a theology conference that is held in the Atlanta area each

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January. It was birthed about seven years ago. 2013 was our first conference and the entire goal in that first conference was to just be a conference to encourage the local church to strengthen pastors, maybe discourage pastors who would come, and others who would attend from those individual congregations as well.

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We anticipated that there would be a few hundred people maybe from various churches in the surrounding

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Atlanta area and beyond, but really what happened was

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God turned it into a national conference that first year. We had a standing room only waiting list established and that was really the way things rolled for the first four years.

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We would sell out about a month early and had to, you know, establish that waiting list and then in 2017 we decided, or it was actually in 16, we decided that the 17 conference we would hold it at the conference center over by the airport to facilitate a larger crowd for the

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Reformation conference. So we went from about 750 to 2500 that first year that we moved and we decided to stay there indefinitely at this point and so that's really where we are.

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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.

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I think we've had sermons watched, Chris, now over a million times on YouTube.

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Wow. And so it's just really unbelievable how God's grown the conference.

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So you said that the first one that was at the Georgia International Convention Center was in 2017? That's correct.

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Oh, so I've been at all of your Georgia International Convention Center conferences. That's right and that's probably one of the reasons for the success,

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Chris. Well, I am eagerly looking forward to being there for my third

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G3 conference and just to let you know, even though we'll be repeating this, the lineup, as always, is absolutely phenomenal.

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The G3 conference lineup this year includes names such as Dr.

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James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, John Piper, Stephen J. Lawson, Vody Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

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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 guest today, the founder of the

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G3 conference, Stephen J. Nichols, the president of the college founded by the late

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R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Reformation Bible College, and many more are on that roster.

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So go to G3conference .com to register. Just out of curiosity, do you have any more room for exhibitors' booths?

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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.

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So is there any more exhibitors' booth space left? Yeah, we do have some space available for exhibitors at this point.

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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 an application you can fill out on the website and you can go ahead and that'll send it right to our office and then we can go ahead and process that and get it in motion, you might say.

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Great. Well, that's G3conference .com, G3conference .com. Well, this is an interesting subject that we are talking about today.

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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 can exhaust the number of repetitions of this topic, especially when they involve different men addressing this issue.

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One of the reasons I say it's such an important topic is that I think it is a frequently overlooked or even, dare

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I say, rejected truth by many who profess faith in Christ.

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There seems to be an overreaction to the superstitious and even heretical understanding of the importance of the

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Church that the Roman Catholic Church has held to for centuries, where you cannot receive eternal life without the

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Roman Catholic Church and its sacraments and so on. But that does not mean that the

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Church is not commanded to be a part of our lives, a vital part of our lives as Christians.

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There is no discussion in the scriptures about the legitimacy of lone wolf, maverick, lone ranger

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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.

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

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I just think it's extremely important, Chris, as you've mentioned already, you know, when we are called out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ, as the scriptures teach, to be a part of the

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Church, that assembly of faith, that assembly of the brothers and sisters in Christ.

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You know, what we must understand from the very beginning is that God has never intended for us to be that lone ranger individual that you articulated a moment ago.

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You know, from the very beginning of our new birth until we enter the gates of glory,

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God has intended for us to be a part of a community of believers. So it's necessary for us, not for salvation, but for our good and for God's glory that we are 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

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New Testament. So this is not the idea of a theologian. This is not the idea that emerges from, say, systematic theology or some sort of seminary classroom study.

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This is the idea of God himself, and we see that Jesus is said to, in the scriptures, to give his life for the

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Church. And so I think that if Jesus is dying for the Church, and we see that the

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Church is considered to be the bride of Christ in the New Testament, then I think that we should give our attention to it and take it seriously in this present life.

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Now, how do you react to people, and I know some, I have met some, and I know some who are my friends and I've had discussions with them where I have strongly disagreed with them.

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They will say, well, since the Bible doesn't mention membership in a local church,

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I am not going to be involved in that because I have no authority enforcing that rule upon my life.

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How do you respond to that kind of a statement? Well, the first thing I would ask is, by that same type of logic, are they willing to renounce the doctrine of the

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Trinity? Because the Bible doesn't specifically state, here is the definition of the

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Trinity. The Bible provides us the definition of our God who reveals himself to us in the pages of the

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Bible, but we don't necessarily have a verse of Scripture that we can point to as the definition of the

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Trinity. And so it is with membership we see, as we see that our

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Triune God put on display in the pages of the Bible, we also see membership in the local church put on display in the pages of the

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Bible. So, for instance, we see in the early part of the

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New Testament, we see that they were counting who it was that was being baptized. Apparently there was a record that was being held.

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We see that type of language simply because of the fact that someone had to oversee those souls.

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Someone had to take seriously the shepherding of those individuals. And that early on was the

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Apostles, and then would have eventually been turned over to the shepherds, the pastors, the elders of the

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Church, who would then be given that oversight. But the point is, if they were counting who was being baptized, that's how we know certain numbers.

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There was a way to know who's in and who's out, who's under the oversight of those elders, and then furthermore, when it comes to church discipline, how are you putting someone out of something that they're not a part of or that they're not involved in?

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And so, just by the clear definition of eldership and oversight responsibilities, the clear record of the

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New Testament in the counting of those who were baptized, and then church discipline, the command to put someone out of a congregation, demonstrates that there's some structure of church membership that flows throughout the

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New Testament. Yeah, as very clearly stated in Hebrews chapter 13 verse 17,

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Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.

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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,

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Chris, did you know that you have to obey Pastor Smith at the United Methodist Church down the road?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The pastor of the United Methodist Church down the road does not watch over my soul. He doesn't even know who I am.

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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.

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That's correct. Just like in the New Testament, when you have Paul giving a command to wives that they're to submit to their husbands, as into the

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Lord, again, they would have understood that to be their own husband, not to just any husband.

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So, when it comes to the church, when it says that the members of that church are to submit to and to follow their leaders, it was understood it was their leaders within the context of their local assembly.

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And so, all through the New Testament, we see the language of church membership. And so, the church is not some sort of option that we, you know, can gravitate towards if we so desire or if we have free time or if we're not so busy with other things in our, you know, personal lives or whatever else.

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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, our sin is erased.

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It's that as a result of God saving us, we are to have the church at the centerpiece of our life and also of how we worship

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God. I mean, that's just what we see in the pages of the New Testament. Now, this phenomenon of maverick,

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Lone Ranger Christians wandering around is not exclusive to the passive, pew -sitting hearer of the word.

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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.

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They just, what they do is travel all over the place from place to place to place, preaching, teaching, selling their wares, their books, their

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CDs, their DVDs, and then they move on, and they are not accountable to any elders over them.

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

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Yeah, absolutely so. I mean, when you think about parachurch ministries, I think some of the stats today tell us that there's, you know, over 100 ,000 parachurch ministries in America alone, and their revenue exceeds $2 billion a year.

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They have assets over $4 to $5 billion. So parachurch, just by definition itself,

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Chris, means that you are to come alongside the church. Parachurch. Alongside the church.

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But for far too long, parachurch ministries have really been the equivalent of the tail that wags the dog, so to speak.

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And so 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 battlefield of ministry.

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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, you know, some sort of mission work, then

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I need to ditch the local church, and I need to, you know, really give myself to this parachurch ministry.

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And so that's a tragedy when we think about the fact that the church today has really given over much of her ministries to parachurch ministries.

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I'm not saying that parachurch ministries are bad. For instance, as we've already noted at the

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G3 conference, there's going to be a lot of really solid, healthy, vibrant parachurch ministries and schools, seminaries, that type of thing that are going to be represented at the conference.

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But what we must understand is that if you think that being a Christian and being a really solid

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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

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God's will is for a person's life. And as you mentioned that, really, I just started, you know, earlier today

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I was thinking about and reflecting upon my time at seminary, and I think about these professors.

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Sometimes even professors can fall into this rut. They give themselves fully and wholly to making that institution successful, making that, you know, that they're teaching within that classroom context to be, you know, very much vibrant and healthy and successful, but it's almost as if the local church is just a sideshow to the real thing, which is the seminary classroom or the

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Bible college, and that's also a tragedy. We need to keep those things in check. Yes.

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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

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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.

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And I ask them, my listeners, to send me an email with something like,

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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.

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I don't know how close each and every church in their particular city, state, or country

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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.

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And I have been able to lead a number of people in all parts of the

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United States and the world, even in Perth, Australia, to churches. Now, do you think

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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?

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No, I don't think so at all. In fact, I would just simply state that if you don't have any desire to immerse yourself within the context of a local church and to put yourself under the leadership of faithful elders who would give themselves to prayer and the study of the scriptures to feed you, then you know you really need to examine yourself to see if you're in the faith.

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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.

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In fact, you know, when we think about the attention that Jesus gives to the church in the pages of the

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Bible, when we see the attention of the Apostle Paul as he gave himself and worked for the joy of the local church,

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I mean, this is not something that we should take lightly. We should be putting the church at the top of our priority list rather than the bottom.

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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?

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Because someone might say, okay, 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.

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So if you could, tell our listeners what you mean. Yeah, I would just say historically,

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Chris, I think that there are, you know, different marks that you might say that would identify what a healthy church looks like, and I think that they would fall under, you know, these general marks or banners.

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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

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Word of God as a steady diet of the church. That's not stating that you can't have some special series of messages or maybe systematic theology study on Wednesday evenings or something of that nature, but as a steady diet on the

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Lord's Day, that Sunday sermon needs to be a verse -by -verse approach to developing and bringing out before the people what that actual text says.

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So the right preaching of the Word. Second of all, the proper administration of the ordinances or the sacraments, which is the proper administration of baptism and the

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Lord's Supper. 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 right practice of those very things.

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And so, in other words, a church that practices baptism but 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.

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And so, again, the right preaching of the Word, the right administration of the ordinances, and then number three,

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I would simply state the practice of biblical church discipline. And so a church that's unwilling to do exactly what

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Jesus commanded in Matthew chapter 18 and hold people accountable to a pursuit of holiness for the glory of God can't be and cannot fall under the definition of a biblical church.

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And so 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 need your family to join a specific congregation.

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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 email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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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

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

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

28:12

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 Sharpens Iron Radio.

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So I'm delighted that my friend Chris Arnzen and I will be heading down to Atlanta for the

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G3 conference where I'll be joining James White, Steve Lawson, Vodie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad Mbewe, Todd Friel, Josh Bice, and a host of other speakers to address the topic,

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A Biblical Understanding of Missions. Chris Arnzen and I hope to see you all at this very important conference.

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From January 17th through the 19th, make sure you stop by the Iron Sharpens Iron Exhibitor's booth to say hi to Chris.

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For more details, go to g3conference .com. That's g3conference .com.

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See you there. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know I have a great love for getting Bibles and other documents vital to my ministry rebound to preserve and ensure their longevity.

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That's ptlbiblerebinding .com. Hello, my name is

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James Renahan, and I'm the President of IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. The Word of God says,

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If a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing. Do you have the desire to serve

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Jesus Christ in pastoral ministry? Twenty years ago, the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies at Westminster Seminary, California, was born.

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You'll find more information at irbsseminary .org. That's irbsseminary .org, two

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S's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon. God bless you. My name is

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Steve Lawson, founder and president of One Passion Ministries, as well as teaching fellow for Ligonier Ministries.

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I serve as professor of preaching and oversee the Doctor of Ministry program at the Master's Seminary in Los Angeles.

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I would like to recommend the church where one of my preaching students, Andy Woodard, serves as the pastor.

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It's called New Covenant Church, NYC. They are a Reformed Baptist church that meets in midtown

33:55

Manhattan. You can find their service times and location on their website, which is www .ncc

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.nyc. They believe in a sovereign God who commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel.

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If you're looking for a church that believes in expository preaching, which is simply biblical preaching, in New York City, I'd like to recommend that you visit

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New Covenant Church NYC. Again, their information can be found at www .ncc

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.nyc. Have a great day. And that was the voice of Steve Lawson, who is one of the speakers at the upcoming

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G3 conference that we hope you attend, along with myself and our guest,

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Josh Bice, pastor of Praise Mill Baptist Church and founder and director of the

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G3 conference. We are discussing a very important topic today. The local church is

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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.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And by the way, just want to repeat that website for the

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G3 conference this January 17th through the 19th, with a Spanish speaking edition on January 16th.

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I go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. And by the way,

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Praise Mill Baptist Church, where our guest serves as the pastor, is in Douglasville, Georgia, if I fail to mention that.

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Pastor Josh, you were talking about the correct administration of the ordinances.

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Now immediately, you're going to have some sweating Presbyterians listening to two

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Reformed Baptists talk about. And, you know, there are many circumstances where you will have a committed and dedicated and thoroughly convinced

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Reformed Baptist who has no question that baptism is only for repentant believers, that infants are not to receive the ordinance.

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But these dedicated Reformed Baptists may live in a town, there may be five

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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, tract rack, a tract that said

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Calvinism, the doctrines of demons. And so you have that situation.

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But there's an Orthodox Presbyterian Church, or a faithful PCA, Presbyterian Church in America Church, or a

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Reformed Presbyterian Church, or an ARP Church, or another Presbyterian, or United Reformed Church, another

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Reformed congregation that believes even strongly in paedo -baptism.

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What do you do? Yeah, well I think that you're going to have to leave that up to two things.

37:07

Number one, you're going to have to leave it up to the leadership and the context of the local church in which that particular individual might be visiting.

37:17

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.

37:23

So you might find a church that would state that this is what they might consider to be a closed communion.

37:33

So only the membership of this particular church can partake in the

37:40

Lord's Table and 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.

37:52

They're not going to welcome any guest that's there that's not a member of that church to worship at the

37:58

Lord's Table. And then you might have a church that would practice what's known as close 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

38:19

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

38:32

Lord's Table. So you're saying that you think there are Pado -Baptist congregations that would fence a

38:39

Credo -Baptist or a Believer -Only Baptist from the Lord's Table? Yeah, I mean,

38:45

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,

38:52

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.

