May 12, 2020 Show with Jeffrey D. Johnson on “Counterfeit Communion”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in 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, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse 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 two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are 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 Tuesday on this 12th day of May, 2020, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest,

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Jeffrey D. Johnson. He's founder of Free Grace Press and pastor of Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, home of the

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Grace Bible Institute. Today we are going to be addressing the theme Counterfeit Communion, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Jeffrey D.

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Johnson. Thanks, Chris. It's good to be back on your show and appreciate all that you do and enjoy listening to your show.

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Great to be on it. Well, privilege is all mine, brother. Well, why don't you let our listeners know about the

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Grace Bible Institute that you are a part of. Yeah, about five years ago we started teaching some of the young men in our church that felt called into the ministry, and three years ago,

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I guess it's going three to four years ago, we've decided to formalize what started out as an impromptu study to formalize it into a full -blown seminary where we're affiliated with Arts, which is an accrediting agency, and so we're in a place that we can offer credits not only for a seminary degree, but people can take our classes and transfer them over to other seminaries, if need be, so we're excited about that.

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We have a beautiful facility that we moved into, I guess, this last summer, so it's almost been about a year since we moved in.

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It's a 7 ,000, almost 8 ,000 -square -foot building with a two -story library, office spaces, a big classroom that will hold 100 people, and a small classroom that's around 25, and got a coffee shop bookstore in it.

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It's very beautiful. We're thankful for the provisions of God to basically provide us a beautiful place to train seminary students, train pastors, and we want to be pastors, training pastors, and I was talking to someone today about our seminary, and it's not just about giving a robust academic education, we want to do that.

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We also want to provide pastoral counsel and try to develop a pastoral heart in our students, and we're fortunate to have professors around the world to come and teach and be a part of our guest faculty.

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We have Tom Nettles and Michael Hinken has agreed to come, people like Sam Walter, and we've had

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Volody Balcom come and teach. We had Steve Lawson, and Steve Lawson's coming back again in a few months to teach our expository preaching, so we're blessed to have some great professors and teachers to come in, and I'm one of the teachers that teach on a regular basis, so it's a neat thing to do.

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It's a residential program, but we also have a long -distance program as well, so you don't have to actually move to Conway to be a part of the program, but many of our students are here in Arkansas.

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And now tell us about Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas. Yeah, we're celebrating our 20 -year anniversary this year.

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It started as a church plant in my living room 20 years ago, and so we're thankful for that.

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We started with 15 to 20 people, and it's been a long, hard journey.

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The first 10 years we didn't grow much, but it was, I think, a time of testing, a time of trying to be faithful with little, and the last 10 years it's been a lot of growth.

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It's been really exciting, and so we're celebrating 20 years. We're right here in the central part of the state of Arkansas.

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We're a Reformed Baptist confessional church, and so we're thankful for that.

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We moved in our new church facility about 3 years ago, and now we're, in 3 years, we're almost outgrowing that, so we have growing pains.

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But we're thankful for the Lord's adding to us and praying that the Lord keep us faithful. Much is given, much is required, so we have a lot to be stewards of.

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Amen. Well, for those of you who want to find out more about the Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, you can go to their website, gbcconway .com,

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gbcconway .com, and for the Grace Bible Institute, you can go to gracebible .institute,

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gracebible .institute, one of those newfangled websites where you don't need a .com

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or .org or .edu. Great. Well, hopefully we'll remember to repeat that information later.

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Well, communion has become a topic that has been discussed probably with more animated disagreement in recent days than it has been for a little while anyway.

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I mean, the subject of the ordinance or sacrament of communion, the Lord's Supper, that has been an issue that has always brought with it debate and persecution and execution.

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And thankfully, in this day and age, we don't see the persecution and execution anymore over that issue anyway.

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But it is an issue that really came again, returned to the forefront when the coronavirus caused a bit of a hysteria,

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I believe, and governing powers all over the United States and in other parts of the world,

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I think have overreached a bit in what they are doing and as far as restricting things, especially the worship of God's people.

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And one of the reasons why communion has come up is that there have been some folks who have begun to practice virtual communion.

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And if you could, give me your comments on that, kind of a communion service where every individual is in a separate place, namely their own home, and you have a minister who is blessing the elements while people at home who already have their own portion partake of their portion while they're in their own home.

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Tell us your thoughts on that. Yeah, to me it's kind of alarming.

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To give pastors and churches the benefit of the doubt, let's assume they have good motives and they believe, hey, communion is important and we can't meet, so let's show that we still believe it's important and let's practice this.

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Let's observe this and we definitely have spiritual communion even though we're not physically in the same room together.

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We still love one another and we're still joined together, and so why not practice some form of virtual communion?

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But what I try to point out in the article that I wrote on the subject is that there's a reason there's physical elements to be observed.

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If it was all this was was a spiritual communion, like Paul says, you know, go ahead and discipline this guy, though I'm not there present, my spirit is present with you.

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I'm there spiritually. I'm telling you what I believe needs to happen.

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You don't have to wait for me to get there for this to be done. When it comes to communion, there is this aspect of having spiritual communion with Christ, and there's this aspect that we're all united in this universal church, united to one another, but communion still has physical elements that they have to be taken, and it's not like we can do communion and say, let's just pretend you have a cup of wine in your hand.

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Let's pretend that you have a piece of bread in your hand, and we don't actually need these physical elements.

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Let's pretend, as long as we have the meaning or know what we're doing, and let's say, okay, in your right hand, let's pretend you have some bread.

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Now, this bread represents Christ. Now, let's pretend like you're eating it, and let's pretend like you're drinking it.

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Okay, though we're not physically in the same room together, let's pretend we are. Let's symbolize our local assembly, though we're not actually localizing our fellowship.

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We're not actually in a physical assembly. Let's pretend. Well, there's something that you, it's not meant to be pretended, or that there is a physical bread, there's physical wine, and we need to taste those things, and though these meanings or these elements, physical elements have spiritual meaning behind them, they have a physical element to it that needs not be neglected, and what does that physical element represent?

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What does that mean? And I think it's important to understand the doctrine of the sacraments or the ordinances.

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Why did God give those to us? It's vital to know how they're to be properly observed, and if we don't observe them with the right physical elements and in the proper way that they were given for us to observe, we're nullifying their meaning.

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We're giving it new meaning. We're prescribing to it something it wasn't meant to prescribe, and it ends up doing something it's not designed to do.

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So before we just willy -nilly this thing and just like, oh, it won't hurt to do this, let's just, why not do it?

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Let's study out the Lord's Supper, and let's find out what it means, and then after finding out what it means, what all is included, let's seek to represent its meaning the best that we can unless we destroy its meaning by observing in a way that it's not designed to be observed.

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Well, yeah, I'd like you to do that throughout the program today, is unpack what the truly biblical

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Lord's Supper is, and I know that in your article you were being critical of two extremes on opposite ends of the spectrum of belief, where you have the sacerdotal view where the sacrament of the

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Lord's Supper, the Holy Eucharist, becomes like magic, and then on the other end of the spectrum it barely has any meaning at all, which is why many churches who are now practicing the virtual worship services, and while people are in their homes, many of these churches may not really care all that much, and I'm not saying all, but many of them may not care all that much about the fact that the

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Lord's Supper is absent from their worship. It has become that trivial, a diminished view of, even farther below, the strictly memorial view.

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No, no, it's an extremely sad case that we're living in, because the

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Reformers had to deal with an over -exaltation and over... too much efficacy was placed in the sacraments.

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You know, they were placed at the center of the worship service. They were the apex of the worship service, because they believe, the

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Catholic Church believes, that it is through the ordinances or the sacraments that God automatically, by the act performed, puts grace into peoples, regardless if they have faith while partaking or not.

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It's irrespective of someone's... the Holy Spirit bringing illumination and faith and believing.

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It's going to impart faith. It's going to impart the Holy Spirit by the act of partaking of it.

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So it's this magical formula. And this is the principal means of God working, is through the

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Mass or through the sacraments. And that's why, you know, it was the central focus of the worship service.

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Everything rotated around the Mass, and it still does in the Catholic Church. Would what you're describing be known as ex -operato?

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Yes, exactly right. Which is a Latin phrase, which means it works by the act performed.

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By partaking of it, you're going to have grace, and it's going to impart faith. It's going to impart grace.

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And so it's basically, it's a re -sacrifice also.

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Another extreme danger of it. It's a Mass. It's a re -sacrificing of Christ on the altar.

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And these elements actually are turned into the physical body of Christ and the physical blood of Christ.

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And you're actually eating Christ and drinking the body of, eating the body of Christ and drinking the blood of Christ.

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And so here you have this over -exaltation of the

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Lord's Supper. It's idolatrous. It's doing idolatry. Yeah, and so we want to run from that.

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And we have often run to such an opposite extreme to that it literally means nothing.

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I mean, some churches, sadly, they only have the Lord's Supper once a year. And when they do do it, they do it on a

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Sunday night or a Wednesday night when no one's around and after a business meeting. And if people miss it, it's no big deal.

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There's no urgency to partake of the Lord's Supper, no desire to see it as a very important thing.

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I mean, it's been minimized to the point that it means nothing. And I think the people who are more prone to take communion at home, outside the local assembly,

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I think they're erring in the sense that, hey, okay, I want to do this, but it really doesn't mean much.

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And they forget the fact that people in the New Testament died because they didn't take it in the way it was prescribed to be taken.

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That there was a right way and there's a wrong way of observing the Lord's Supper.

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And I think it comes down to what does the Lord's Supper do? Do we have a right view of its...

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And when I say what does it do, I'm talking about the efficacy of the Lord's Supper. What actually takes place?

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And does it bring salvation like the Catholic Church teaches? Or does it do nothing at all like many contemporary

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Christians? I would say they believe. I don't think people have much of a theology of the

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Lord's Supper anymore. It's just practically, they show that they don't have a strong understanding of the

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Lord's Supper. So I think we need to, in this discussion, we first have to understand what does it do?

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And how does it do what it does? And that's the question that's paramount.

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What does it do? And how does it do what it does? And then that is tied up, that question, the answer to those questions is tied up to what does the

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Lord's Supper mean? Yes, and before you go into that,

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I just had one comment. I was a bit surprised that you thought the ones who had a more trivial or meaningless view of the

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Supper would be the ones to bring it home to have it in their virtual worship service.

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I would have thought that people who thought it was more essential might do that. Like for instance, the

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Roman Catholic Church will, because they have such an elevated and idolatrous understanding of the

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Lord's Supper, they will bring it to you if you're in the hospital. They will bring it to you if it's an emergency kind of a situation.

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Right, right. Even if you are separate from the body, meaning the corporate gathering of the people.

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Yeah, right. Yeah, you're right, because it's really both extremes lead to both the same error.

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You have Catholics that will separate it from the local assembly, and then you have the people who don't think much of it all separate it from the local assembly.

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Because if it loses its meaning, and we're tipping our hat a little bit about what we're about to get into, but part of its meaning, a very central part of its meaning is the local assembly.

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It's tied up. Its very meaning is tied up to the local assembly. And if you don't understand it correctly and have a balance on it, if you push it too far or if you minimize it to the other extreme, you're going to end up implementing it in ways it's not designed to be implemented.

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And taking it home and just doing it as a Christian, it becomes a

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Christian duty or a Christian individual between me and God. We've basically perverted the very intent of the

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Lord's Supper. Okay, well, what is it? What does it do?

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And how does it do what it does? Yeah. Okay, well, what does it do?

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What are the ordinary means of grace that God has given to work on earth?

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Now, God's in heaven. We're on earth. God works. We know he sent the

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Holy Spirit to work and to be with us on earth. He didn't. The Lord Jesus worked when he was here, but he left.

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And I'm not going to leave you orphans. I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is among us. So God is with us, and he's working with us.

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But how does he work is an important question. How does the Spirit do the work of salvation, sanctification, ministering to us, encouraging us, rebuking us, all these things that the

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Spirit does, but how does he do it? Well, the work of the Holy Spirit is tied up to the written word of God.

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The Spirit is one who inspired the written word of God, and it's the Spirit that illuminates the written word of God.

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So God has chosen to work on earth through a book.

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And I'm firm on this. I mean, there's a lot of people with different views of the gifts and ongoing work of the

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Holy Spirit, but I'm convinced that the Spirit works in, by, and through the

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Scriptures. And he's tied. I won't put God in a box, but I want to put the

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Spirit in the box that he put himself in. And that's the Scriptures, the word of God, that he works through, in, and by the

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Scriptures. And where there is no word, there is no

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Spirit. Where is the Spirit going to be found? It's going to be found where the word of God is found.

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That's what the reformers were strong about, sola scriptura, and the sufficiency of Scriptures, that we don't need anything else.

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The Scriptures is sufficient, but we understand that the Spirit has to use the word of God to speak in our heart.

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Now, when it's called the ordinary means of grace, the word grace, we know, means unmerited favor, but it means more than that.

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And when it comes to justification, we know it's an act of God taking place outside of us. It's a declarative work about us.

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It doesn't mean we've changed. It doesn't include anything about us. But sanctification is the idea of grace working in us.

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I am what I am, Paul says, by the grace of God. I've labored more abundantly than the rest of the apostles, but it's not me.

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It's the grace of God working in me. And Paul told us and taught us that the grace of God has appeared to all men, and it's the grace of God that teaches us to deny ungodliness and war against us.

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It's the grace of God that empowers us, if you would, to do what's right. So if we're going to live a holy life, if we're going to be sanctified, it's going to be by the grace of God coming into our lives.

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And we know that the grace of God comes to us from heaven by God. Now, it's unmerited.

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We don't deserve it. And it's still grace in that sense, but it's this power working within us. It comes to us by the written word of God through the work of the

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Holy Spirit. So if in your mind, or you're listening out there, you've got God in heaven, you've got me here on earth,

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God's going to touch me and His presence is going to be with me through this grace that comes through the

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Bible. So we have this God working on earth through the scriptures, through the

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Holy Spirit, illumination. But there's another step. There's another agent that God has chosen to use.

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And this is what, to me, is remarkable. He could just drop the

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Bible in everybody's lap, or He could, maybe, the Holy Spirit or an angel come and preach the

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Bible to us. But He's chosen the church to be the agent in which

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He works on earth. And through the instrument of humans, He's chosen the foolishness of preaching.

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I mean, God could send an angel to preach, but He doesn't. He uses human converted souls.

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You know, we've learned that in Romans. You know, how shall they hear without a preacher?

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Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. But there's just another agent that's involved, and that's the evangelist.

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That's the preacher. That without preaching, without missionaries, without the church, if you would, taking the word of God and communicating that, there's no grace.

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There's no presence of the Holy Spirit. And so here we have God coming to us through the

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Bible, through the work of the Holy Spirit, and then this second layer of God working through the means of grace is through men, women.

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And He's given the church, you know, these ordinary means of grace. He's given the church five means of grace, five ordinary means of grace, five things that He has chosen to speak through.

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All these means of grace have something to do with divine communication, that God works through communication through the word.

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And so it's preaching. It's praying. It's singing.

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And that would include fellowship, fellowship of the saints. And then in addition to all those other four, it's the ordinances, that God speaks through the ordinances, through the baptism and the

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Lord's Supper. Now why do you think the church does not identify preaching and praying and the other means of grace as ordinances as well?

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Okay, the simple answer is that the ordinances are means of grace, but preaching is not an ordinance.

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And the difference between that is that the ordinances, or if we want to call them sacraments, to me those are interchangeable words.

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Some people prefer ordinances over sacraments, but why I kind of would tend towards the word sacrament because it has, sacrament just means that which is sacred, you know, a sacred thing is all the word sacrament means, the

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Latin word. It comes from the word sacred. But the thing that separates the ordinances from the other four means of grace is the ordinances are visible signs.

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It's an illustration, the word of God through a sign. And we have, if it's the water of baptism, if it's the bread and the wine, the one cup or the one bread, these are visible, tangible signs of earthly things that have spiritual significance.

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And so preaching is not necessarily, incorporates an earthly sign, but it is a means of grace because it's divine communication brought to us.

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And so that's how I distinguish, and I think historically that's how

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Protestants have distinguished the ordinances or the sacraments from fellowship, preaching and reading the scriptures.

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I imagine those Protestants and Bible -believing

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Christians who shy away or even disdain the term sacrament is because they rightly,

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I'm not saying that the reaction is right, but they rightly want to distance themselves as far as they can from the superstitious and idolatrous understanding of the sacraments that is held by the

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Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. Yeah, yeah. And I don't blame them for that. I don't blame them for that because I withheld from saying the word sacrament many years in our church because I didn't want the church to go, okay, wait, what, are we going

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Catholic? You know, because, oh, that's very dangerous. So I would just say ordinances. And I think in many contexts that's probably the wise thing to do.

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But I also think sometimes, you know, the word ordinances, because you, again, we're trying to balance this rope.

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We don't want to go to either extreme. And one extreme is this sacrodotal system of the

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Catholic Church, which is, like you said, is a form of idolatry. And then the other extreme is this lower form of moralism where it means nothing.

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And sometimes the word ordinances is just, okay, there's just nothing to it. And so I think it's,

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I think sometimes the word sacrament kind of speaks more of its efficacy ordinances. The word ordinances doesn't have any efficacy at all.

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And so sometimes I kind of go back and forth with those words. But I think if you have, if any of your listeners are a little bit concerned about that, just interpret my language as ordinances and feel free not to use the word sacrament if that's your context.

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I wouldn't think that's wise. I just think that you shouldn't go overboard in condemning it either.

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No, that's right. And for those of my fundamentalist friends who may be listening, who may be infuriated by the acceptance of the term sacrament, don't forget

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon used that term. And most of my fundie friends love

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Charles Haddon Spurgeon, at least when they're not dwelling too much on his writings on Calvinism, which he truly cherished.

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And of course there are fundamentalists who are Calvinists as well, but many who are not.

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We have to go to our first break right now. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Jeffrey D.

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Johnson on counterfeit communion, our email address is chrisarnsen 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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Now don't go away. We'll be right back with Jeffrey D. Johnson and more on counterfeit communion right after these words from our sponsors.

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Consider restocking your pews with the NASB, and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

36:40

Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order.

36:56

O hail the power of Jesus' name.

37:03

This is Pastor Bill Sousa of Grace Church at Franklin here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

37:10

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support

37:15

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially. Grace Church at Franklin is an independent, autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

37:31

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

37:38

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

37:51

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

38:01

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org. That's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

38:09

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

38:14

Sovereign Lord God, Savior and King Jesus Christ today and always.

38:45

...of Christian books, manuscripts, and Bibles of historical significance spanning nearly a thousand years.

38:52

The mission of HBS is the preservation and public display of ancient scripture, dissemination of scripture, to provide tools equipping believers and Christian apologetics with evidence for the

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Bible's reliability, and to introduce Reformation literature and Christian art to a broader audience.

39:10

Since 2004, HBS has toured schools and churches throughout the Northeast United States, reaching thousands of believers and nonbelievers alike who are hungry for knowledge of the

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Bible. HBS's founder, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, is committed to sharing this collection along with an inspirational historical message that will captivate you and your church.

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Come journey through their website, historicalbiblesociety .org. The collection includes a complete 11th century

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Bible, an actual page of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455, the first book ever printed, the

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Geneva Bible, the 1611 King James Bible, and much, much more. Visit historicalbiblesociety .org

39:55

today. Thank you, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, for your faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

40:22

I'm Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

40:33

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

40:41

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

40:58

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

41:05

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

41:14

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

41:21

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

41:30

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

41:56

The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly changed our way of life, bringing so many uncertainties.

42:03

When will it end? Why do disasters like this happen? How do we deal with anxiety, fear, and the like?

42:10

Well, join us each Friday on the program Iron Sharpens Iron, with your host, Chris Arnson, and Pastor Joe Jacobs, as they explore

42:19

God's Word for answers to this and other of life's related issues. Tune in at firstloveradio .org,

42:27

that's firstloveradio .org, each Friday at 1 p .m.

42:33

Pacific, 4 p .m. Eastern. That's Iron Sharpens Iron on firstloveradio .org,

42:39

Fridays, 1 p .m. Pacific, 4 p .m. Eastern, to hear what the Bible has to say about pandemics and how we should respond.

42:50

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

42:58

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

43:07

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

43:13

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

43:26

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

43:33

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com. That's solid -ground -books .com

43:41

and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

43:48

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And don't forget folks, whenever you purchase books from solid -ground -books .com

44:01

you are helping Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to remain on the air. They are a primary sponsor of this program and we would likely not exist without their financial support, barring a miracle of God, of course.

44:16

So please, whenever you can, whenever you have the funds and the opportunity to purchase books, whether to edify yourself by replenishing your own library, or as gifts for others, whether they are saved or lost, because a saved person could be greatly edified by what you give to them, and a lost person could be drawn to Christ and experience eternal life with Him by the

44:48

Gospel that appears in the pages of many of these fine books published by Solid Ground Christian Books.

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So whether it's for birthdays, Father's Day coming up next month, graduation day, back to school gifts, wedding anniversaries, even bereavement gifts, consider

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Solid -Ground -Books .com Solid -Ground -Books .com and always mention that you heard about them from Chris Arnsen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

45:23

In fact, Pastor Jeffrey D. Johnson, it was Mike Gaydosch, the founder of Solid Ground Christian Books, that first introduced me to you and your ministry.

45:34

Yeah, that was many years ago. Yes, it was. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today is

45:39

Pastor Jeffrey D. Johnson, founder of Free Grace Press, and pastor of Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, home of the

45:48

Grace Bible Institute. We are discussing today counterfeit communion, and our email address is

45:54

ChrisArnsen at gmail .com ChrisArnsen at gmail .com And if you could further explore exactly what it is that the

46:05

Lord's Supper is. Yeah, the Lord's Supper, well, it is a means of grace, like we were talking about.

46:14

It's a means in which God has chosen to edify us, to speak to us, to minister to us, so it is

46:22

His presence, is present with communion. We're having communion with the

46:28

Lord Jesus Christ, and His physical body is not there, as John Calvin says. It's not like those elements turn into the body.

46:36

They represent it, but Calvin says His spiritual presence,

46:42

God is, Jesus is still God. He's still omnipresent, and He's come in a particular way to meet with us in the

46:50

Lord's Supper, so we know He's with us, and we were taking the

46:57

Lord's Supper in a particular way, and so the Lord's Supper is a means which God ministers to us and speaks to us through symbols, through object lessons, and so here we have bread, and we have wine, and they represent three things, and most people,

47:18

Chris, most people only have two things that it represents. Now, one of the things I put in the article that I think is so important, and I teach ecclesiology in our seminary, and I go over this and over this.

47:30

When it comes to the ordinances, I say the efficacy is in their meaning. It means nothing.

47:38

I mean, it does nothing. It will not help us at all if we get the meaning wrong, because one of the things that ties all the means to grace together to make them work is that they come to us through our cognitive understanding.

47:53

Without understanding truth, there's no edification. There's no

47:58

God's not speaking to us. He's not working in us. He's not ministering to us. There's no grace without the mind being engaged, and so when, if we just passed out elements, here's some bread, here's some wine, and we didn't say what they meant, we didn't give meaning to the symbols, they would be empty symbols that would do nothing.

48:19

We would be wasting our time. You know, if you preached a sermon but didn't communicate, you just, you know, mouth, you know, words that meant nothing, or if you spoke in tongues there was no interpretation, it is of no value unless there could be a cognitive understanding, and God speaks through the mind to the heart.

48:41

Well, that's how the means of grace work. So here we have object lessons that speak to us.

48:49

We need to know the meaning behind these objects, and only by the meaning will they actually be efficacious.

48:57

Only will we be built up in our most holy faith and be nourished and encouraged and actually experience the presence of God through the mind.

49:11

And so we have to know what they mean. And that's so important in this debate when it comes to how are they to be properly observed.

49:19

We do this at home, it's only in the church service, this virtual communion, it comes down to this, what does it mean?

49:27

And as a Baptist, we can flip the conversation to baptism.

49:33

As a Baptist, I think immersion is important because it means something.

49:39

Immersion actually communicates something, the act of burying the person underwater where the person becomes hidden or immersed, where no longer do you see that person, where sprinkling doesn't, you know, can't communicate that.

49:56

It doesn't communicate that because the person's never hidden, it's never, if you would, buried.

50:02

And we learned in Romans 6 that baptism speaks of a burying or you've been baptized into Christ or you've been immersed into Christ, you've been hidden into Christ where you're no longer there.

50:14

Like Jeff Johnson is gone, that old man is dead, he's been buried. And the way you do it, the method in which you carry this out communicates something and it communicates truth and without that truth being communicated, there's no efficacy.

50:34

And so that's why we believe baptism, our immersion as Baptists, is vital to carry out its meaning, its efficacy.

50:43

Well, the Lord's Supper also has meaning and we need to know what does it mean?

50:49

What does the bread represent? What does the cup represent? And there's a third meaning, we all know it represents

50:57

Christ in His body. We also know that it represents, these are the things that get covered typically in most churches, is

51:06

I do this as often as in remembrance of me, those words. So it's a memorial.

51:12

Now it's more than a memorial, but it's nothing less than a memorial. So one of the meaning of it is we're looking back into time.

51:20

We're looking at a historical event where Christ physically died, was buried, and rose again. We're looking back at His death, and that He died with a body.

51:30

It wasn't Him just coming as a spirit and suffering. He suffered in the flesh.

51:36

He took on our flesh, and that flesh suffered and died, and we remember that. So it speaks of what

51:42

Christ has done. That's one of the meanings. And most people will amen that.

51:49

Those who are taking Communion at home will amen that. Oh yes, that's what it means. In fact, before you go to any other meetings, we've got to go to our midway break.

52:00

So if anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, send us an email to chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

52:10

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. And please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

52:21

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

52:27

Let's say you disagree with your own pastor or your own congregation, at least the majority in your congregation, over something we're saying today.

52:38

Well, obviously, that would be a good reason to be anonymous. Perhaps you're even a pastor, and you disagree with your denomination or your fellow elders on this issue.

52:49

I obviously understand that you'd want to remain anonymous. And there could be other reasons as well that make sense.

52:56

But please, if it's just a general question, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

53:07

USA. And please, I first of all ask of you for your patience during this break.

53:13

It's the longer than normal break that we have. And that's because Grace Life Radio 90 .1

53:21

FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show because they have to follow

53:30

FCC regulations and localize Iron Trump and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida.

53:38

So while they air their own public service announcements, we air our globally heard commercials.

53:45

And therefore, please make a note of as much of the content of the information in the ads as you possibly can so that you can more successfully and more frequently respond to these ads.

54:07

Because remember, folks, we depend upon our advertisers to exist. So write that information down and patronize our advertisers.

54:17

And also send in those questions to Jeffrey D. Johnson, to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

54:23

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

54:40

Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes Solid Rock Remodeling to our family of sponsors. Serving South Central Pennsylvania, Solid Rock Remodeling is focused on discovering, understanding, and exceeding your expectations.

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55:52

Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

56:00

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

56:12

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

56:21

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet God has raised

56:28

Chris up for just such a time. And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

56:37

I'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

56:43

Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

56:51

I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

56:58

where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.

57:27

A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey pastored by Alan Dunn.

57:37

Grace Covenant Baptist Church believes it's God's prerogative to determine how he shall be worshipped and how he shall be represented in the world.

57:45

They believe churches need to turn to the Bible to discover what to include in worship and how to worship

57:51

God in spirit and truth. Grace Covenant Baptist Church endeavors to maintain a

57:56

God -centered focus. Reading, preaching, and hearing the Word of God, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, baptism and communion are the scriptural elements of their corporate worship performed with faith, joy, and sobriety.

58:10

Discover more about Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey at gcbcnj .squarespace

58:19

.com That's gcbcnj .squarespace .com

58:26

Or call them at 908 -996 -7654 That's 908 -996 -7654

58:35

Tell Pastor Dunn that you heard about Grace Covenant Baptist Church on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

58:53

Every day at thousands of community centers, high schools, middle schools, juvenile institutions, coffee shops, and local hangouts,

59:02

Long Island Youth for Christ staff and volunteers meet with young people who need Jesus. We are rural and urban, and we are always about the message of Jesus.

59:11

Our mission is to have a noticeable spiritual impact on Long Island, New York by engaging young people in the lifelong journey of following Christ.

59:19

Long Island Youth for Christ has been a stalwart bedrock ministry since 1959. We have a world -class staff and a proven track record of bringing consistent love and encouragement to youths in need all over the country and around the world.

59:33

Help honor our history by becoming a part of our future. Volunteer, donate, pray, or all of the above.

59:40

For details, call Long Island Youth for Christ at 631 -385 -8333.

59:47

That's 631 -385 -8333. Or visit liyfc .org.

59:56

That's liyfc .org. That's liyfc .org.

01:00:29

That's liyfc .org. That's liyfc .org.

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That's liyfc .org. That's liyfc .org. That's liyfc .org. That's liyfc .org.

01:01:22

That's liyfc .org. That's liyfc .org. Iron Trumpets Iron Radio on the air.

01:01:32

Pastors, are your pew bibles tattered and falling apart? Consider restocking your pews with the

01:01:38

NASB and tell the publishers you heard about them from Chris Arnzen on Iron Trumpets Iron Radio.

01:01:45

Go to nasbible .com. That's nasbible .com to place your order.

01:01:59

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach, and debate at numerous venues, some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the

01:02:14

Brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church, now located at their new beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

01:02:21

I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

01:02:30

New York debates. I do not hesitate to highly recommend Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island to anyone who wants to be accurately taught, discipled, and edified by the

01:02:40

Holy Scriptures, and to be surrounded by truly loving and caring brothers and sisters in Christ.

01:02:46

I also want to congratulate Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham for the recent appointment of Pastor Rich Jensen's co -elder,

01:02:52

Pastor Christopher McDowell. For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

01:02:59

That's hopereformedli .net, or call 631 -696 -5711.

01:03:06

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island that you heard about them from James White on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:03:21

This is Andrew Rappaport with Striving for Eternity Ministries. Are you cooped up at home?

01:03:27

Are you just desiring to use your time wisely? Well, Justin Peters and I got together and realized that our calendars were cleared because of COVID -19.

01:03:37

So we decided we would get together and do our Snatch Them from the Flames Seminar Home Edition.

01:03:44

That's right, a free seminar May 30th from 10 a .m. to 6 p .m.

01:03:50

Eastern Time. We're going to give you a free seminar that you can take at home. We're going to cover the topics of the sufficiency of Scripture, interpreting

01:03:59

Scripture, discerning false teachers, identifying false teachers, and then a Q &A.

01:04:05

Get all the details at strivingforeternity .org, and there you can go to the online events to register before May 30th, and we'll see you there online in your home.

01:04:25

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, Give yourself unto reading. The man who never reads will never be read.

01:04:33

He who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men's brains proves he has no brains of his own.

01:04:41

You need to read. Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and book distributor who takes these words of the

01:04:47

Prince of Preachers to heart. The mission of Solid Ground Christian Books is to bring back treasures of the past to minister to Christians in the present and future, and to publish new titles that address burning issues in the church and the world.

01:05:00

Since its beginning in 2001, Solid Ground has been committed to publish God -centered, Christ -exalting books for all ages.

01:05:08

We invite you to go treasure hunting at solid -ground -books .com.

01:05:13

That's solid -ground -books .com, and see what priceless literary gems from the past to present you can unearth from Solid Ground.

01:05:22

Solid Ground Christian Books is honored to be a weekly sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly changed our way of life, bringing so many uncertainties.

01:05:38

When will it end? Why do disasters like this happen? How do we deal with anxiety, fear, and the like?

01:05:45

Well, join us each Friday on the program Iron Sharpens Iron with your host, Chris Arnzen and Pastor Joe Jakowicz, as they explore

01:05:54

God's Word for answers to this and other of life's related issues. Tune in at firstloveradio .org,

01:06:02

that's firstloveradio .org, each Friday at 1 p .m.

01:06:07

Pacific, 4 p .m. Eastern. That's Iron Sharpens Iron on firstloveradio .org,

01:06:14

Friday's 1 p .m. Pacific, 4 p .m. Eastern, to hear what the Bible has to say about pandemics and how we should respond.

01:06:32

Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I would like to introduce you to my good friends

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Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS, which stands for Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

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Todd and Patty specialize in supplying Reformed and Puritan books and Bibles at discount prices that make them affordable to everyone.

01:06:53

Since 1987, the family owned and operated book service has sought to bring you the best available

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Christian books and Bibles at the best possible prices. Unlike other book sites, they make no effort to provide every book that is available because, frankly, much of what is being printed is not worth your time.

01:07:11

That means you can get to the good stuff faster. It also means that you don't have to worry about being assaulted by the pornographic, heretical, and otherwise faith -insulting material promoted by the secular book vendors.

01:07:24

Their website is CVBBS .com. Browse the pages at ease, shop at your leisure, and purchase with confidence as Todd and Patty work in service to you, the

01:07:35

Church, and to Christ. That's Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at CVBBS .com.

01:07:42

That's CVBBS .com. Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

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And don't forget, folks, you can call CVBBS .com at their toll -free number, 800 -656 -0231, 800 -656 -0231.

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You can call that number Monday through Friday between 10 a .m. and 4 .30 p .m. Eastern Time.

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Those are the only days and hours that phone line is manned and there is no voicemail. So call

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Monday through Friday, 10 a .m. to 4 .30 p .m. Eastern Time at 800 -656 -0231.

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Always mention that you heard about CVBBS, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, from Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

01:08:32

Well, before we return to our guest, Jeffrey D. Johnson, we just have a couple of announcements to make.

01:08:40

First of all, tomorrow, that is Wednesday, the 13th of May, we have, after a long absence, returning to my program, one of our key sponsors of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio, Daniel P.

01:08:56

Buttafuoco, attorney at law. And Dan is going to be addressing his ministry, the

01:09:04

Historical Bible Society. And he basically, this is a fascinating thing that he does.

01:09:11

He has a vast collection of very rare and very valuable

01:09:17

Bibles and Christian books of antiquity, some even dating back prior to the

01:09:24

Reformation. And he travels on the East Coast to churches, schools, and parachurch ministries to put these

01:09:35

Bibles and books on display. And he gives a presentation, an absolutely fascinating presentation, on how we received the

01:09:44

Bible in the English language. And I've seen him do this probably 10 times, and I've never been bored by it.

01:09:52

I am always riveted to what he's saying. So that is actually the theme of the show, how we received the

01:10:00

Bible in the English language on Wednesday. That's tomorrow, Wednesday, May 13th.

01:10:07

On Thursday, the 14th, we have returning to the program, all the way from Northern Ireland, Angus Stewart.

01:10:16

And we did not yet pick out a theme, but we will let you know what our topic will be as soon as possible.

01:10:24

Then on Friday, Pastor Joe Jakowitz of Christ Bible Church in Pleasanton, California, returns to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to continue his weekly coronavirus update, and also providing biblical application that the body of Christ should follow in response to these updates that we hear.

01:10:49

And so that's the remainder of the week. And this is the last part of my commentary before Pastor Jeffrey D.

01:11:03

Johnson, before he returns to be interviewed.

01:11:08

This is my least favorite part of the program. I really despise this part of the program, but it's a necessary part of the program.

01:11:18

We need your help financially. If you want this program to remain on the air, and you have extra funds, then please consider sharing some of those funds with us, because we are in urgent need of them.

01:11:36

As I always try to remember to remind you, I never want anybody to siphon money away from their regular giving that they're accustomed to, to their local church, in order to give to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:11:50

Please never do that, especially during this coronavirus hysteria that's going on, and many churches have been hit extremely hard financially.

01:11:59

So please, especially if your church is one of them, don't siphon money away from them to give to us.

01:12:07

And please don't put your own family in financial jeopardy either by giving to us.

01:12:15

But if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands, providing for your church and home, then we would love to receive financial gifts, and we are in urgent need of them.

01:12:31

You may have extra money because you're not going out to dinner. You're not going to concerts.

01:12:36

You're not going to the movies. You're not going to theatrical performances.

01:12:42

You're not going to Bible conferences. You're not going to your favorite sporting events, and you may have extra money.

01:12:48

Well, please, can you share some of that with us if you love the show? And if you don't love the show, I'm not sure why you're listening.

01:12:54

But if you love the show and you don't want us to disappear, please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:13:00

click support, then click click to donate now. You could donate instantly with a debit or credit card, and you can also send in a check via snail mail to the address that appears on the screen when you click support.

01:13:17

And I just ask of you folks to pray for us.

01:13:25

Pray that we get more donors coming in and more advertisers. If you want to advertise with us, then just send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:13:40

chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put advertising in the subject line. Also, if you are not a member of a

01:13:48

Bible -believing church, and you're not even prayerfully looking for one, please rectify that situation immediately.

01:13:56

I may be able to help you find a church because I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world, and I have helped many people find churches that they have joined, or where they have visited when they're on vacation, or where they have recommended their friends and family and loved ones attend when they do not have a church of their own.

01:14:16

So please send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com, and put I need a church in the subject line.

01:14:23

By the way folks, I do want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart who have been answering my

01:14:29

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01:14:39

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01:14:54

But she has broken all records with financial giving on I Am Drippin' Zion Radio, and I thank

01:15:01

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01:15:08

Thank you so much. And all of you who have been giving regularly, some of you have been longtime supporters, some of you have been brand new supporters.

01:15:19

I thank God for all of you, because this show could not exist without you. And if you have a question for our guest,

01:15:28

Pastor Jeffrey D. Johnson, on our subject Counterfeit Communion, send us an email now at chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

01:15:36

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And if you could, before we take any listener call,

01:15:44

Pastor Jeff, if you could pick up where you left off on the meaning of the

01:15:50

Lord's Supper. Yeah, so the first meaning we discussed was it reminds us of the death of Christ, and the other two meanings flow from that.

01:16:01

That's the principal meaning, is the root meaning behind the other two. So it is a priority of that meaning.

01:16:08

We're principally being reminded through these symbols of Christ's death that He physically, that's the physical elements, that He physically died, that He physically rose again for our salvation, that we stand right before Him because of a demand

01:16:25

Jesus Christ to not abide. But it also speaks of the future marriage supper of the

01:16:34

Lamb, that we're going to one day eat physically, have a meal with the

01:16:40

Lord Jesus. He says, I'm not going to taste of this until, you know, taste in the kingdom of heaven.

01:16:46

There's this anticipation, do this as long as you do this in remembrance of me.

01:16:52

And it's just like we're to do this as an ongoing ordinance until the end, until we actually, in the presence of Jesus Christ, eat with Him.

01:17:03

I don't know what that's going to look like, I don't understand heaven totally, but I do know we're going to have a resurrected body, and Christ will have

01:17:10

His resurrected body, and there's going to be, it appears, some feast where we're going to have the final

01:17:18

Lord's Supper, if you would, this great celebration of heaven, of having eternal communion and fellowship with Christ.

01:17:28

And, you know, the Lord's kind of arranged for fellowship to take place around meals, uh, having a meal, you invite people over your house, often there's a meal involved, you go on a date with someone, you take them to a restaurant, meals are just part of the cultural identity of interacting with people, and fellowshipping, and talking, you know, you eat with people you care about, not the people you don't care.

01:17:55

So meals speaks of fellowship, and we're looking for that one day, a taste of heaven.

01:18:01

And so I believe when we have communion, we're having a down payment, if you would, a little sampling, a little, you know, appetizer, if you would, of the future wedding supper.

01:18:17

And what a beautiful thing that is. Oh, it's the closest thing to heaven there is than having the

01:18:24

Lord's Supper with the saints on earth. It's the closest thing we have of it, and where there's real love and companionship, and it's not just fellowship with Christ, it's fellowship with the saints.

01:18:34

And that leads me to the third meaning, and this is where having the

01:18:40

Lord's Supper remain in the congregation, within the assembled saints, is vital.

01:18:47

Because the command is, when you assemble together, the Lord's Supper is attached to those words, when you assemble, when you come together, as Paul says, as a church.

01:18:58

Coming together is part of what a church does. It's a central part of what the church is. It visibly comes together and has communion together, not just in this spiritual sense, but you're actually face -to -face with people, and you're rubbing shoulders with people, and you're having this assembled saint.

01:19:17

And that's why Paul identifies communion as, with the words, one bread, one cup.

01:19:25

We partake of a single nourishment, where there's one cup, and that one cup obviously speaks about the one

01:19:36

Savior that we have, there's one Jesus that we all partake of. But the

01:19:43

Apostle Paul makes it clear what that one bread symbolizes, what that represents, the one cup represents.

01:19:50

It represents the assembly of the saints, that we're having communion with one another because of and based on our communion with Jesus Christ.

01:20:01

So our external communion with the body of Christ is based upon the fact that Jesus died for us and paid for our sins and united us together with Him and with one another.

01:20:13

And I think that's a vital part of what Christianity is and the Christian life is and the church is.

01:20:19

I tell our students in ecclesiology, you don't understand

01:20:24

Christianity if you don't understand the church. And the church is not just something added to the

01:20:29

Christian life, it's a vital part of the very makeup of the Christian identity, that we're not just me, myself, and I with the

01:20:38

Lord. It's not just this, you know, personal relationship, though it is that. No doubt you have your personal relationship that's incommunical, your prayer calls it, it is that.

01:20:49

But that's not all that it is. There's, in addition to being united to Christ, this is being united to the rest of the body of Christ that is manifested and lived out in the local church setting.

01:21:03

And we are one another, we are actually members of one another, and this is the body.

01:21:10

This is the church, it's the body of Christ. And the Bible says for us, when we take the

01:21:16

Lord's Supper, to be careful that we do it properly. And part of that, doing it properly, is discerning the

01:21:26

Lord's body. And we know that in Corinth, first century, that many people were sick, others had died, because they were not discerning the

01:21:37

Lord's body. Now do you think that that happens today? I think we need to be worried that it will happen today.

01:21:46

I don't know of any case that it has happened, but I could imagine if it has happened, we're not, we're so slow to take the

01:21:56

Bible seriously, we would chalk it up to some other cause. And we would be slow to recognize the fact that, hey, we're not really treating the

01:22:07

Lord's body with discernment. And so, I mean, if it weren't happening today, how would we know it?

01:22:16

Because we have such a low view of the Lord's Supper, we wouldn't even look at that as a possible factor.

01:22:23

Right, and of course, the biblical writers were writing things that were

01:22:29

God -breathed, so they obviously knew from divine revelation that...

01:22:37

But the warning is for all of us. That's the thing we should take, is from this, look how serious it was.

01:22:44

Now, Ananias and Sapphira, they were killed on the spot, does that happen all the time? No, it doesn't happen. I'll thank the

01:22:49

Lord it doesn't, but at the same time, it did the early church good to see how serious the worship of God is, and how serious the church is.

01:22:59

And it may be a judgment upon the church that God doesn't do that, and allows the church to continue on in kind of a disrespectful fashion, and just kind of like a low view of worship, a low view of the church, a low view of God.

01:23:16

It may be more of a judgment for God just to not put some soberness in us.

01:23:24

But I do think every church should take this seriously, and be reminded of the fact that people have died because they didn't take this seriously.

01:23:35

And so what does it mean to discern the Lord's body? Well, remember the elements represent the body of Christ, and now

01:23:46

Christ's body is in heaven, but his spiritual body is still on earth.

01:23:52

The church is the body of Christ, so discerning the Lord's body includes discerning the elements that what we're doing, that we're right with God, but it also means discerning the saints, the assembly of the saints, the church, discerning the body.

01:24:08

And here's the crux of my article, and the crux of why you shouldn't take the

01:24:14

Lord's Supper at home, is that what was going on in the first century in the

01:24:20

Church of Corinth, they were taking the Lord's Supper when they gathered together, but they were breaking apart into smaller groups, fragmenting themselves, and they would, one group would have enough, they were making it into a meal, making it into, they were, you know, eating mashed potatoes and gravy and corn on the cob, and all these other things.

01:24:46

They were making it into a meal, which is not meant to be a meal. It's meant to be something, it's an ordinance, it's not meant to be this big meal they had.

01:24:56

And we know that because they said, listen, if you want to eat, you can eat at home. If it's about physical food and nourishment, you've got a home to do that in.

01:25:04

But when you come together, you know, this is not about just pigging out, you know, it's not about just eating, getting all, you know, full on food.

01:25:14

It's not what this is for. If you do that at home, that's fine. And if you want to have, you know, a few friends over, you can do that at home.

01:25:22

But when you come together as a church, discern the Lord's body, and make sure that everybody has enough, and basically the exhortation is, do this together, because it symbolizes, it represents our unity, our oneness, and our physical fellowship together.

01:25:43

And how does that communicate it, if you're doing it at home?

01:25:49

It's like, you know, it's if baptism represents being buried into Christ, and the old man dying, and the new man being resurrected with Christ.

01:26:00

And that is perfectly symbolically displayed through baptism, through immersion into water, and coming out of that water.

01:26:09

If that's a great picture of the spiritual reality, then it matters, the mode of baptism.

01:26:16

And all of a sudden the mode of baptism is very important, because the truth is in its efficacy. The truth is in how you communicate this.

01:26:26

And so if one of the major truths of the Lord's Supper is our physical union, and unity, and fellowship with the saints together in one place, if that is one of the, that we are actually having communion together with Christ Jesus, it's not just symbolizes it, but it also facilitates real fellowship.

01:26:47

If that's what it communicates, then how does that communicate that if you're away from the church by yourself?

01:26:56

How does it represent that? It, all of a sudden, it turns the meaning to mean something else, and it's the very meaning, which is this efficacy it's tied up to, it becomes, like I say, a counterfeit ordinance, and loses all of its power and importance, meaning becomes something it's not intended to do, and thus we should abstain from taking the ordinances at home.

01:27:28

They're not private ordinances, they're church ordinances. Well, we have a listener who is remaining anonymous, who asks, typically in a

01:27:38

Reformed Baptist Church, you will hear the elders, before they start distributing the elements of the

01:27:46

Supper, warn those who are in attendance that they should not partake of the

01:27:54

Supper unless they are baptized, where the difference between Reformed Baptist churches come into play is that many will offer the

01:28:06

Supper to Presbyterians who are present, even if they have only been baptized as infants, whereas that is not baptism, and therefore you have some others, probably a minority of Reformed Baptists, that would prefer their

01:28:23

Presbyterian brethren, as much as they cherish them, not partake in the Supper. How do you respond to this difference?

01:28:31

Yeah, that's an important debate in the 17th century Reformed Baptist. You have John Bunyan, who was more amicable for Presbyterians to take the

01:28:41

Lord's Supper in his church, and he made exceptions, and Bunyan got a lot of flack for this, that you could take communion before baptism if baptism was something you intended to do as soon as possible.

01:28:57

So let's say if you're there doing a baptism service once a year and the Lord saved you, and you've got eight months before that baptism service is going to take place, with examination you could go ahead and partake, knowing that you'd be baptized for a sustainable chance or opportunity.

01:29:14

That was Bunyan's position. A lot of the other Reformed Baptists kind of opposed that and said, no, you should wait.

01:29:20

Baptism is your entrance into the church, and therefore it's the first ordinance, and the

01:29:27

Lord's Supper follows. And the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith was written in a way that it leans,

01:29:36

I think, towards my personal opinion, it leans towards the baptism first, but it allows a little toleration that, hey, this is a difficult subject.

01:29:48

There's room for differences of opinion to what degree we take here. I think all positions would want to hold, at least

01:29:55

I think the thing you want to hold is that baptism is not something that you can neglect.

01:30:04

It's something that's model, and I've always taken a stronger stance at our church that even though I want

01:30:11

Presbyterian brothers that can't find a good Presbyterian church to attend, I always would want them to, hey, if there's another

01:30:17

Presbyterian church that's like -minded, you should attend there, but if you can't, we would like for you to come.

01:30:23

You're our brothers, you're our sisters, you're welcome to fellowship with us, you're welcome to be a part of us, but it's hard.

01:30:33

We believe that baptism is a church ordinance that we're commanded to follow up or commanded to do, so that's a very difficult debate, and I'm sympathetic to both sides.

01:30:50

I tend to lean towards being on the conservative side for safety, just to be safe.

01:30:56

What would be wrong with just after giving that warning that only baptized believers and members of churches in good standing can partake, you leave it up to the consciences of those in the room?

01:31:14

Because that's typically what we do anyway. I've never seen the elements of the supper taken away from someone.

01:31:25

Yeah, right. We've had Presbyterians in our church take on the ordinance, and we haven't purveyed that.

01:31:31

We fence the table, we verbally fence the table. The only way I think we would do more than a verbal fencing is if we had someone under church discipline, and they came, and we saw that they were going to take it, we would, you know, the men that pass out the elements, we would make sure that they did not get this.

01:31:54

That would be the only time that we would go more than that. But the verbal fencing that we have, of course, there's a talk in our ecclesiology class that there's closed communion, and there's closed communion

01:32:08

A, closed communion B, there's a conservative and kind of more of a liberal position, then there's closed communion, and there's a conservative -liberal position in that, then there's open communion, and there's a conservative -liberal position in that.

01:32:21

So there's just this wide range of how to fence the table, or do you fence the table at all? And we take that middle approach where we verbally fence the table that we're asking you to even baptize, you're a member of our church in good standings, or you're pursuing church membership.

01:32:39

We invite you to partake of the Lord's Supper with us, that you examine your conscience, and if you're right with God, and you have nothing wrong with anything between you and God, nor anyone else, feel free to partake of the

01:32:52

Lord's Supper as our guest. And that's a verbal fencing, but let's say you have someone visiting your church, and they're not a member of a church, they haven't been a member of church, they don't want to join a church, and all of a sudden, you know, we're opening up the table.

01:33:11

I think, how do they represent being in communion with God's people if they're not in communion?

01:33:18

It's a lie. They're saying one thing with their actions, and denying it by their actions.

01:33:24

It would be like someone who has no faith in Christ knowingly wanting to be baptized.

01:33:30

It's like, that's a lie. You're not following the Lord, so you're miscommunicating. And so that's the way we do it.

01:33:38

We fence it, we tell people the danger that they're in, but only they can read their conscience.

01:33:43

We're not going to micromanage their conscience, and examine themselves, and then know that some people get deathly ill for taking this in a way that's not in a proper way.

01:33:59

So it's a serious thing, but it's also a joyful thing, because it's a foretaste of heaven.

01:34:05

And it should be the crowning moment of our week to be able to have communion with Christ, with his bride.

01:34:15

Yes, and there are some who take the really strict view of closed communion, where if you're not a member of that congregation, if you're a visitor, you cannot partake.

01:34:25

Right, right. That's the strictest form of closed communion. Then there's the, you know, the close communion slash close, where you have to be of the same denomination, or the same affiliation of churches.

01:34:37

Then you're, I guess, if you're a Presbyterian, you know, if you're a Baptist Church Presbyterian, or you're a

01:34:43

Methodist, you're forbidden. So there's just this gradual degree of how close do you fence, or how tight do you fence the supper.

01:34:53

And then all the way up to this loose, open communion, to the point of embodying unbelievers to partake of it, as well as believers.

01:35:02

That's become the stream on the other end, which is very dangerous. We have

01:35:07

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, the constant

01:35:13

Roman Catholic claim is that the Church, going back to the

01:35:19

Last Supper, has always taught and practiced transubstantiation.

01:35:26

And they will use as some extra biblical proof that nearly all of the

01:35:32

Church Fathers believed in the real presence of Christ in the supper.

01:35:39

However, I have since learned from Protestant apologists that there is a difference between the real presence and actual transformation of the elements into flesh and blood.

01:35:53

Can you explain the difference between that? Yeah, I mean,

01:35:59

Calvin was really good to explain the fact that Christ is really present.

01:36:05

It's not just mere memorialism. You know, if you go to a grave, tombstone, you're looking at someone's memory, and maybe their bones are present, but they're not, you know, they're not present.

01:36:16

They're not there. And they're absent. But there's a memory that's there.

01:36:22

And that's how they're present. They're only present in the memory. They're there in my mind, but not in the body or there actually.

01:36:32

Well, here we have Christ has gone to heaven, and we're going to have communion with Him. How is

01:36:38

He present on earth? Some early Church Fathers, like you said, understood that Christ is actually there.

01:36:46

But does that mean He's physically there? Well, for Him to be physically there would have to deny the humanity of Jesus Christ.

01:36:57

And it's a heresy. The early Church established that it's a heresy to say that the humanity of Christ took on divine attributes.

01:37:06

So the early Church that separated, understood the importance of one person, two natures.

01:37:11

And we separate the natures of Christ. There's a divine nature, there's a human nature. And He cannot be present in His human nature,

01:37:19

His physical body, because that is in heaven. And a physical body can only be in one place at one time, unless it takes on, you know, some divine attribute.

01:37:30

And it destroys the fact that Jesus is the resurrected man. That's where the Catholic Church went into heresy, basically by saying that Christ's physical body is everywhere the mass is located around the globe.

01:37:46

And that just takes divine attributes for that to happen. Where Calvin says, listen, it's not just humanity that's present, it's

01:37:53

His deity that's present. Jesus is the God -man, and in His deity

01:38:00

He is actually, literally, you could say literally there, not physically, but He's literally present with the

01:38:09

Church in communion. And we can experience Christ through the

01:38:16

Word of God being properly proclaimed, and in the ordinance being properly explained.

01:38:21

He is there. It's not just a memorial. I'm not at the empty tomb, you know, a grave, which is just a memorial tombstone where I keep in my mind.

01:38:30

No, He's more than here in my mind. He's actually in the Church building. He's actually with us.

01:38:39

But He's with us in His divine nature, not His human nature. Well, we have to go to our final break right now, and I'm going to ask you a question before we go to that break, a listener question, and you can answer it when we return.

01:38:56

John in Bangor, Maine wants to know, I have witnessed more and more Reformed churches switching from grape juice as one of the elements in the supper to fermented wine.

01:39:09

They take it, typically, very seriously. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this, and we'll have you answer that question from Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, when we come back.

01:39:21

If anybody else wants to join us with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:39:29

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages.

01:39:37

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If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

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Law Journal. If you have a serious personal injury or medical malpractice claim in any state,

01:48:39

I recommend that you call Dan. Consultations are free. There is no fee unless you win.

01:48:46

Dan Buttafuoco's number is 1 -800 -669 -4878. 1 -800 -669 -4878.

01:48:54

Or email me for Dan's contact information at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:49:00

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And don't forget,

01:49:06

Dan Buttafuoco is our guest tomorrow, representing his ministry, the Historical Bible Society, and he's going to be discussing how we received our

01:49:17

Bible in the English language. So make sure you mark your calendar or put a post -it note on the refrigerator or on your computer screen or wherever else you will more than likely see it, and join us for that discussion, which

01:49:31

I'm sure will be fascinating. We are now back to the final segment of our interview today with Pastor Jeffrey D.

01:49:38

Johnson, founder of Free Grace Press, and pastor of Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, home of the

01:49:45

Grace Bible Institute. We are discussing counterfeit communion. And before the break,

01:49:51

I have noticed the same thing that my guest has brought up, not my guest,

01:49:59

I'm sorry, that our listener brought up, that there are more and more Reformed churches that seem to be gravitating and switching over to fermented wine in the supper, and I personally don't have any problem with that at all, but I at the same time believe that those of us who are in churches that use unfermented wine or grape juice are not in any kind of violation of the scriptures by doing so.

01:50:31

But what's your thoughts on that? Yeah, well, you love the NASB, and so do

01:50:37

I, because the NASB is a very literal, accurate translation of the

01:50:44

Word of God. Now, I may personally put the NASB as just the most literal translation in that sense, the translation that we would want to use.

01:50:54

I wouldn't say that other translations are unfaithful.

01:50:59

Now, there are some translations you would want to stay away from, like the Message and many other things. Look at them as a paraphrase and maybe sometimes even as an interpretation or commentary rather than an accurate translation.

01:51:12

Translation matters. When it comes to wine or grape juice,

01:51:22

I think it does matter that we seek to be as faithful as we can because the context, the object does communicate.

01:51:30

This does represent the blood of Christ, and so it does communicate something. I wouldn't want to use a soda pop or Dr.

01:51:37

Pepper or just go, you know, water or just Kool -Aid or just anything because we're having a reverence towards this thing.

01:51:46

It's not just a, you know, Dr. Pepper and a Ritz Cracker. There's more to it than that.

01:51:53

This represents something. But like you, our church uses grape juice because of the sensitive conscience of meaning, especially being in the

01:52:05

Bible Belt. We don't take the fact that the wine is wrong.

01:52:11

In fact, many Reformed Baptist churches are good with drinking in moderation, and that would be my position.

01:52:19

I want to be sensitive to the weakness of conscience of others, and for that reason, we believe that grape juice is still a good representation of the blood of Christ.

01:52:31

And doesn't the original Greek word merely mean fruit of the vine, which could be fermented or unfermented wine?

01:52:40

Right, right. You know, on that,

01:52:46

I would say my position is that, you know, when the Bible speaks of wine, it's typically speaking of fermented juice, you know, and to what degree was it fermented,

01:52:58

I'm not for sure. But there's a lot of abuse of alcohol, and there's a lot of sensitive conscience towards this drink that could easily be misused and often is misused, and so I think the church is wise.

01:53:16

Churches are wise to be sensitive there. And in fact, the

01:53:22

Didache, the early church, the Didache was one of the earliest books that we have, books that we have that talk about the early church worship, and they preferred baptism to be in living water.

01:53:33

And if you don't have living water, you could use, you know, um, some fresh water.

01:53:40

If you don't have that, then you can use, you know, whatever water you have. Like, it could be warm water. So this is what's preferable, but these things are also okay.

01:53:51

That's kind of my position when it comes to the Lord's Supper. This is, this represents, this is good, but the symbol needs to be as close to the truth represented by the symbol as possible, but we need to remember it's not the symbol, but the meaning behind the symbol that makes it efficacious.

01:54:14

So, you know, that's why, you know, I'm perfectly fine with using grape juice.

01:54:23

By the way, I, having had a very serious sin problem with alcohol,

01:54:30

I abstain from alcohol completely, even though I believe my brethren have the liberty to moderately consume it.

01:54:40

But I did partake in the Lord's Supper at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, at least once, and they use real fermented wine.

01:54:51

And I can say without hesitation that there was no alarm bells going off in my head or some kind of temptation to drink in a more, a much larger quantity.

01:55:08

And obviously there is such a tiny amount when you're, typically anyway.

01:55:14

We have people in our church that it's a conscience issue, and it would be a sin against their conscience.

01:55:20

And I would not want someone to go, okay, I have to somehow mend my conscience before I take the

01:55:26

Lord's Supper. I think it's charitable of churches to be considerate of the members that they have, and, you know, and if someone has a conscience issue, that this would be something that I can't take up.

01:55:40

I think that's a worthy consideration for churches. Now, I do have a thing about,

01:55:48

I don't know why churches don't always use unfermented bread. Unleavened bread,

01:55:53

I'm sorry. Unfermented bread. Unleavened bread, which is, if Jesus used it at the

01:56:01

Supper, makes sense. But anyway, we have

01:56:07

Will in Bright, Indiana, who

01:56:12

I believe is a first -time questioner. How would one address one's local church or relative who has a very liberal open communion position?

01:56:22

Liberal in the sense that it could be any believer, baptized or not, and can be self -administered by laymen at home, etc.

01:56:31

Could a difference of viewpoints on the Lord's Supper warrant leaving a church? Well, obviously the last sentence of the last question, the issues could be a lot more serious even than what he listed, so obviously it would be a reason sometimes to leave a church.

01:56:48

But if you could answer the questions, and actually we're running out of time, so try to be as brief as possible.

01:56:54

Yeah, sure. Yeah, this is difficult questions. I think, you know, the

01:57:00

Reformers would say, where do you find a true church? You find a true church where the Word of God is faithfully preached and the ordinances are faithfully administered.

01:57:08

And I think we need to take the ordinances seriously. I do think that they're important. If you was going to a church that did practice during this time some type of virtual communion,

01:57:21

I wouldn't encourage you or say, hey, leave the church as quick as you can. That's not my counsel.

01:57:27

My counsel would be be patient and maybe communicate with the elders and try to speak to them about these things.

01:57:35

And realize that a lot of times people churches do things without much thought.

01:57:42

They've got good motives, good intentions, but they're not really thinking through what they're doing. And very few people have really studied out the

01:57:49

Lord's Supper and all of its meanings and all of its significance. And so I would just encourage you to do that on your own and take that study that you have and share that with your elders and just be patient with people when it comes to these things.

01:58:05

Well, thank you so much, Will. Thank you. And please give me your full mailing address in Bright, Indiana, because you have won a free

01:58:16

New American Standard Bible by virtue of being a first -time questioner.

01:58:22

So please send us that mailing address so that our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service can ship that Bible out to you at no cost to you or to us.

01:58:36

And we also want to obviously thank the publishers of the NASB for providing these

01:58:41

Bibles that we always mail out or that cvbbs .com always mails out to first -time questioners.

01:58:49

Well, it's been a joy having you back on the program. We have to make this a more frequent experience here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Pastor Jeff.

01:58:59

I just want to make sure that our listeners have all your contact information.

01:59:07

The website for Grace Bible Church of Conway, Arkansas is gbcconway .com,

01:59:15

gbcconway .com. And of course, as we mentioned earlier, the

01:59:21

Grace Bible Institute can be found at gracebible .institute, gracebible .institute.

01:59:27

I want to thank you again, Pastor Jeff, for being an excellent guest. I want to thank everybody who listened. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives,