Church, Part 1 of What We Believe, Part 36

And this is an important passage to have ready for someone because it comes up often when you deal with this and that's 1st John 2 19 which says they went out from us but they Were really not of us for had they been of us they would have remained with us.

But they went out so that it would be shown that they are not of us.

The Church as the Body, Bride, and Headship of Christ

Into the rap report with your host Andrew Rappaport where we provide biblical interpretation and application. This is a ministry of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church go to striving for eternity org.

Welcome to another edition of the rap report. I'm your host Andrew Rappaport the executive director of striving for eternity and the Christian podcast community of Which this podcast is a proud? Member you can check out striving fraternity org or Christian podcast community org to find out more.

And I am joined for this episode and a couple more that we're gonna have is folks You know that have been listening. We have been rotating through guests co-hosts with me here. Through the other members of the Christian podcast community and this episode we're gonna start talking about the church.

What better than Talking about the church than with pastors. So our first pastor that is gonna discuss this topic with me is pastor Stephen Jew and he's from two different podcasts on the Christian podcast community.

And so he's one of the few that we have that does multiple ones because he's not busy enough. But he has the doctrine matters podcast, which I encourage you to check out. It's a little bit shorter of than his other one, which is the Christian foundry podcast.

A Christian foundry podcast is. Well, they got like eight guys on there. So it's hard to figure out everyone's voice. But Stephen will will really give you a lot when it comes to the the doctrine that matters.

When he deals with topics and a lot of different topics on his podcast that he covers and does very good gives you a lot of Material in a short amount of time, which I appreciate he's very concise that way.

So I encourage you to check those podcasts out. So Stephen welcome to the wrap report.

Yeah, thanks for having me as you said to podcast and a pastor. So I've been kind of busy lately with those things, but I'm honored to be here. Thank you for the invite and You're right. What what better way to start this just talking about the church in general one of God's glorious institutions.

So I'm looking forward to the conversation. So now but and as a pastor you don't really work until what. Saturday night, that's true. Yeah, no, I work late. Saturday night is when I start working into Sunday and then only on Wednesdays.

That's kind of how it's laid out.

That's what people think. Well, you know, that's true. Let folks know right off the bat. Church your pastor in any way they could get ahold of you if they are. Want to get to your church if they're in your area, yeah, I'm a.

Lead pastor at South Carraway Baptist Church in Jonesboro, Arkansas, which is in Northeast, Arkansas. Been here a little over five years now, and we are a reformed Baptist Church. So if anybody's looking in the area for a biblical church You can go to our website South Carraway Baptist Church comm or our Facebook site or page I guess it's called these days.

You can also find me on Facebook as well.

The Church Is Not a Building or a Numbers Game

All right, so let's get into discussing the church. I Really don't know how far we're gonna get into this this this episode. So what I'm gonna ask if you could just read the first well the first paragraph which consists of one sentence.

All right. All who place their faith in Christ Jesus are immediately placed by the Holy Spirit into one united spiritual body. Called the church the bride of Christ of which Christ is the head. All right.

So this is again folks as we've been going through this whole series. We've been saying we're doing this. We're going through our doctrinal statement at striving for eternity. So if you want to read along follow along with us go to strivingforeturning .org under the about section and you'll see what we believe scroll down to the church and expand that that's what we're reading and.

We're doing this basically to say what is in a doctrinal statement when we see doctrinal statements. There's a lot more as you if you've been following along with our series here. There's a lot more to a doctrinal statement than a lot of people may have thought before because a lot of what this is saying is really saying things that we're saying the Bible doesn't teach and.

A lot of this you're gonna see especially when it comes to church. We're gonna bring up some other hmm, can we say churches? No. No, we can't but Kingdom halls at the Mormons things like this. You're gonna see when it comes to the way we view the church and what the church is.

You're gonna start to see some differences again. We really saw a lot when we talked about who Christ is. But the running of the church is gonna be different. I'm just gonna give you one way that you can see a big difference.

When you see a biblical church. There's going to be freedom and when you're in a cult, there's going to be control. And that's going to be one thing. You're going to be able to spot right away. In fact a good way to to view a cult if you look at cults if you get my book.

What do they believe in the beginning in the intro? I define a cult by five different things. Whether they have an Authoritarian a group or a person that's the only one that can interpret the Bible. They have scripture twisting because that's kind of necessary for all their control that they're gonna do you have?

Isolation where they're gonna try to pull people away from other people family friends that would warn them and The reason or the way they do that is their exclusivity. They claim that they'll be the only ones with the truth.

And then the last one is harm and that could be physical emotional or spiritual harm. And so those are the five ways that the five elements that we have when defining a cult but another way of looking at it is just the idea of control and I saw someone that had the acronym bite for behavioral control.

Informational control. I know the E was environmental control, but I forgot what the T stood for. I have that list somewhere here. Maybe I'll find it. But it's really the idea you end up seeing that they will be controlling and so as we go through this.

You're gonna see we're gonna talk about the freedom in Christ that we have within a church. But right off the bat one thing that you're gonna see different is That if you look at any man-made religion that has a church Roman Catholicism, and yeah, that's man-made.

You end up seeing that their position will be that if you're born into a Family, that's Roman Catholic or Jehovah Witness or Mormon that Puts you into the church and so you're part of that church because you're born with a family.

That's part of the church. Right off the bat here. We're making a difference. We're saying that those who are the church are Placed there by the Holy Spirit, so that's different. So Steve we don't have people that when we go have people come to church.

It's not that they've been attending your church ever since You got there or ever since they've been born that makes them a Christian. Is it?

No, but You know in my context and I think it's probably like this everywhere you talk about being born into the family. Which you're automatically a part of that church in the south. That's you hear that a lot.

It's well, I've always been a Christian. I was born a Christian or my daddy was a deacon or a Baptist pastor. You know you name it and they think that automatically makes them part of the church. And You know, I think that's where not having a statement of faith in what churches believe have gotten a lot of churches.

In kind of hot water and and not maybe not even churches. Themselves, you know, maybe not you may they may not can even call themselves a church. You would think that just being born into a Christian family makes everybody a part of the church and makes everybody a Christian around here.

That is the thing that I find so often or hey, I've been baptized and therefore I'm part of the church. I'm a Christian just because I Did something either I'm born into it or I did something like an act of baptism and This is why we have the section on the church after we spent so much time on Soteriology the doctrine of salvation to define what it is that when we say someone becomes a Christian what that means we end up seeing though that when we have a church you go to any any church and When you walk in first off the church is not the building.

A Lot of people will talk that way that they go to when they speak of a church. They're referring to a building. Some refer to a denomination but We're gonna say as we we say even in this first sentence.

It's really the body of Christ. It's it's the people that make up the church. But when we do go To a building to where the church would meet we have to realize and I'm gonna say this Throughout this part as we talk about the church I'm probably gonna say it's like every episode because it's really important understand.

There are people attending even your church even my church. That are not saved. Even though the doctrine could be really really good. We have to realize that there's people who are not saved. So the church locally is made up of believers and unbelievers.

Now some of you may be saying Andrew Why are you making such a big deal this and you're saying you're gonna make a big deal this like each week? Well, the reason is is because when if you go back to the episode we did a couple weeks ago when we talked about Security eternal salvation eternal security that when we're saved we can't lose that.

That all the passages that people end up using to argue for losing your salvation. It's because they're confused over what who makes up the church. And what the church is and so they take passages to the unbelievers that sit in the pews that are pretending to be Christians.

And they take those passages and say oh that is a Christian. Well Time and truth go hand in hand give enough time. You'll see the truth if someone's really a believer we will look at the fruit and so We have to realize that just because they go to church and just because they seem like they are really on fire.

In fact, I'll say this It's usually the people that are really on fire when they first quote-unquote get saved that usually get me the most nervous. Yes, Stephen. I know you were you were at least watching apologetics live some time ago when when we were recording about this Guy Zach's open letter to Justin Peters and in there I talked about the fact that his wife Lindsay who came out of Bethel she claimed she got saved in Bethel and She was thoroughly reformed and came out and she was everyone wanted to interview her because she just seemed like she was so solid and she came out of Bethel and People were asking me like oh you got to get her on your podcast and I said no I'm gonna wait like a year to see where she's.

I want to see if she's going to Be what a Christian would be which means go and get discipled and get underneath people and be trained. It's it's one thing to read books and listen to sermons right, but it's a different thing to get into the Bible and be discipled by someone and trained up and I know you you're look at you have the Christian foundry podcast bunch of guys from your church and Whether you recognize this or not pastor Steve I Could see what your discipleship is like through that podcast because I'm listening to these guys who didn't know Christ until they entered that church building and I'm seeing how they speak of you and what you did in their life and worked with them and how each of these guys are Being discipled by each other.

That's a huge element of the church. It's actually missing these days I wanted to see if she was gonna do that and I didn't see that in her and and now she's back at Bethel you know supporting churches like that and so.

Well, why did I have that knee-jerk reaction to say no because I've seen this plenty of times where people like oh I'm saved and they're like on fire. So it seems but there they were just Hypocrites that were just pretending now.

I'm not saying she's not saved. I don't I don't know that I just know that she was she her her theology could swing 180 degrees and then 180 degrees back why because she had no foundation and That's one thing I think we need to be able to see in the church absolutely.

Unfortunately, you have that and and like you said the the ones that have this knee-jerk reaction. They're on fire. We see that a lot here of kids that come back from camp. You know they got saved on the beach or whatever and they're coming back and they're on fire for Jesus and then they get back in their school and it's just right back to who they were.

Right but you have a lot of adults that do that same thing and I was listening another night and I haven't followed her story but it blows me away how the doctrinal shift can happen so quickly and. That's one thing though that we do need to be aware of in our churches or those people that are like that.

That can be all in with what you're teaching and then all of a sudden they're blown away by every wind of doctrine right and and they're that doctrinal pendulum swings and before long that could disrupt the church and I think you're right on you've nailed it we have to make sure that we understand that there are believers and unbelievers in the church, which is.

In my opinion the number one reason why there should be a plurality of pastors leading a church. So that we can keep our thumb on the pulse of the congregation and protect the sheep. But also feed those that are unbelievers and I know that I've got so many thoughts in my head about all these things.

So I may be chasing rabbits here, but that's one of the things about the church is. For years, I believe it's Charles Spurgeon has said that we've been too busy feeding the goats. Or entertaining the goats and not feeding the sheep and we have a lot of churches looking more like the world now.

And I think those are those churches are going to be evidenced by the people within those churches. Doing the same thing you're talking about that doctrinal swing. Back and forth. Well see that was under Spurgeon's time.

We've we've passed that now. Now the churches are just goat farms. They're not even entertaining the goats. They're producing them. They're giving a false gospel.

To get people in the pews. Right. Yeah, and unfortunately those goat farms are producing more goat farms instead of churches producing more biblical churches, correct.

When you think about this, I a lot of times I go to the when Jesus spoke of the parable of the soils. Because it's not actually about the seed the seeds the same right? He says the seed is the Word of God.

It's the soils that are different. So you have The first and last soil right the first soil the rocky soil. Nothing happens that the Word of God just lands on on that heart that person and just nothing.

They hate God they're rebelling and nothing's gonna happen. The last one is the good soil where that produces fruit. That's speaking of the believer. It's interesting most people don't think about those other two in the middle.

Those are the hypocrites. Those are the people that go to church and The first one it's like they they look like they sprout up and they just suddenly have growth and you see that plant is like wow Oh that shot up fast, but it had no roots.

It just soon as the Sun came up. It just scorched it. That's what we're talking about with some of these people, right? They they shoot up and they they seem like they have a good knowledge a good handle of Scripture and they shoot up real quick and They fade away almost as quickly.

The other soil is the thorny soil where you know, they shoot up and it looks like they're doing well but soon as the world kind of gets its hands on to them and they have some trials or some temptations or Testings and all of a sudden they're done.

Right, so two of the soils half the soils are talking about people that are in the church. But aren't believing now, how do I know they're not believing? Very simple and This is an important passage to have Ready for someone because it comes up often.

When you deal with this and that's first John 2 19, which says they went out from us but they Were really not of us for had they been of us they would have remained with us. But they went out so that it would be shown that they are not of us.

So what John is saying is that if they go from us if they leave the church and start denying Christ. All they're exposing is they were never of us. They were hypocrites that stopped pretending those two soils, so even though someone shows some signs of fruit that doesn't mean they're actually believers.

Okay, so that's a lorally long introduction. I Feel like John MacArthur now John MacArthur preaches for like 40 minutes goes. Well, that was the introduction. But his introductions are way better than mine.

All right, so let's look at this we're saying all who who place their faith in Christ in Jesus Christ. So right there what we're saying is this is the limitation that we were talking about, right? It is not everybody who comes to church.

That becomes a member of the church. It is those who place their faith in Jesus Christ. I Don't know Steve if you ever had this experience I had a couple that came the husband got saved and the wife did not and So the husband wanted to become a member of the church.

Which we had no problem with we were gonna you know, we were gonna baptize him and have him come into the membership but his wife was upset because she wanted to get baptized with him and become a member and I said no and She found that very upsetting and I said well We can't because you haven't put your faith in Jesus Christ.

So you you can't get baptized because that's not gonna be an outward sign of something that Happened inwardly because nothing happened inwardly and we can't have you as a member because you haven't been Baptized and the reason you haven't been baptized is because you're not a believer.

And so she ended up I think kind of pulling the husband by the ear as they found another church. That would allow her to be a member. So she she just wasn't happy but the reality is that as a pastor I would have been Derelict in my duty to allow someone to be come a member that I know is not a believer.

I don't know if you have some thoughts on that. No. Oh, yeah. In the Southern Baptist world the blue cards are at the front of every church on the first pew and During the invitation as they sing just as I am and wait for somebody to come down.

Somebody could come down and say I want to join your church and and it's got by profession of faith by baptism or to transfer a letter from another church something like that and For years, I've watched this play out.

I've never personally been a part of a situation like you were just talking about. I've been a part of a lot of other ones, but for years the church has just said oh you want to be a member because Church has been a numbers game for a multiple amount of years and Oh, yeah.

You know the Monday morning conversation at the the local breakfast club is how many people are in your church now you know between pastors so church has been a numbers game for years and People have spent more time thinking about physical numbers than the spiritual lives of those joining.

So that in and of itself has been just a terrible thing for the church. When my church when I came and that's kind of the way it functioned I said we can't do this anymore. We just can't let somebody off the street walk in and say well, I like the music.

I like the teaching I want to join your church. Without knowing anything about him because anybody can mark. Yeah, I'm gonna profess Jesus Christ. This is how I'm gonna become a member and none of us know that.

So I remember early on in this church when I changed started changing this. Got a lot of pushback. It's like you got somebody wanting to be a member of your church. Why are you not? Which what's going on?

What's the deal? And I'm thinking do you know how serious this is is? Becoming a member of a church. So we started really Pushing back and I'll tell a quick story about this when we started. We pushed back in a loving way and taught our people wide membership matters and what that looks like biblically.

So we started having You know a member you can call it a membership class whatever but we wanted to get to know the people that wanted to join our church and We wanted them to get to know us instead of just based off of one sermon or one visit.

We had this guy come up. He came up to me after service. We were singing what we call our reflection song. He says I want to I want to join this church first time. I've ever seen this guy didn't know him from anybody.

I said, okay. Well, let's talk about that. When the song when we're done here and I'll get you set up with next steps. He said, okay I'll spend some time going through your statement of faith because that's one thing we do we go through our statement of faith kind of Like we're doing here.

We talk about all you know. The leaders of the church who those are why membership matters all the stuff. One of the things is we want to hear your testimony. Just because I heard a guy one time say I was sitting by a lake.

The wind blew and I just felt at peace and I knew God saved me and I said no. But that's what he bases his salvation off of so we don't want church churches full of those testimonies, right? So that's part of it hearing their testimony and all these things getting to know him well about the the second week of meeting with the group because there was a Few people and one of the one of the people meeting with us happened to be a black lady well this guy she was running late that night and he started just Where's that blank why is she not here and just being very openly racist and We had to pull him to the side and say this is sin, you know, you you can't talk to Somebody created in God's image or about them in this way and he got mad left and we never saw him again so Had we accepted him on his first walk down the aisle and say I want to I want to be a part of your church.

Then there's no telling what would have happened.

You have to deal with some church discipline then which. Absolutely. Yeah. You bring up a really good point not that I was planning on bringing this up but you you really do bring up a Issue that when we speak of the church, we have to address is the the numbers game.

Because that has affected the church folks listening. I think about this. I'm gonna ask the question I'm gonna give you time to think about it. What do you think is the average size of the church now.

I'm asking that question and most people are gonna be thinking of you know, you have like a John's, you know MacArthur I think he's got nine ten thousand people at his church. And if you think of the Joel Osteen's Out there with you know, like a hundred thousand people.

So you think of all those big churches now, here's the thing the reality the average size church in America is 75 people so that tells you that if you have a church of like a Joel Osteen with a hundred thousand that means there are a Lot of churches way more churches with far less than 75 a lot of them 25 are they any less of a church?

I know Andy Stanley would say that's not a real church because he says only big churches are churches. I Know he's got a couple of issues. And if folks need go back a few episodes drew and I dealt with Andy Stanley.

It's some of how he views who can serve in church. We address the fact that he has no problem with some that with two homosexual men living together serving in church. He was just upset that one of them was still married to a woman.

So Adultery to a woman that's bad adultery with the guy. Hey, that was fine. Right, but what we end up seeing if you want go back to that previous episode. You could listen if you haven't so what we end up seeing is that most churches are small.

I remember with my first church. It was about a hundred forty hundred fifty people in New Jersey and in New Jersey. Like when I would go to pastor conferences in Jersey or the pastor's fellowship that we had.

I Was the guy with the big church. That's a big church in Jersey. There's a couple that reach up to the hundreds and thousand. You know, I was in my group that I was with I was I was the guy with the big church at a hundred and forty so we look at this and realize people have started to do is focus on numbers as as Stephen mentioned and what that ended up doing was changing behavior.

Because when it became more important when this whole church growth movement started it became important to have larger numbers. Well people started playing games with like well, let's not let's not focus on doctrine and Steve does doctrine matter.

Absolutely. Okay, sounds like a good name for a podcast. Yeah, it does.

So I'm surprised that no somebody hasn't. You know, snatch that one right up.

Well, actually, it's kind of funny because so I always end up getting because you have the Doctrine matters podcast and then we also have the matter of theology podcast. Like. So when you and you guys both had had applied around the same time if I remember correctly, so I was always confusing them but yet doctrine matters and.

The thing is that people are giving up doctrine for the sake of unity. Now Steve I'm gonna ask you this question and I know folks. I want you to think about this. I'm gonna ask the question. I'm gonna give you guys a little bit of a chance to think but the the question becomes.

You know if we focus on on the numbers, right. We end up seeing that people have a reaction. There's a change they start to focus more on unity. And so the question I'm gonna have for you Steve is does and it don't answer right away.

So I'll give people time to think about it. Does doctrine divide. Okay, so that's the question that he's gonna have to answer folks. I want you to think about this. Because most people will say yes it does.

I'm gonna say I'm gonna agree and Disagree, but I'm gonna think I don't want to see what Steve's gonna say about that. So Steven does doctrine divide. Should we avoid it for the sake of unity?

So we should not avoid doctrine. But I will say it does divide Although it shouldn't and what I mean by that is Again, I'm gonna just from my context here in the south is My church is about an hour away from What's-his-name's Adrian Rogers Church Bellevue which he was there for years.

So this area is Heavily Armenian, right grew up learning all of Adrian Rogers teachings their pastors would teach the same things and Then when you start looking at true biblical doctrine and you start getting into Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 and I mean Genesis 15 All over the all over the place, right?

You see people really start to put up walls and They say, you know, I wasn't taught this way I've never been taught this way. This is foreign to me and You know, I've had a lot of people say even though I see this right here that you're teaching me I still can't believe it whether that be soteriology whether that be whatever the case may be when it comes to doctrine.

But they I've literally had people say well I can see it. But I just wouldn't. I mean I've spent I've been in the church for 40 years. That's not the way I was taught I just can't believe it. So there you have doctrine dividing and People they're allowing it to divide in reality what I think true biblical doctrine should unite true believers, so I think when you get to Doctrines that are difficult and there are many doctrines that are difficult.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I still feel the tension in God's sovereignty and salvation. I still I mean, although I believe God's sovereignty and salvation I believe that there's always kind of this God's sovereignty and man's responsibility.

There's always that kind of friction that rubs so. But even in those difficult things Believers should be willing to go to the scriptures together and reason with one another from the scriptures and not from you know, well my old pastor said this or my you know, my Google search said this or you know, I watched a YouTube video that said this so I can watch a million videos that are gonna confirm my thought process.

But I need to open up the Bible and say let's sit down and reason together from the scriptures and Just let the Holy Spirit work in that because even even listen, I mean, I've already mentioned soteriology.

So even if I agree in God's sovereignty and his election and somebody else doesn't. That doesn't mean we have to butt heads and divide over that. Right, I think because I used to be this person before I believed in God's sovereignty and salvation.

So, I think we can come together and talk through these things Biblically and not from a point of anger and contention. And I think in that whether you know, somebody accepts it fully Immediately or not.

There's still gonna be that unity to say, okay. Hey, I'm wrestling through these things. I'm dealing with these things but I'm with you. We're united and We've been called to go make disciples, so let's do that.

Yeah.

I know that actually has happened in your church because I listened to the Christian foundry podcast and a couple of guys have said They came in your church and they were very much against you in some of your doctrine and then they went.

Oh wait, no, he's right. That's what the Bible's teaching we also we now know that you're not a regular listener to the rap report because you would have gone back to a couple of episodes ago on the doctrine of Superintending and that will I put that out and I had said this is the solution to the Calvinism Arminianism debate it really is because and we've covered it a lot when we went through salvation, but when we think about Inspiration how we got scripture, right?

God works through a human author. Who has the choice of what words he's gonna write and yet those words he writes are Actually what God intended to be written, even though they chose to write them. They can't take credit for those words.

They give the credit to God so he gets a hundred percent of the credit. So this doctrine of superintending is God working through human agents with the choices. They make that their choices are exactly what God intended.

We see that also in sanctification. Folks, if you if you remember just a few episodes ago, we dealt with sanctification and we said it again there, right? God work gives do we do good works? No, God does those good works through us?

So I just apply that right to regeneration and I think problem solved. Did I choose God? Yes. Did God choose me? Yes, I didn't choose him. Apart from him. He worked through me. So the choices I made were exactly as he intended them to be.

But I did make a choice. But I couldn't have made it on my own so he gets a hundred percent of the credit.

So that's how I resolved that tension, yeah, and I will tell you that he's being a regular listener. I'll tell you preach that down at it at can't remember the pastor's name but down in Florida and afterwards all the folks come up and said man that was really helpful, so.

Yes, I said he doesn't listen he looked at he gave me a look like oh really. All right, so so what we're saying but like putting a doctrinal statement out. Yeah, it's divisive, but it's unifying this unifies Those that are genuine believers with falsehoods.

So when we're saying all who place their faith in Jesus are immediately placed by the Holy Spirit into the church. Right, then what are we saying? We're saying you can't be born into the church, right?

So if you're saying you could be born in the church, yes, does it divide? Yeah, it's dividing between those who claim you can just be born into the church from those who believe what the Bible teaches.

So yes, it does divide but you know what else it does as Steve said Stephen and I are unified in so many different things. Why? Because we have a doctrine that unifies us now. Are we gonna be unified in everything?

No, I mean I have plenty of Presbyterian brothers and sisters who I can unite with. By the time we're recording this, I'm not in Israel by the time you're listening to us. I'm back from Israel, but I'll be there with a friend of mine Matt Slick.

He's Presbyterian. I'm Baptist. He goes to a Calvary Chapel Church. Because he you know the some of the things like the music and he doesn't believe in membership. I believe in membership and I like hymns.

We have a lot of differences. There's there's some of those differences that we're gonna have more strict divides over. He's covenantal. I'm Baptist. He believes in infant baptism. I don't he believes in the gifts continuing.

I don't you see all those are doctrinal things and We could choose and this was a really important thing. I hope everyone heard it. Pastor Stephen had said we could choose to divide over those things and some of those secondary issues to divide over those or we could unite as Matt and I do we could unite over the gospel and the things that unite us or the doctrines we agree on and Then we have friendly debates over the rest.

And key let's keep them friendly if you're gonna do that. But what this statement of faith is is trying to say is that it's not everybody who's a member of the church. Just because they attend it. It's those who are placed there by the Holy Spirit before we get into this next section because I want to get into this but I'm gonna just take a quick break at this moment to give a word from our sponsor my pillow.