39:01

Now if a committed Reformed Baptist is welcomed into a

39:07

Bible -believing Presbyterian church and they have an agreement where we are not going to enforce

39:13

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

39:31

Bible -believing church? Yes, I think so, but I do think that, you know, the right understanding of Baptism is not going to allow me personally to lead my family to join a

39:44

Presbyterian church. That is absolutely not suggesting 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.

39:56

You've had Presbyterians preach at the G3 Conference? Oh, absolutely, and from year number one we have.

40:01

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, intentionally so, invite and partner with Presbyterians.

40:17

In fact, Ligonier Ministries, they've become increasingly so friends of mine and partners in the

40:23

G3 Conference. Chris Larson, these brothers are great brothers, you know, and so when we think about the differences here, when we say that, you know, there might be someone who holds to our understanding of Baptism more of a

40:40

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

40:53

Presbyterian church that's solid and healthy and vibrant and that type of thing, then again, that's on them to make that decision.

41:03

I just think that we need to not be so quickly to cross those lines.

41:09

I think that we need to think through what it means to practice this ordinance of Baptism, and so as for me, it's going to be very difficult for me to join a

41:20

Presbyterian church, but at the same time, if you were 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.

41:32

Sproul, you're going to find that was a healthy, fun conversation, but it shows you that there were two men who held to their convictions and would not be joining one another's churches, if that makes sense.

41:47

Yes, it does, and obviously, since I do not have any children, and it is very unlikely,

41:57

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

42:11

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.

42:21

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

42:30

Right, absolutely. And we do have an anonymous listener. This anonymous listener says,

42:39

My spouse was a faithful, church -going Christian for many years.

42:46

When my spouse became seriously depressed, she ceased attending church with me, and this went on for approximately a decade.

42:58

She eventually developed a serious illness and passed away. Should I have confidence that she is in glory with Christ?

43:06

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

43:17

I urged her to attend. So what are your thoughts on that?

43:22

That's a very heart -wrenching situation, and I think that one thing that immediately goes to my mind is that we who are

43:30

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.

43:39

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.

43:48

Now, that was a sin, but I don't think that too many of us who are

43:54

Reformed Baptists would question whether or not we're going to meet A .W. Pink in glory. What are your thoughts on that?

44:01

Yeah, this is a very difficult question on many different levels, but to my brother who writes the question,

44:08

I would simply state that I do believe that you can have reasonable confidence that you're going to see your wife in glory.

44:16

I think that we should not be too quick to rush to provide assurance to people who disassociate themselves with the local church.

44:28

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 of her sins, then we can have the confidence that she is with the

44:47

Lord. But another example we can also go to from church history would be the case of William Cooper, and you think about Cooper who wrote some really wonderful hymns, and you have

45:02

John Newton who is really just trying his best to just minister to this individual who was greatly depressed, yet at times and seasons, it was almost as if he was just completely isolated, and for many years was from the local church.

45:21

And so again, I think that if I were talking to someone, I would just be very cautious to rush to provide assurance for someone who's living in open sin.

45:35

In the case of this particular woman who developed an illness at the end of her life and then passed away, you know, 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, you know, our sin not in part but the whole was nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more.

46:03

And so not some of our sins, but all of our sins are paid for in the atonement of Jesus Christ.

46:12

Praise God. We have, excuse me, we have a gentleman from Canada, and I believe he is from the

46:26

Toronto area because he's written to us before. His name is Sicka Lee, and remember Sicka 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

46:42

Canadian brother because he's written in frequently enough and he has an unusual name to boot, Sicka Lee.

46:48

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?

47:05

How would they go about navigating through each? Each thinks they may be biblical, but it would be difficult for new

47:12

Christians not to be dragged away with each wind of doctrine. Take care brothers. Yeah, that's a great question.

47:21

And by the way, sorry Sicka Lee, you put at your very last sentence,

47:27

I'd like to remain anonymous at the very end of your question.

47:33

I'm sorry I identified you, but next time put that immediately in the question. Sorry about that.

47:39

But anyway, go ahead. Well now that the whole world knows who we're talking about. What I would simply state is that when it comes to looking for a church, we must come with this understanding that we're not going to find the perfect church.

47:59

Again, we hear the cliche tagline that once you find the perfect church on earth, or if you happen to stumble upon it, don't join it, because at the very moment you join it, you're gonna make it an impure church.

48:12

Well, you know, the fact is we're not going to stumble upon the perfect church in this life.

48:18

The only perfect church that we're going to ever be a part of is the church that's going to be in the presence of the Lord in eternity.

48:24

So we need to rest assured that we're not going to find the perfect one. But when it comes to looking for a church and to join the local church, we need to take that seriously, and I think that we need to look for specific things that are non -negotiable.

48:40

So the right preaching of the word, the right administration of the ordinances, the practice of church discipline.

48:48

You talk about a church that may be more legalistic, well, are they practicing church discipline biblically?

48:55

And you talk about a church that might be more loose in leadership, well, are they practicing church discipline at all?

49:02

And so we need to think about what it looks like. So yeah, I would definitely not encourage anyone to join a legalistic church, but, you know, again, we need to be thinking in terms of finding the best church in a particular area, or at least within driving distance, and then join that church.

49:21

You know, we have a, Chris, we have a new members class that we offer a couple of times a year, and it's really been a joy this past season.

49:31

We had just finished up our latest new members class, and we had nine different families that went through that class.

49:40

One particular family that was a part of that class, they, as this

49:48

December 24th, will mark the seven -year mark that they first walked into the doors of our church.

49:56

And I remember meeting them on that Christmas Eve service, and so they just have been regular attenders, they disappeared for a while, they eventually came back, they've just been, you know, perpetual in their attendance, but not pursuing membership.

50:13

And so we've had some really good conversations about the necessity of church membership and joining a church.

50:19

Don't just date a church, don't just attend a church, but make it a priority, and again, put yourself within the context of that church.

50:29

And again, you're not going to find the perfect church, you're going to have to give on some issues, but I would look for a church that has a plurality of elders,

50:37

I would look for a church that is again, preaching the word and has sound biblical doctrine.

50:44

These things matter, and so it might not have the best playground, and it might not have the most exciting bells and whistles in a community, but find the church that will, you know, faithfully care for your soul.

50:58

That's the key. Now what do you make of Christians, and I know a number of them, who believe, according to their profession anyway, strongly in the doctrines of sovereign grace.

51:12

They may even be personally confessional, either to the 1689 London Baptist Confession, the

51:19

Westminster Confession, the Three Forms of Unity, but they go to an Arminian church because they've got more programs for the kids, and another excuse may be, uh,

51:33

I'm a musician, I love music, they have a really professional level music ministry there, praise band, etc.

51:41

So my family feels more comfortable going to this Arminian church because of those things. How do you respond to something like that?

51:47

Well, I think it's compromise. I mean, I'm just going to be as bluntly honest as I possibly could be at that juncture.

51:53

I think that it's compromise. You wouldn't do that with your health. I mean, if you have a doctor or a physician that says, you can't just consistently eat this type of food that's loaded down with cholesterol, it's loaded down with all of these harmful ingredients, it's going to be devastating on your physical body.

52:14

Are you talking to my doctor? No, but I'm just suggesting that that's the logic, brother.

52:20

I mean, when it comes to our physical health, we're going to make some adjustments pretty quickly.

52:26

But when it comes to our local church, we oftentimes make really bad decisions, or we allow children to make the decision for us.

52:35

Well, where, you know, if you're talking to a child, you know, you might move into a community and then they go to school and then you're, you're asking your kids, well, where do all your friends go to church?

52:44

And then they talk about some church down the road that has all these programs, all this stuff going on, seems really exciting.

52:52

And so you end up joining that church because you want to make your children happy. Well, the best way to make your children happy is not by programs, but causing their heart to delight in God through sound biblical theology.

53:07

And so find a church, not a dead church. You don't have to find a church that's dead, you know, that seems lifeless, but, you know, might have a serious commitment to exposition.

53:19

I mean, that, unfortunately, in a lot of Reformed circles, there's this idea that if you're going to be really healthy, you've got to be boring.

53:27

Well, here's a real simple, helpful thing for us to remember is that God isn't boring.

53:34

And so worship should not be boring, and it should not be lifeless. But at the end of the day, when it comes to making a decision about a local church, it shouldn't be based on bells and whistles, it should be based on the content of what's happening in that local church.

53:51

Can I be fed faithfully? And if you're a musician and you say, I want to sing in this particular choir, or I want to, you know, play in this orchestra, what in the world are you singing?

54:03

Are you singing sound biblical theology, or are you singing something that's watered down or might even be doctrinally impure?

54:11

And so we need to think about these things, it really does matter. And we have to go to our midway break right now, it's a longer than normal break, because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

54:20

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us to have a longer break in the middle, because they air their own commercials and public service announcements to localize

54:29

Iron Sherpins Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida. In fact, I was added to the roster of Grace Life Radio 90 .1

54:36

FM in Lake City, Florida, by meeting those involved in running that station at the

54:42

G3 conference back in 2017. So that was a very important G3 conference for me.

54:49

But anyway, take this time to write down the information provided by my advertisers so that you can successfully patronize my advertisers more frequently.

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They are the ones, primarily, that keep Iron Sherpins Iron Radio on the air, in addition to those generous listeners who contribute to us faithfully.

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So if you want my advertisers to stick around and continue to sponsor this program, I'm asking you to please patronize them as much as possible.

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So write down this information that they give, and also write down questions for Josh Bice about our topic today, about the importance of the local church.

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Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we're going to be back with Pastor Josh Bice and more about the importance of the local church right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And Chris Arnzen was there last year.

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He's been there, I think, every year. It's great to see him there. You and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place, which is a highlight to me.

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So tons of stuff going on. Tons of great speakers. And no matter where you are in the building, you will hear Chris Arnzen's laugh.

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And that's worth the price of admission alone. If you would like to join Phil, me, Chris, and a cavalcade of great preachers, and me,

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G3conference .com, G3conference .com. And my friend

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Mike Gadosh, who just got out of heart surgery not long ago, was very, very worried because he was laughing hysterically at Todd Friel's commercial that you just heard.

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And it may not be the safest thing for somebody who's just had serious open heart surgery to begin laughing uncontrollably.

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But keep Mike Gadosh in your prayers. He has been home recovering for weeks, thank

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God. And he is improving radically after this very serious, dangerous, complicated, and deadly open heart surgery that he underwent.

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01:06:18

We also have a few announcements of special events that we want you to be aware of before we return to Josh Bias.

01:06:25

First of all, next week, November 9th through the 10th, God willing, I will be at the

01:06:30

Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology at Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Quakertown, Pennsylvania.

01:06:37

The theme is The Glory of the Cross, and the speakers include David Garner, Ray Ortland, Richard Phillips, Timothy Gibson, and Carlton Lynn.

01:06:45

That's November 9th and the 10th at Grace Bible Fellowship Church, Quakertown, Pennsylvania. If you want to register for that conference, go to alliancenet .org,

01:06:56

click on events, and then scroll down to Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology, and then the event that we have been discussing throughout this program today, the

01:07:05

G3 Conference is coming up from January 19th, I'm sorry, January 17th through the 19th, that's

01:07:12

Thursday, January 17th through Saturday, January 19th, and that will be held at the

01:07:19

Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. They are expecting between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people to attend this conference, so I urge you, if you have a church, parachurch, ministry, or business that you would like to promote in that crowd of between 4 ,000 and 5 ,000 people, that you not only register to attend, but you register for an exhibitors booth as well.

01:07:44

The speakers, once again, include James White, John Piper, Stephen Lawson, Votie Baucom, Mark Dever, Conrad M.

01:07:51

Bayway, Tim Challies, Phil Johnson, our guest today, Josh Bice, Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, Stephen J.

01:07:59

Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College that was founded by R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, and many, many more are on that roster.

01:08:08

Go to g3conference .com, g3conference .com. Don't forget to tell your Spanish -speaking and bilingual friends that there will be a

01:08:14

Spanish -speaking edition on Wednesday, January 16th as well. That's g3conference .com,

01:08:19

g3conference .com. Last but not least, I am headed for the first time ever to Mississippi.

01:08:25

I've never been to that fine state before in my life. This will be to Mann and Iron, Sharp, and Zirin at exhibitors booth at the

01:08:33

Deep South Founders Conference. That's going to be held in Laurel, Mississippi, and the focus is going to be on the doctrine of sanctification, including

01:08:43

Conrad M. Bayway, who I just mentioned, Rusty Reed, Gerald Henderson, Jason Goodwin, and Bobby Crenshaw.

01:08:52

That's January 24th through the 26th in Laurel, Mississippi, the

01:08:58

Deep South Founders Conference. If you want to join me there, go to deepsouthfounders .com,

01:09:04

deepsouthfounders .com. Last but not least, if you love

01:09:10

Iron, Sharp, and Zirin radio, you don't want us to disappear from the airwaves, you love sharing the free

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MP3s with family, friends, and loved ones, you look forward to the guests and topics that sometimes are rarely, if ever, heard anywhere else, then please consider financially supporting

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01:09:34

I have a strong warning to remind you of, never siphon money away from your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church where you are a member.

01:09:45

Never do that in order to give to Iron, Sharp, and Zirin radio. Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron, Sharp, and Zirin radio.

01:09:52

Those two things are commands of God, providing for your church and home. Providing for Iron, Sharp, and Zirin radio is obviously not a command of God, but if you love the show and you're financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, then please consider donating to Iron, Sharp, and Zirin radio as heavily as you can and as frequently as you can by going to ironsharpandzirinradio .com,

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click support, then click, click to donate now. You could also send in a check via snail mail the old -fashioned way to the address that appears on your screen when you click support at ironsharpandzirinradio .com.

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If you want to advertise with us, send an email to me, to chrisarnsit at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line.

01:10:33

As long as whatever it is you are promoting is compatible with what I believe, it doesn't have to believe, you don't have to believe identically with me, but if as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what

01:10:44

I believe, then I would love to help you launch an ad campaign as soon as possible because we surely do need the advertising dollars.

01:10:51

chrisarnsit at gmail .com put advertising in the subject line and also remember if you do not have a church home and you're not prayerfully seeking for one, you're living in rebellion against God, send me an email to chrisarnsit at gmail .com

01:11:03

and put something like I need a church home in the subject line and I will help you find a church home.

01:11:09

I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world that I can use to help you find a church near you.

01:11:16

I've already helped a number of people in the United States and overseas to find church homes, so please send me an email to chrisarnsit at gmail .com

01:11:26

and put I need a church home in the subject line. That's also the email address where you can send a question to Josh Bice, our guest today who is discussing the importance of the local church.

01:11:38

That email address is chrisarnsit at gmail .com chrisarnsit at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at your city and state of residence and your country of residence if you live outside the

01:11:49

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves personal and private matter. And Pastor Josh, before we go on to church shopping and consumerism, we just want to go to one listener question here.

01:12:02

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania wants to know, you've mentioned the wisdom behind overlooking churches that are doctrinally in error in order to find a reformed church, but what about the reverse when you have a local church that may be biblically sound when it comes to the ordinances and the gospel but may be

01:12:23

Arminian and you actually believe that you can do some good there where the leaders might think so highly of you that you could contribute your knowledge to the body there and perhaps will even be used by God eventually to lead them into the doctrines of sovereign grace.

01:12:38

What are your thoughts on becoming a member of an Arminian church when it is the closest church and where you may have some good involvement?

01:12:48

I would just simply state that it needs to be very cautiously approached, that decision does.

01:12:56

When you think about a member joining a local church for the purpose of changing that church, well that could come with, you know, a lot of disastrous consequences.

01:13:08

So it's very unlikely, just being honest, it's very unlikely that a member is going to join an

01:13:16

Arminian church, so a reformed believer joining an Arminian church is just going to revolutionize and change that church.

01:13:25

What's probably going to happen is that church is going to change you before you're going to change the church, and it's also going to, you know, even if you say, well

01:13:37

I'm going to be so strong in my convictions that I'm not going to waver, but then you actually might create division in that church.

01:13:45

And so it's going to be very difficult for you to sit under week by week consistent

01:13:52

Arminian teaching and thrive, so that's going to be hard. And so once I, you know,

01:13:58

I heard R .C. Sproul when he was asked the question once in a Q &A session about, you know, what if the best church option for your family is an hour away, what should you do?

01:14:10

And he immediately, without hesitation, said drive. He said, you need to drive.

01:14:15

You need to put in the effort. And then he went on to talk about the fact that people all the time drive an hour to work every day, or they drive, you know, across Los Angeles, across major cities in America to get to work and back home each day, or they travel many miles, far longer than an hour to go to basketball games to chase their children around and that type of thing, you know, in athletics.

01:14:45

So when it comes to the decision of a local church, I think that if you're moving to a new city, let me just say this, if you're moving to a new city, that you need to find your church before you find your home.

01:14:59

You need to try to get as close to your local church as you possibly can, but in the strange event that you end up in a particular place, and the best church option for you is some distance away, then you might need to consider praying through actually driving.

01:15:18

We just had a family join our church that drives 45 minutes, but they said this is what they did.

01:15:24

They started off with a circle that was rather small, a radius of, you know, just a few minutes, and they started expanding that radius until they eventually landed with us.

01:15:35

And so you just need to really think through what it means for your soul and for the good of your family each week to be in a good solid church.

01:15:44

And I'm wondering about two exceptions to that. The first is, I have a couple of friends who are

01:15:52

Reformed Baptists who are in leadership at a congregation which is in the

01:15:59

Wesleyan denomination, and they were welcomed and they were invited and welcomed to be the leaders there.

01:16:05

And the congregation was fully aware of their Calvinism, and the congregation was basically theologically tabula rasa, where they needed instruction.

01:16:16

They weren't really theologically driven or doctrinally driven beforehand. So you have this very unusual circumstance where you have two

01:16:23

Reformed Baptist pastors very clearly and openly and unwaveringly teaching the doctrines of grace, but it's in the

01:16:30

Wesleyan denomination. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, the church has welcomed them in and they're in leadership, so they're going to stand and they're going to give an account before the

01:16:40

Lord of Glory how they handle the Word of God. So if they're shrinking back from teaching the

01:16:46

Word faithfully because of the fear of man or because of a paycheck or whatever else, then that's on them.

01:16:53

But, you know, if what you said is true, that they're godly brothers who take their role seriously and they're going to preach the

01:16:59

Word faithfully, then you know what? The congregation said come, and so I would say preach the

01:17:05

Word and be faithful. Amen, yes, and especially with one of those pastors who I've known for years and I'm very close, he's a close personal friend of mine.

01:17:15

I happen to know that he is unwavering and he's a public figure regarding the doctrines of grace, so he's not shrinking back at all in that.

01:17:22

The other circumstance is what if you are Arminian, or should I say, let me take that back, you were saved while an

01:17:30

Arminian and in an Arminian church, but then you became theologically reformed. Do you think that requires a person to leave the

01:17:39

Arminian church that is biblically faithful in other crucial ways as far as the gospel and the ordinances are concerned?

01:17:47

No, absolutely not. I would never state that it is absolutely mandated that you leave that church.

01:17:53

I would simply state that as you grow and as you learn the scriptures, as you continue to progress in your faith, if you come to a crossroads where you feel like, you know,

01:18:06

I'm just not going to be able to continue to grow here, then I think there's a proper way to leave that church and to do so without violating your conscience, without violating the covenant of membership, and I think that you go to that particular church's leadership, to the elders of that congregation, or if it's a single pastor model, you go to that pastor and you, you know, explain with clear reasoning and just articulate this desire for you to leave, but ask for, you know, that particular pastor or the elders of that church to give you the blessings in leaving, and to do so without any division whatsoever, and to walk through a process of prayer, and so that would be how

01:18:54

I would approach that, you know, but I would simply state that if you come to the knowledge of the doctrines of grace as a member of an

01:19:04

Arminian church, that doesn't mandate that you leave immediately. And one final quick question that's connected to this.

01:19:11

I have met people who are born -again believers who believe in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, according to the scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone, and yet they remain in the

01:19:26

Roman Catholic Church because they somehow think they're going to have some positive influence there, they think they're going to be a 21st century

01:19:35

Martin Luther perhaps, and they also may have a spouse there, they are fearful of ruining a marriage or splitting a marriage, there may be a number of reasons that they remain in a

01:19:49

Roman Catholic Church, but I have told them that they cannot remain there, because especially when the ordinance, or should

01:19:57

I say the sacraments, are observed, the Mass especially, you are being witness to an idolatrous and heretical rite, and even,

01:20:15

I know that I will upset some of my own Presbyterian brethren, but I even believe that the Roman Catholic baptism is an unbiblical rite, not only just because it's involving infants and I'm a credo baptist, but because of what is said, actually cited or recited by the priest and by the parents getting the child baptized, they are unbiblical concepts, they involve prayer to Mary and the saints, they are intended not only to bring upon that child regeneration, but they are also intended to baptize the child into the

01:20:57

Church of Rome. But what are your responses to that? The person that says, well I'm going to stay in the

01:21:03

Catholic Church because I know I'm going to do some good here, or I want to save my marriage, what are your thoughts on that?

01:21:10

Well I mean I think that you've given really good rationale as to why it's really not even possible to do so.

01:21:16

First of all, Luther was unable to stay within the Roman Catholic Church, before his conversion, you see, since yesterday was

01:21:25

Reformation Day, we need to be mindful of the fact that when Luther nailed that 95 cc to the

01:21:32

Catholic Church door in Wittenberg, he was not yet a believer. He was hoping to reform the

01:21:38

Catholic Church from within. There was a majority about indulgences, or the abuse of indulgences, the sale of indulgences.

01:21:47

Absolutely. He was fired up, and rightfully so, about the misuse and the abuse of basically a glorified fundraiser with the indulgences.

01:21:56

And it was abusing the conscience of people, making them think that they could give money to the

01:22:02

Roman Catholic Church and somehow spring the soul of their loved one out of purgatory.

01:22:08

And so he was not yet a believer, but when he did become a believer, the whole

01:22:14

Protestant Reformation exploded and became an external movement rather than an internal movement.

01:22:21

And so Luther was unable to stay within that blasphemous system, and so he had to then work externally.

01:22:29

And so we are very grateful for the fact that worship changed dramatically as a result of the

01:22:36

Reformation. And so, yeah, I mean, I would state that you're not going to change the

01:22:41

Roman Catholic Church. I mean, if you look at Pope Francis's tweet on Twitter, the very first tweet of 2017 on Twitter from Pope Francis, this was marking the entrance to 2017, which would have been the year of the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the

01:23:01

Protestant Reformation. So it was in January that very first tweet stated the following, it said, "...let

01:23:08

us entrust the new year to Mary, mother of God, so that peace and mercy may grow throughout the world."

01:23:16

And so it's just, it's not a proper conclusion to think that it's possible to stay within a broken system like the

01:23:24

Roman Catholic Church. It's blasphemous, it is not proper worship, and so you can't be fed properly within that system.

01:23:33

Okay, let's move on to church shopping and consumerism. What are your thoughts?

01:23:40

Yeah, I think that it's a tragedy today when we think about so many people approaching the local church as if they need to find what works best for them.

01:23:51

So in other words, you hear people talk about, well, the music is not my type of music, or I need to find the church with the best programs for my children, or, you know,

01:24:03

I'm getting older now, so I want to find the church that has the best, you know, gathering for senior adults, so that we can go on trips and eat at really good restaurants and things of that nature.

01:24:14

When you start hearing people talk like that, it just smacks of that consumerism mindset where people are approaching the local church as if they're looking at, like, a shopping mall, and, you know, well, that store doesn't work for me, but that one over there will, so I'm going to go to that one.

01:24:32

And so they approach it as if there's not really a covenant of membership in the first place, and so they'll just switch churches left and right, and that's really a tragedy.

01:24:43

When we read in the New Testament, we don't ever see the Apostle Paul talking like that as he writes a letter to a local church.

01:24:52

You don't see him talking to the church in Corinth stating that, hey, listen, guys, you know, you've got some really horrific sin in your midst.

01:25:03

You've got a man sleeping with his stepmom, and you've got all types of sin problems there, so if you can't stomach this, then why don't you think about maybe going over the line into Ephesus or somewhere like that and find you another church where you might could thrive.

01:25:19

Maybe you should go to Philippi or another city. Just move and, you know, try to strike up trade in another city and join that church.

01:25:27

You don't see him talking like that. You don't see him using that language. You see the language of commitment, working through trials.

01:25:36

You see him talking about putting and making right the wrongs of sin, the exercise of church discipline, the caring for one another, the maintenance of church membership.

01:25:49

All of that is what you see coming in the voice and through the pen of the Apostle Paul.

01:25:55

So if he's suggesting in his letters in the New Testament that we need to be very much committed to a local church and very much interested in working through problems, then when problems arise or you find that you don't like certain type of music in a church or whatnot, you don't need to just go find another church.

01:26:16

You need to work through the issues in your local church. And when you persevere for many years and you put down roots in a local church, you're communicating something of great significance to the generations that are watching you make those very decisions.

01:26:32

So I think it's important to never, you know, in other words, I like to say it like this,

01:26:37

Chris. I have a very short list of reasons for moving a church that's just a, you know, a couple of blocks down the road or a couple of miles down the road and leaving your local church.

01:26:49

I think that that list should be very, very small. All right, we're going to go to our final break. And when we return, we are going to move on to the subjects of church maintenance and commitment to the local body.

01:27:00

If you have questions, please send them in now or forever hold your peace because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:27:06

Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. Chris Arnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:37:23

That's chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And now we move on to the subject of church maintenance using as a reference

01:37:33

Ephesians chapter 4 verse 3, if you could tell us about that. Yeah, Chris, I think that it's extremely important to think about building on the previous conversation that we were having before the break is that, you know, when it comes to the life of the local church, we need to think about our membership in terms of covenant, commitment to one another.

01:37:53

That means bearing with one another. That means praying with and for one another.

01:37:59

That means striving together in the faith. And so these are critical, critical aspects of what it means to be a part of a local congregation.

01:38:10

But when we see Paul writing to the church in the city of Ephesus, and that letter in and of itself would have been a circular letter that would have been sent to other churches in other cities as well, but when you read that language in the fourth chapter where he specifically states in Ephesians 4 verse 3 that we are to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, and so that particular word maintain, maintain, eager to maintain, not just, you know, lazy -minded about it, but we're to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

01:38:50

When we think about that, again, that word maintain has the idea of causing a state or condition to continue, an activity to continue.

01:39:00

And so, in other words, there should be this continual unity that marks what it means to be a part of a local church.

01:39:11

So that congregation should be known as a unified church. But what does it mean to maintain that unity?

01:39:18

Well, when you think about maintaining a car or maintaining a house, there are various different things that you actually have to do.

01:39:26

You might not like to paint, but you're going to eventually have to paint some walls, you're going to have to paint some siding, you're going to have to fix some pipes that leak, or you're going to have to work on your

01:39:38

HVAC unit to make sure that, you know, you change filters. You have to maintain things.

01:39:44

If you don't maintain your automobile, you end up breaking down on the side of the road. And that's just logic.

01:39:50

But when we think about the life of the church, oftentimes people, you know, they don't want to maintain unity.

01:39:56

And so if someone does something that they don't like, or if a pastor does something that they don't like, then they're quick to just change churches.

01:40:05

And that's unfortunate. We need to actually be people that are marked by this idea of perseverance.

01:40:13

So we're going to work through problems and trials, and so there's a maintenance aspect to church membership, and so we need to be making sure that we're consistently engaging in that type of thing.

01:40:24

And that's why when we go to the Sermon on the Mount, you see Jesus, you know, talking about having anger for someone that's equivalent to murder, that we're to not even continue with our sacrifice, but leave it there at the altar and then go be reconciled to your brother.

01:40:41

So that's the idea that we see throughout the pages of the New Testament, and we should take that seriously.

01:40:47

We've got another anonymous listener who says, what advice can you give us in reference to our urgings and pleadings to those among us who refuse to enter the doors through a church again, or at least refuse to become a member of a church again, because they have been so brutally and horribly scarred and wounded mentally and emotionally and spiritually by churches that abuse, perhaps even cults, and they are just terrified of making that kind of a commitment again in fear of just a repetition of what had happened to them in the past.

01:41:28

Yeah, that's a great question. Unfortunately, that's the truth, Chris. There are many people who have been injured, who have been harmed, who have been abused in some sort of way, or just mistreated within the contract of the local church, and that could be by members of the church, or it could be by, you know, ungodly leadership.

01:41:48

But I would simply encourage the individual who's writing in this question to rethink it in this sense.

01:41:55

In other words, the beautiful thing that we call marriage and family, simply because we have some problems in our family, or we've seen other people be abused in a marriage situation, or something like that, we should not throw marriage and family out the window simply because of, you know, some sort of abuse that we've witnessed elsewhere or that we might have experienced personally.

01:42:21

So I think that we need to be cautious not to throw away something very good that God has given us simply because of really bad examples that have come into our lives or have, you know, touched us in some way.

01:42:36

Furthermore, I would simply state that the church is God's will for your life. So if you're going to prosper spiritually, you can't do that alone.

01:42:44

You can't do that without the context of a local church, and we see that, you know, time and time again where people try to isolate themselves, become the

01:42:53

Lone Ranger, or they like to sit at Starbucks and watch YouTube videos and drink a latte and call it church.

01:43:00

That's not church. And so you need to make sure that you're held accountable by congregation.

01:43:06

That's for the good of your soul. And you need to make sure that you're being fed on a weekly basis.

01:43:12

That's for the good of your soul. And you need to make sure that you're exercising the gifts that the

01:43:18

Spirit of God has given you, and that's for the good and for the glory of God and the good of another local church.

01:43:24

And so if you're isolating yourself from a church, then you can't work for the good of that church.

01:43:30

And once again, you know, just back to the previous thing about maintenance. You hear people say, well,

01:43:36

I'm just not connecting well in the church. I'm just not finding many friends in this church.

01:43:42

So I'm going to go find another church and see if I can find friends there. And what they're really saying is this. I don't feel like people like me in this church, and so I'm going to go somewhere else and just kind of hope that when

01:43:55

I walk in the door that I'm just going to be like this magnet for other members, and they're just going to just jump into my life and invite me to every social gathering or whatnot.

01:44:05

And what we need to realize is that maintenance is not just in terms of fixing the problem.

01:44:12

It also has in mind the idea of investing in friendships. And so you can't just expect that people are just going to always be inviting you over to a social, and you're going to be building these really healthy friendships.

01:44:27

You actually have to put forth the effort to engage in friendships.

01:44:33

And sometimes, you know, churches, church life can be messy. It can be difficult. There's difficult personalities in every church.

01:44:41

But shopping around to another church or hopping around to another church simply because you don't feel, you know, that you have the greatest friendships at one church, and you're hoping that when you walk in the doors of another one, it's just going to solve all the problems.

01:44:55

It's not going to solve the problem. You're going to have to work. You're going to have to engage and invest your life in that church.

01:45:03

I have told people when they have had that experience, I'm not going back there.

01:45:08

My pastor was a fraud. My pastor molested someone. The church treated me horribly during a crisis in my life.

01:45:17

You could go on and on and on. I have said to people like that, Judas did not die for your sins.

01:45:22

Jesus did. That's right. And how can you consider abandoning or denying

01:45:28

Christ because of Judas? How can you stop following Jesus because of Judas?

01:45:35

And sometimes, of course, people are just using those kinds of things as an excuse.

01:45:42

But, you know, there are other cases where there are really serious scars left on someone, but they have to keep remembering that not only do you have in a better case scenario the fact that, yeah, you have fallible people who are just still veiled in sinful flesh, and they are not operating in the fullness of perfection that people will receive in glory when they're with Christ, so you're always going to have some problem.

01:46:13

But you also have false churches. You have cults. You have horrible, sinister, and even satanic things going on.

01:46:18

But that does not give someone the justification to abandon Christ and his church altogether just because of what sinful men do.

01:46:28

Absolutely. That's very good counsel. And we have another anonymous listener who says,

01:46:36

So if someone has been at a church for years but now seems issues,

01:46:42

I think he meant sees issues, how would someone reconcile that with wanting to maintain unity?

01:46:50

When should a person leave? He mentioned a short list of when to leave a church.

01:46:56

What would that be? Thank you. Yeah, that's a good question. I would simply state that if you're in a church and you start to see problems, well, guess what?

01:47:05

There are problems in every church. And so then you have to start a triage type of approach to figure out, okay, what is an essential problem that's going to possibly cause a fracture here that's going to cause me to leave this church?

01:47:20

And I would say that on that short list would be, like, so for instance, if you sense that there's sin in the church that needs to be dealt with, and you're trying to work through and confront that sin and eventually you bring that to the attention of the elders, and it's really serious business.

01:47:39

You know, it might be open adultery in the church. It could be a number of different sins that need to be confronted.

01:47:46

But perhaps the elders, because of the individual's personality, might be one of the most wealthy people in the church or whatever else, is unwilling to follow through with biblical church discipline.

01:48:00

Then, you know, you stay and work through that process to the best of your ability, but then when you see that the leaders are just simply compromising, they're not really biblical shepherds, and you've really put forth effort and tried, then

01:48:15

I think that you have a biblical rationale to leave. But if it's just, you know, that someone stepped on your

01:48:21

Twinkie and you didn't like it and that type of thing, so you're just going to pack up your, you know, furniture and go move to another church down the road, that's not healthy.

01:48:30

And so we need to think through what that looks like. Let's now move on to commitment to the local body, and caring for one another would be obviously a first hallmark of that.

01:48:43

Yeah, I just want to say that, you know, praise God for the resurgence of Reformed theology.

01:48:50

We've heard it said before that there's been, you know, this resurgence. I wrote a book and was part of editing the book called

01:48:59

The New Calvinism, so you can pick that up on Amazon. But in that particular book, we tried to complement and to critique at the same time some of the trends of this, what we call the

01:49:13

New Calvinism movement. And so you might have some younger people that say, you know, I'm just content with my college ministry, or I'm just content with this parent church ministry, or you know,

01:49:24

I'm just content with watching YouTube videos of, you know, my favorite preacher at Starbucks or the local coffee house.

01:49:32

And so that's a tragedy when you think about what God's will is for your life. And in that particular book that we wrote, one of the chapters was by Paul Washer, and I just love what he states in that chapter that he wrote.

01:49:49

And so I'm just going to read an excerpt from that chapter, if I may. So here's what Paul Washer said. He writes the following.

01:49:56

He says, why then is she so often neglected? And he's talking about here, by the way, the local church.

01:50:03

Why then is she so often neglected and passed over? Possibly for the same reason that the typical housewife cannot compete with the supermodel or the actress on stage or screen.

01:50:15

The housewife is real, with faults and defects exposed. But the actress is made up and decorated.

01:50:23

The housewife is the stuff of everyday life. But the actress is seen only in the most attractive role and at the most spectacular moments.

01:50:33

Similarly, the local church is something that is real, exposed, and undecorated.

01:50:39

A congregation of redeemed people caught in time between the already and the not yet. New creations that are not quite fully new.

01:50:48

Pilgrims on the road to Zion, but still marred in part by the soil of Babylon.

01:50:56

The conference is different. It is filled with like -minded people, even in the most intricate nuances of the faith, and they are all appearing on their very best behavior.

01:51:06

No misunderstandings, bickering, or outbursts of immaturity. Three or four days of heaven on earth.

01:51:14

Then there are the conference speakers. They have published more books than the local pastor has read, and they are educated and eloquent, and their sermons are full of the most intricate theological wonders.

01:51:26

They appear suddenly upon the platform, speak with the lips of a seraph, and then are whisked away like Elijah in a chariot of fire.

01:51:35

But the minister of the local church knows no such glory. He lives in anonymity to the larger

01:51:41

Christian community, and yet is under the constant scrutiny of his people day after day and year after year.

01:51:49

He has three messages a week to prepare, private counseling sessions, visits to the hospital, and a constant battle with fatigue and doubt.

01:51:58

He is a shepherd guarding a handful of sheep, a lonely sentinel on a night watch, a steward who gives

01:52:05

God's servants their rations at the proper time. Like his master, he has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him.

01:52:17

For these reasons and many more unmentioned, it is not difficult to see why the young and the immature will be enamored with the conferences,

01:52:27

YouTube speakers, and the great authors and musicians of our day. But the discerning eye will see the wisdom and power of God in the local congregation and the men who faithfully serve there."

01:52:42

Wow. Wow, powerful. We have a listener, let's see here, we have

01:52:52

Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who says, since discipline is such a major function of the church that you mentioned earlier, can you go into more detail for our listeners about what is entailed typically in regard to church discipline?

01:53:07

That's a very good question. I know that I've repeated this a number of times on this show, but I do so to give more encouragement to people that they should not fear church discipline and that it is meant for their good and when it is being conducted by a loving and biblically faithful church, it is meant to be an expression of love.

01:53:29

I was under church discipline years ago because of my lapse back into alcohol abuse and it was a very serious level of alcohol abuse and could have cost me my life.

01:53:45

And I thank God for the church discipline that I received by loving pastors and I was fully restored.

01:53:51

My pastors are still close friends, even though I've moved away to a different state and they have been guests on this program.

01:54:01

In fact, you can hear my interview with Pastor Mark Grimaldi, if you type in G -R -I -M as in Michael, A -L -D as in David, I in the search engine of the podcast past shows section of ironsherpinsironradio .com,

01:54:15

you can hear me interview Mark Grimaldi on church discipline and even involving my own discipline that I had to undergo.

01:54:25

But this is meant to restore. It's meant as an act of love. It's not meant to be something that cripples somebody.

01:54:33

People should not flee the church because of fear of embarrassment or whatever.

01:54:39

They should submit to their elders and go through what they need to go through to be restored.

01:54:45

Am I right? You're absolutely right, and I think that one of the misunderstandings of church discipline is that it's just in regards to the final stage or the step of discipline, the excommunication aspect.

01:54:58

That's certainly not the case. Discipline should be happening on an ongoing basis, on a weekly basis even, just, you know, confrontation, correction, accountability among the members of the church.

01:55:10

And church discipline is not where we just walk down the hallway to the pastor's office and knock on the door and cattletail on someone in the church so that he can go take care of the problem.

01:55:20

Church discipline involves us being in one another's lives so that we're not just living and hiding out behind these large privacy fences and then assembling for church on the

01:55:30

Lord's Day and disconnected from one another. There needs to be interaction and accountability, and then in the worst of cases, when there can't be resolved, then there is a step of excommunication that happens, but that's the final step, and it's only really for the calling that individual back to repentance, and if they choose not to repent, then we don't believe that they're a genuine believer.

01:55:58

You know, we put them out of the church. That's a very serious thing, but that is for the good of our soul, and so we need to be thankful that a church would actually practice biblical, healthy church discipline.

01:56:11

Amen, and I think, again, at the risk of repeating myself, that is,

01:56:17

I think, one of the most primary reasons people do not become members of local churches, because they don't want somebody overseeing their lives and providing the discipline that they need.

01:56:28

And in every case I know, when someone has sought to maintain a faithful Christian walk outside membership in the church, they always wind up falling into serious sin, in my experience, when

01:56:38

I've witnessed it. Yeah, I think, Chris, sometimes it's not that they just don't join a church. I think that they actually join another church.

01:56:45

They might join a church that doesn't practice church. Right. Well, very briefly, can you discuss the local church transcending

01:56:54

Bible study groups, Christian ministries on the college campus, and the local coffee shop, YouTube approach to studying and worshiping

01:57:01

God? Yeah, in conclusion, Chris, thank you for having me today. I would simply just state this.

01:57:06

I know that the listeners of your show have a high view of church membership and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:57:12

I'll just simply state that it should just come as a clear reading of the

01:57:17

Bible that, you know, we're not going to see the ordinances of the church practiced at a coffee house.

01:57:24

We're not going to see church discipline engaged, you know, in a college ministry,

01:57:31

Bible study type setting. So the things that we actually need, the ordinary means of grace, if you will, the things that God has, you know, intended for us in the context of a local, tangible, visible

01:57:44

New Testament church as members who are putting ourselves, intentionally so, under not only the accountability of that church as a whole, but the accountability and the shepherding ministry of elders in a church.

01:58:00

We're not going to get that elsewhere. And so you're not going to get that in some parachurch ministry. We need the local church.

01:58:07

It is for our good. It is for God's glory. And by the way, that's a foundational element and commitment to the

01:58:14

G3 conference, is that we want to beat that drum every year. The final thing that you're going to hear in the benediction if you come to the

01:58:21

G3 this year, is that this conference comes to a close this year until next year.

01:58:27

And so now we return to the context of our local, tangible, visible New Testament church on the

01:58:34

Lord's Day. And that should just be what it's for. We can't live and be vibrant Christians in the context of a conference.

01:58:41

We need the local church. Amen. And let us not forget that when Jesus Christ appeared to Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, he said to Saul, why dost thou persecute me?

01:58:56

And he was saying that when Saul was persecuting the church, Jesus Christ had already rose and ascended into heaven when he said that.

01:59:03

So he was equating the seriousness of persecuting the church with persecuting

01:59:08

Jesus Christ himself. Therefore, if we neglect the church, we would also be neglecting

01:59:14

Christ Jesus. And I want to remind our listeners that you can go to G3conference .com

01:59:20

for more details about the conference. G3conference .com. As far as Praise Mill Baptist Church in Douglasville, Georgia, go to praisemill .com.

01:59:29

P -R -A -Y -S mill .com. Thank you, Pastor Josh, for being my guest today.

01:59:35

Thank you, everyone who listened, especially those who took the time to write. And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater