What is the Church, Part 3

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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01:02

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

01:08

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

01:18

Well, I am your host, I am Andrew Rappaport. Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report.

01:23

I hope you enjoy the new intro that was provided for us by Robert Solberg, the author of Torahism.

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That's an excellent book, and actually the only book that I know that addresses Hebrew roots.

01:36

If you're not familiar with it, go back to previous episodes on The Rap Report. I had

01:41

Robert on, R .L. Solberg, he goes by as an author, but we had him on both on my

01:48

Rap Report podcast and on Apologetics Live. So he was on both of those. Great discussion.

01:55

Apologetics Live, wow. That was a recent one, I think it's the most recent one that dropped from when you're going to listen to this, and that was great.

02:03

We got someone that believes in Hebrew roots coming in, you got to hear the discussion, and wow, did that guy make some pet arguments.

02:12

But you'll want to go and listen to Apologetics Live to hear that. The thing is, I do appreciate

02:18

Robert for providing that. He's got a background in music and just has that great radio voice, so he was able to put something together, and we appreciate it.

02:28

I should also, at the beginning, giving some announcements, announce the winner. We've been telling you about the Christian Podcast Community having a contest, and we had $1 ,000 worth of theological resources that were given away, and Philip Lexlow was the winner of that.

02:44

So Philip got a 30 -pound box, and I'm going to wonder how long it's going to take him to get through all the materials he got, but he got a lot.

02:57

And actually, we were going to open with you saying this is the Bud Report, weren't we? Yeah, welcome to the

03:02

Bud Report, Andrew, glad you could be here today, but I think that was some sort of dream or something

03:07

I had, I don't know what I was thinking. So it's the Bud Brief.

03:13

It's the Bud Brief, there we go. So, Bud, this time

03:18

I can actually say I am back from Shepherds Conference now that we're recording after that, and I can say it was a lot of good fellowship, and next episode we're going to deal with one of the messages that we heard from there that fits perfectly in line with what we've been doing in this series on the

03:37

Church. Very good, on the Church. Yeah, the Church is an important thing, although right now many of those who may be listening to us are sitting at home, and they're saying,

03:49

I couldn't go to church today, because many churches are closing.

03:55

Now my church, as you and I were talking before we went live, the church that I'm attending, we have a, it's a church plant, so we rent a senior center.

04:06

And so basically the state or the town shut down all public buildings, and so we thought we'd be open for rentals, still be open, but they closed for the senior citizens, and the answer was no, they are closed.

04:22

So we've been, it's been an interesting couple days as we scribble.

04:29

It's progressed rapidly, and it is in the last couple of days where you see a lot of these things happening. It's happening in our area, mainly with a number of churches, smaller churches that meet in public schools, and the school boards have come out and said, you know what, we're shutting down all extracurricular use of the buildings, and it has affected some church gatherings that have either had to cancel

04:53

Sunday services or make some other accommodations. So I was,

04:59

I'm sure you saw it, I enjoyed reading the response from the elders at Grace and L .A.

05:04

as to how they were handling this, because that governor had, I guess, indicated gatherings of 250 or more were forbidden, he had mandated against that, and in a

05:16

Romans 13 spirit of obedience to the governing authorities, Grace, you know, determined that they would abide by that.

05:24

I thought that was helpful, because we are to do that. This is not a matter of targeted persecution against the church.

05:32

This is a much broader issue that society at large is having to deal with.

05:38

And this is what, before we get into our topic for today, this is what I wanted to address, because there are some, not many that I've seen, but there are some who are challenging this, some pastors who are implying that somehow the state asking them to not allow gatherings on a

05:59

Sunday is something that should be responded with disobedience. In other words, there's some people who are trying to say this is a law that should be ignored because of the fact that we're commanded to gather together and to worship

06:15

God, and this is somehow a violation of Christian law.

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And my perspective, and you mentioned the article from the elders there at Grace Community Church in California, and I think it was well written,

06:29

I think that what we have to look at is, is this a Romans 13 issue or is this

06:35

Christian persecution? And I think for those who may be struggling with this, maybe people have been influenced by some pastor who is saying, no, we are going to worship because we're

06:48

Christians and we go to church. This was a question that I received in email, and my response was, when we look at this, this is the government asking all gatherings, not just Christian gatherings,

07:05

I mean, this is affecting, as you mentioned, the schools, public buildings, mosques, synagogues, everyone.

07:13

So it isn't a targeted thing against Christians. It's not Christians can't meet.

07:19

It's nobody should be, I mean, sporting events are being canceled. I mean, hello, they're putting a two -month pause on cruise ships.

07:29

You look at this, this is not the government trying to infringe on Christian rights.

07:37

This is the thing where the government is trying to say, everyone needs to, we need to put a stop to this.

07:42

Now, do I think this is a pandemic? Yes, I think it's a pandemic of insanity, stupidity.

07:54

I mean, let's call it the stupidity virus. I mean, I'm sorry, there's one of two things, bud, that I've realized with this.

08:04

Either there's a lot of government officials who know something, and they're just not going to let us know the details, not that governments ever do things like that.

08:14

Conspiracy kind of thing. Yeah. And that becomes the problem is how would so many governments,

08:20

I mean, around the world, no one is saying what really is going on.

08:26

Because you look at the reaction to this, you have a 3 % death rate. And I put some things up on my

08:33

Facebook that show that out of all the diseases, there's diseases that have a much higher death rate.

08:39

There's ones that are much more contagious. And yet, this one is getting a reaction worldwide.

08:47

So it's like, is there something that all the countries are saying, we can't tell people because there'd really be panic, and I'm going, well, there is panic.

08:54

I mean, you can't even find toilet paper, which of all things, of all things, but help me understand why toilet paper?

09:00

I mean, hand sanitizer, I can understand, food, I can understand. Toilet paper? Yeah, I'd be buying soup or something, but I walked through our public store yesterday after work and took a picture and sent it to my wife of, there's no toilet paper.

09:14

There was one roll of Charmin, and it was like $18, one little pack of a four rolls.

09:20

I'm like, what's going on? I don't get this. Of all things, I mean, like, I can understand a run on food.

09:27

You want to make sure you have food. I can understand things like that. But I was like the toilet paper, like, there was someone who

09:33

I saw online that someone sent a picture and someone had like 144 rolls of toilet paper.

09:40

And I thought it was really funny. The response was, if you need 144 rolls of toilet paper for a two week, you know, thing of, you know, this coronavirus, you should have seen a doctor long ago, because you've got different problems.

09:53

Your problem is not the virus right now. Yeah. 144 rolls of toilet paper, something else is going on with your body that you go through that in two weeks or even a month, even two months.

10:04

No kidding. So I do I do think that there's there's something

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I mean, either this is either way. It's almost like conspiracy theory either way. Either all the governments are gone.

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This is really bad. We can't let people know we got to lie to everyone or and they're lying about the numbers or somehow like worldwide.

10:25

Everyone is using this to create mass hysteria over what to me seems like very little.

10:33

I mean, so far, you have a 55 percent recovery rate in the total number of people that have gotten it, you know, from the start of this.

10:45

It just it's like something isn't adding up. I don't know. Now, here's an interesting thought.

10:50

And we won't have time to get into this, but an interesting thought for the evolutionists out there. Why exactly would they have an issue with this virus?

10:57

Wouldn't this be natural selection? Those who are fit to survive, this can continue on.

11:04

I mean, the children, the healthy and those who are elderly and unhealthy, they die off.

11:09

Isn't that evolution? I mean, shouldn't they do nothing to stop this? Just let nature run its course, isn't doesn't nature have the intelligence they always tell us to know the right things to do?

11:23

Almost makes it seem like they don't believe their own teachings. Yeah, well, that's that's perfect.

11:31

I had a conversation yesterday with some guys at work who are absolutely panicked by this.

11:37

You could get this and you could die. I mean, it could take two or three days and you're dead.

11:42

And and I thought, you know, I'm not worried about the natural selection side of this because I don't buy into that.

11:49

I'm thinking divine sovereignty and Lord, you are forcing these people to look at their own mortality.

11:55

And I told him, you know, the life you need to worry about is not this one. It's eternal life.

12:02

And those who don't believe are condemned already. You need to repent and believe. So from that standpoint of divine sovereignty,

12:09

I cherish the fact that people are looking at their own mortality. And and if one effect of the fear is is that may the gospel go forth in the midst of it.

12:20

I think, you know, our friend and pastor, Justin Pierce, put this very well. He says his numbers were awful.

12:28

He says one percent. It's actually three percent. But he says the the odds of dying from coronavirus is less than one percent.

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The odds of facing Jesus as judge of the universe are one hundred percent.

12:41

Yeah, I think he got the he got the important statistic, right? Yeah, he got the important statistic, right?

12:47

Is correct. Yes. So what we want to talk about is the church.

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We've been talking about this. If you have been here listening to us in the past couple of of episodes, we have been going through this because we think this is an important topic.

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Now, to give you guys a resource that you can use, we're getting a lot of what we're going over from a book that I wrote called

13:12

What Do We Believe? You can get that at the Striving for Eternity website.

13:17

Just go to strivingforeternity .org, go to the store. You could pick it up there. Now, the reason we're going through this is because of the fact that what what we see in this is much confusion.

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And as we've been laying this out, as we have been trying to develop this more and more,

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I think what we end up seeing with people is that there's there's many people who are arguing over the issue of what the church is.

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And we hope that today, as we try to conclude what's really been, you know, four different parts of us building up to this, this is really the conclusion where there's been much debate.

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We we started off by talking about these terms dispensational and covenant theology.

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We're going to bring that to a head. And hopefully what we want to be able to do is we want to be able to provide for you really some clarity on this issue, because I believe that these things that are being debated are not that big of a difference.

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There's a lot more similarity than people think about or realize. And we want to show where there is the differences, where there's not the differences, and a lot of the strongman arguments that get made to attack the other side.

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So with that, what I want to start off, though, is bring us where we've been in the last three episodes of The Wrap Report, three parts of the we've been discussing the church so that we can bring this all together in the modern church.

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Now, as we've been going through this, we started off by saying, what is the word ecclesia, the word for church?

15:12

And we were explaining that in the first century, that was really a term before Christ.

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It was a term that just meant a gathering specifically for voting purposes. As we gather soon for an election, that would be an ecclesia, when everyone would gather, although those gatherings are not allowed anymore around the world because we're supposed to stop these public gatherings, so we should stop public ecclesia.

15:38

But the word, this word ecclesia that we think of from the

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Greek that is the idea, we have the word church, it was a regularly summoned legislative body or assembly, and it was gathered for a purpose.

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Now, what we ended up seeing is after Christ, and even Christ started to use it in a different way.

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He had a more specific way. And then after Christ's death, burial, and resurrection, we see that more specific idea of a gathering specifically for the worship of God.

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And that change ended up being something that was a more specific usage of the word.

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It's what we think of when we speak of church nowadays. We don't think of it as a general gathering of all people for a purpose of even voting.

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No, we think of it as the gathering for the worship of God.

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And that was how in the early church it started to be more specific. We then talked about how in the

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Middle Ages or the Dark Ages, we saw that this term started to morph again to be a little bit more specific because after Constantine just declared that they were a

16:57

Christian nation, there was confusion. When there was persecution, no one wanted to be in the church, so people that claimed they were part of the church, well, there was a risk in doing so, something called like death, being fed to lions.

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So there were things that made it where people didn't want to claim they were Christian unless they actually were

17:19

Christian. And as we look at that, we end up seeing that when you just declare everybody a

17:26

Christian by fiat, by the emperor just declaring such, well, there's many who are not

17:31

Christian. How do we distinguish between those that are genuinely Christians, let's call them the elect, those that are chosen by God, and those that are in church, but they're not really the elect, they're the non -elect, they're not really believing, they're just declared to be

17:49

Christian because of a governor or because they're born in a Christian family or the church just baptized them and that makes them

17:54

Christian. How do we distinguish those two? And during the Middle Ages, they started to develop this idea of the visible and universal church.

18:02

I prefer the terms because I think it's clear when we talk about the universal and local church. So the invisible or universal church was the idea that those that are the elect of God, those that are going to be with him in eternity, have eternal life, that transcend time, it doesn't matter,

18:20

Old Testament, New Testament, you have the elect body of Christ, those that have been redeemed by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

18:28

That's one group. Then you have this universal or local body that's also called a church, but they gather and they meet and in there you have believers and unbelievers, elect and non -elect.

18:42

So you see that in the local gathering. This is very important to what we're going to talk about with the modern church and these issues, is understanding the fact that you have an elect body called the church and you have an elect non -elect body that's called the church.

18:59

So the universal church, which is that invisible church, and then you have that local body that's the visible church that is made up of believers and non -believers.

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So if you understand that, we get into the Reformation. During the Reformation, they clarified it even more because the

19:25

Roman Catholic Church basically put the church up as having authority over scripture.

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Why over scripture? Because the Catholic Church said that only the Catholic Church can interpret scripture and by default then the

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Catholic Church is greater than the scriptures because they're the only ones that can interpret it.

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Once they did that, the Reformation had to clarify these things. How do we clarify them? Well, they started to say, what is the function of the church?

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So not only do you declare what's a true church, a local gathering, you declare that as true and false churches.

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So there wasn't the debate over the universal, invisible church, the elect. That's very clear.

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But in the Reformation, they started to say there needs to be a distinguishing between the true church and false church, referring to the local gathering, the local church, the visible church.

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And the way they did that is by function. And they said there were three functions that a local church has to be doing.

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The proclamation of God's word, the practices of ordinances, meaning baptism and communion, and then the keeping the church pure by church discipline.

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So if you like literation and you want some peas there, you have proclamation, practice, and purity.

20:44

I just noticed that looking at the book. I just noticed that. And I would point out just to support what you've said, when the reformers came to this conclusion, it was in indefinite distinction against what

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Rome had done with the elevation of church authority alongside scripture, which technically is over scripture.

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The reformers emphasize sola scriptura. So these three categories, the proclamation, the practice, and the purity, these are drawn from the word of God.

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It is the authority scripture alone. So that supports and enforced and really exposed what is a biblical church.

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And the reformers you see in the progression of this understanding of what the church is, the reformers put those things together and those come strictly from scripture.

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And what we end up seeing here is we bring all this together for what we want to look at now, because what we want to look at here is the fact that we bring this into the modern church.

21:55

And as we look at the modern church, the rise of this age, about early 1900s, there became some, and let's be clear when we talk about this as a new theological system, this is a thing where a lot of people say, oh, if it's new, it's bad.

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Covenant theology was new at a time. Reform theology was new at a time. Dispensational theology is new at a time.

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For those who want to reform and keep reforming, well, keep reforming. But the thing is, through every generation, we see that there are times that we are going to have more and more study.

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We're going to see error, heresy that comes in, and answering that gives more clarity, this has been throughout history.

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So the argument that this is new, is bad, would say that Luther was wrong for bringing up his arguments against the

23:03

Catholic church, because that was new at a time. So I just want to deal with the real arguments at hand.

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Let's deal with the fact that dispensationalism as a systematic theology is a relatively new system of theology.

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It's not the newest. We actually have something newer, new covenant theology, which comes out of the more of the reformed camp, and is really what

23:31

I think is a lot of those that hold to covenant theology, that see some valid arguments made in dispensationalism, and it's really a bringing of them together.

23:43

Now, when we talk dispensationalism, understand there's differences there. You have classic dispensationalism, you have

23:49

Ryrie's dispensationalism, you have dispensationalism, progressive dispensationalism, so there's differences within that system, just like there are with covenant theology, new covenant theology, and you have some variations even within that.

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So it's not when we say covenant theology or dispensational theology, it's not one monolithic thing.

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We did this in the first part of this series. I want to quickly, Bud, just give a very, very high level view of dispensationalism and covenant theology, reformed theology.

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And in the next episode, we're going to play John MacArthur explaining things that I've said for years, and boy, some of the things

24:29

I've said, I get a lot of heat. It was interesting, because while MacArthur was preaching, we'll talk about it next week, people were saying, well,

24:36

I guess if John says this, it's okay, when you say it, it's bad. So I feel like when

24:43

John MacArthur repeats what I say, then I guess I'm in better ground, right? Well, you know, there's another P you can add to your alliteration, platform.

24:51

Yeah. Well, with the run on toilet paper, we shouldn't talk about peeing, right? So here's the thing, when we talk about dispensationalism, dispensationalism is not,

25:06

I want to be really clear with this, because this is the straw man argument that people make, dispensationalism is not an end times system.

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The view of premillennial, pretribulational views, if you understand those terms, that is a byproduct of the hermeneutic.

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Now, hermeneutics is the science of interpretation. These are the rules we would follow. So what dispensationalism is, and what

25:32

Reformed theology proper is, is a system of interpretation, the rules you follow.

25:40

As we look at this, we look at these rules, we see that there are rules for language.

25:48

Now, when you look at this, dispensationalism is going to lean on three principles, and this is the sine qua non, the things that you cannot have without that define dispensationalism, and there's three.

26:02

The first is what would be, they would often refer to it as a literal interpretation. Let me redefine that, because I think there's people who have said, oh, well, if you say it's literal, everything has to be literal.

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What is meant by that, it's a normal interpretation. In other words, you're not looking for some hidden or spiritual meaning.

26:21

You look at the text and you take it for what, following the rules of interpretation, looking at what it meant to the original writers, the original audience, at that time, their culture, their history, what was the authorial intent, understanding that to understand the meaning.

26:39

If someone meant an idiom, it's an idiom. If I say I'm so hungry I can eat a cow, and you think

26:45

I can't really eat a cow, it's because you haven't seen me eat. But for most people, they can't really eat a cow.

26:51

But you understand that it's a figure of speech. It's not meant to be taken literal. That is, when we say a literal hermeneutic, we're saying that you take it in the normal sense.

27:02

In other words, the point of it is that you're not looking for some deeper spiritual meaning. You're not looking at allegorically.

27:09

So right there, you can see where we have the difference. The fact that dispensationalism is pointing these out, each of these points is going to be a point of difference between Reformed Theology.

27:22

I'll get to why I say Reformed Theology in a moment, because people confuse that term with Covenant Theology, Reformed Theology, so I want to give that history as well.

27:31

But the second point, and really a key differential point with dispensationalism and what many call

27:39

Covenant Theology, I'll call Reformed Theology, is this idea of a separation or discontinuity between Israel and the church.

27:47

We're going to get into that this episode, so I'm going to put that one on hold. The other thing, the third point, is that dispensationalism would see that the purpose of Scripture, every verse of Scripture, all of Scripture is for the glory of God, doxological, versus Christological, where every verse is focused on Christ.

28:10

How does that make a difference? Well, if all the passages of Scripture is to point to Christ, you get things that say the book of Song of Solomon or Song of Songs, and what do you do?

28:19

You end up having to find Christ in that. Now, so that's talking about Christ and the church. See, as a dispensationalist,

28:26

I can look at this and say, oh, that's dealing with God being glorified in a godly marriage. When you have a marriage where you can have in a culture where love was not part of the marriage, here's a couple that's in love with each other, it glorifies

28:40

God. So that would be a totally different way of viewing a book like that. So those are the things.

28:46

Now, why do I make a differentiation between covenant theology and reformed theology? Covenant theology, historically, please do not throw tomatoes at me, but this is just a historical statement.

28:58

It is not me trying to say that people that don't hold to dispensationalism are Roman Catholic, but covenant theology is

29:06

Roman Catholic in its history. The Roman Catholic Church had developed what we would think of as covenant theology, where it was very allegorical because they were, much of the

29:17

Catholic church, their leadership were not believers. They didn't want to see what the Bible actually said, but they used the

29:23

Bible to see how they can control people and how they could use it to create doctrines that were not in the

29:29

Bible. So they started to use the Bible as a figurative book. They were very allegorical with things.

29:37

What believers believe that are not dispensational, that often call themselves covenant theologians, are actually called reformed theology.

29:45

Now, many people, when they hear reformed, they're thinking Calvinistic, that meaning how we get saved.

29:51

Do you believe that God's sovereign or we chose? Again, bad terminology. Historically, reformed theology was the theology of the reformers that basically coming out of the

30:01

Catholic church had looked at this and developed a hermeneutic that got back to scripture, said, no, we don't sit here and take all this other stuff that the

30:12

Catholic church has created. We look at scripture and we see that Christ, not the church, is the center of scripture.

30:20

And so they started to develop a more literal hermeneutic than the

30:26

Catholic church had, but not as far as dispensational. You see them still having some allegory and sometimes looking for deeper spiritual means, but not in every passage, though some people still do that.

30:40

The thing that you also see in the reformers is you end up seeing that they saw, they carried over from covenant theology, this idea that the church is

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Israel and Israel is the church. That was necessary for the Catholic church to claim the authority that they claimed.

30:57

Mormons do that. Lots of people want to claim they're Israel. There is a sense that that's true and there's a sense that's wrong.

31:03

We're going to explain that. And all of that to say that what many people are, when they say they believe in covenant theology, what they actually historically refer to is reformed theology.

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Now, that's a long introduction, but I wanted to give that. Now, we're going to refer to it as either reformed theology or covenant theology, but know that we're doing that because we understand the way people are using the terms.

31:26

We understand the way that's historically been used and we know there's this confusion.

31:33

Understand how we're using the terminology when we're going to say in this show that we're going to make a distinguishing between either covenant theology or reformed theology.

31:41

We're going to group those together. So if we use them interchangeably, just know that what we are really referring to is the hermeneutic that came out of the reformers.

31:52

Okay. Gotcha. Okay. So as we look at the modern church, we end up seeing that there is a new change that occurred really in the early 1900s with making more of a distinction between Israel and the church.

32:09

And this is a thing that a lot of people buck against and there's reasons for this.

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I think we'll make it, we'll clarify it even more in next week's episode, but as we were talking before we started, we were talking about this whole idea that we understand that revelation is progressive.

32:35

Progressive, right. God throughout time has given us more and more information and with each of those he gives a covenant.

32:45

And for folks who may not be familiar with dispensationalism or have a misunderstanding of it, you'll hear arguments of covenant theology is biblical because there's covenants in the

32:56

Bible. That's a bad argument for anybody. Okay. I'll tell you why.

33:02

One, dispensationalism is in the Bible. Dispensationalism refers to a

33:07

Greek word for economy, and we do see that in the Bible, but see covenants are not covenant theology, covenants are covenants, and covenant theology is a hermeneutical system.

33:21

Dispensationalism is a hermeneutical system. So the fact that the words in the Bible doesn't make it biblical just because you take the word and you say, oh, well, here's the word, you know, the

33:32

Greek word for economy, and here's the usage of it in English for a theological system. Well, that has nothing to do with each other.

33:39

It's a logical fallacy to equivocate those two together. However, dispensations, if you look at the way dispensationalism is, is that with each period of time,

33:48

God would give a covenant. That covenant would have new revelation, new responsibilities.

33:55

And that would be a new economy of God working with his people.

34:02

We all believe God has one people. Okay. And I think this is where we get confusion, but what it is, is that we see

34:12

God giving more and more revelation, more and more responsibilities, and with each one of those in dispensationalism, we say, okay, this is the rules for Adam and Eve.

34:23

So when we look at Adam and Eve and we see that they're given information, so you start with one man, okay, and he's given information, and then it, we end up seeing that Noah is given more revelation.

34:38

Now we don't have, we don't have all of it listed what he was told.

34:44

It wasn't codified, but this one family was now given information.

34:51

Then later we end up seeing one nation, the nation of Israel. Then after that, we see the church come into play and we see all of the nations are now part of included in this revelation that's given.

35:06

In the future, I would say that all of nature ends up coming into getting this new revelation in a millennial kingdom.

35:15

And I think there'll be finally a new creation where all of the universe will be, will change.

35:22

I think these are the different economies that God deals with. Now I say this, and I know that there's some confusion with many people, and I want to be really clear because this is the thing that we have to understand.

35:37

We all know, all of us, that God gave more and more revelation.

35:44

Proof, you have the first five books of Moses. We didn't stop there. You have a New Testament too.

35:51

So more revelation is given. In fact, those that would hold to a reformed theology, many, and we'll get in here this next week, many will say that we interpret the

36:02

Old Testament by the New Testament. In other words, we have more revelation in the

36:07

New Testament. So everybody, dispensational, covenantal, whatever you want to say, we all know that revelation was given progressively.

36:20

And with this, as we got more revelation, we have to interpret this with the revelation that we have now.

36:29

Dispensationalism is based on covenants. I hope that I've made this clear. I hope so.

36:35

I'm under the new covenant. I was counting on that. Yeah, me too. I was once under the old, now

36:42

I'm under the new. But the thing is, we have to understand that when we're dealing with these issues, we don't want to misrepresent one another.

36:53

Now, anyone who's listened to this podcast has heard me tell this story, but this story, this event makes it so clear what we're dealing with and it's so helpful.

37:03

So that's why I tell it so often. When I was taking a class on dispensationalism, Bud, I had to read books on both sides.

37:10

One of the reasons I love the seminary that I was at is because I was a dispensationalist, and the reason I love the seminary is they forced you to read both sides of an issue. Many seminaries are scared.

37:16

They only want you to read their side of an issue. So what I ended up noticing was I read a dispensational book, and I'm going to paraphrase it, and anyone who is believing in covenant theology, please understand that you need to listen to this whole account because there's going to be something that's going to ruffle your feathers and don't tune it out because there's going to be something that you're going to agree with in the end.

37:42

But I read a dispensational book, and basically it was making the differences between covenant theology and dispensational theology.

37:49

And their argument was that covenant theology believes in two ways of salvation, works in the

37:56

Old Testament by the covenant of works, grace in the New Testament and the covenant of grace, or the new covenant, and that in the dispensational view, we believe that ever since Adam, ever since the fall, it has always been salvation by grace.

38:14

And I said, well, I must be a dispensationalist because I think that ever since the fall of Adam, it's been by grace. Okay. But then afterwards,

38:20

I start reading a covenant theologian, and he's making the distinctions between dispensationalism and covenant theology, and paraphrasing again, he basically says this, that the problem with dispensationalism is they believe in two ways of salvation.

38:36

Works in the old, and he quotes Schofield's original reference notes where Schofield did say that, make it clear in his mind, it seems that he believed that the works save people in the

38:45

Old Testament and grace in the new, but we covenant theologians believe ever since the fall of Adam, it has been by grace.

38:52

And I went, wait a minute, pulled the other book off the shelf. I looked at the two and I went, these guys are not really reading each other.

38:58

It was when that light bulb went off for me that people kill a lot of trees and need to ask forgiveness of those trees because there's a whole lot of butchering of other people's views that go on.

39:12

And they're saying the exact same thing. They're making the same straw man argument against the other side.

39:19

And I went, wow. And so we don't want to be guilty of that. So all of that is introduction for our conclusion.

39:28

I sound like a John MacArthur sermon. Yeah. Yeah. Let's get into it.

39:35

But, you know, at Shepard's conference, Bud, and I talked to you about this before we went live, it was clarifying because MacArthur did a sermon that deals with these issues.

39:44

You guys will be able to hear it next week. We're going to play it. And what you end up seeing is there's a lot of people that started discussing what are the differences here?

39:56

We're going to reveal that someone did a response video. We're going to play some of that.

40:01

And I want to do that because I want people to hear there's not as much difference as people try to make it out to be.

40:09

And there's a lot more similarity than people actually believe. And so I want to clarify that.

40:15

But something in discussing with some of the other pastors and explaining these issues to some pastors really helped clarify something in my mind on where the real debate is and where the confusion is.

40:29

And this is why I think this episode is going to be so important for you. Because as we think about these things,

40:36

I hope you heard me refer to the elect and non -elect. You see, when people talk about Israel and the church and this continuity and discontinuity between them,

40:48

I think the real issue comes down to the elect body and the non -elect body.

40:54

In other words, we are talking about the church, the visible and invisible or local universal, this body of believers that are the elect, which are the invisible universal church.

41:07

And then we have that local body that gathers that's made up of elect and non -elect. Well, the same thing is true for the nation of Israel.

41:17

Now, why am I saying nation? Because they were. They were a body of people that were made up of elect and non -elect.

41:27

In other words, just like you have that local church that gathers and there's elect and non -elect, same with Israel.

41:33

But the problem is a lot of times people say Israel and the question is, which Israel do you mean?

41:39

Maybe this is what we need to do for the new generation. Just like a distinguishing factor had to be made in the

41:48

Middle Ages of defining that the church has an elect and non -elect portion of it.

41:54

We need to do the same thing with Israel. When Paul says not all Israel is

41:59

Israel, what is he saying? There's an elect Israel and there's a non -elect

42:04

Israel. They're all part of the nation of Israel, but they're not all part of the body that would be known as the elect,

42:14

God's special people. You see, when we make that distinguishing factor,

42:19

I think these issues that we discuss become clear. As we want to add the clarity to this, you end up seeing that many people refer to Israel and when they say

42:30

Israel, they're saying the church is Israel. What they're referring to is the elect body of Israel, not the nation of Israel.

42:40

So now when people end up getting into the issue of the laws given to Israel, well, who were they given to?

42:46

Were they given to the nation or the elect body? Well, it's not as clear now, is it?

42:54

You see, we end up in the New Testament having Christ giving commands. They were given to the elect, but we see instructions given to a church and it also refers to how to deal with unbelievers.

43:08

You see, just like the local body is made up of believers and non -believers, so is the nation of Israel.

43:16

And I think that this needs to be the defining thing that we need to look at when we talk about Israel and the church and the continuity, discontinuity.

43:25

What are we talking about? The nation of Israel or elect Israel, spiritual Israel. Where we're going to agree is that spiritual

43:33

Israel and invisible or universal church are one body of believers, the elect.

43:42

We agree. But is the nation of Israel the same as the local church or the visible church?

43:50

You see, now we're in different territory because there were laws given differently to those.

43:56

There were laws given to the nation of Israel that were very clear for the nation in Exodus chapter 12.

44:06

The nation of Israel was to forever keep the statute of Passover.

44:13

It is Exodus 12, 14. This day shall be for you a memorial that you shall keep as a feast to the

44:21

Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever, you shall keep them as a feast.

44:29

Now you look at this and you say, well, okay. The word for forever doesn't always mean forever in perpetual, never stopping.

44:37

But he's saying, he's clarifying that and saying throughout your generations. In other words, for the nation of Israel, that is a command that was given to believers and unbelievers.

44:48

It was for the nation. Should we as the church be doing the Passover? If you're going to say the church is

44:56

Israel, then people will go, well, yes, you should. The question is, was that given specifically to the elect

45:02

Israel or was it given to the nation of Israel? And this is where you start to, when it comes to interpreting scripture, we have these differences.

45:11

This is where I think we have to get this clarifying thing. You'll see in Reformed theology, the reference when it comes to the law about a tripartite law, that God's law was given ceremonial, civil, and moral.

45:26

Now I don't see that in scripture. I don't see that breakdown. That's something that we as human beings have, have developed to better explain the law.

45:34

But what is it doing? It's, it's trying to identify a difference between those laws given to the nation and those laws that are given their ceremonial that Christ completed and those moral laws that we're still obligated to keep.

45:46

I define them differently. I don't know if anyone else does it this way, but I refer to them as universal laws.

45:52

Universal laws are laws for every human being. I think there's laws that are for the nation of Israel limited to them.

46:01

And there's laws for the church. Maybe there'll be laws in the, you know, the millennial kingdom, if you believe in a millennial kingdom.

46:08

And by the way, I am pro millennial. If there is a millennium, I am all for it.

46:16

Thank you for laughing. You got the joke. I'm sitting here laughing. I stole that from a friend of mine and I just loved it.

46:24

But the thing is that what we end up seeing is I'd break those laws that way.

46:30

In my mind, as I am interpreting scripture, it makes it simpler. But you see how the complexity of defining

46:37

Israel and the church makes a difference. It's a question of, do you, do you follow all the old

46:42

Testament laws? If not, why not? All these things come into play. And so really the, the clarifying question

46:51

I think we need to ask when we're discussing Israel and the church is the question, which

46:57

Israel? Spiritual Israel, you know, let's call that invisible

47:02

Israel or the nation of Israel, let's call that visible

47:07

Israel or local Israel, right? I mean, we can use the similar terms that we use to refer to the church from the, the dark ages, the middle ages to refer to the nation of Israel.

47:17

And I think this gives us the clarity. Just like there's unbelievers in the church, there's unbelievers in Israel.

47:25

Just like the church is made up of believers. So is Israel made up of believers.

47:32

So the elect, we all agree. See, that's where there's the agreement.

47:38

And so when we speak of dispensationalism, there are some extreme views on both sides.

47:43

Let's not deal with the extreme. Let's deal with the rational views. In covenant theology, there's not a complete discontinuity.

47:50

They believe that there's some continuity between, sorry, I reversed that. In dispensationalism, there's not a complete discontinuity.

47:59

They believe in some continuity between Israel and the church. When you look at covenant theology, they don't believe in a complete continuity.

48:06

They, they see differences. I mean, they don't keep the law completely like Israel did. So they see some discontinuity.

48:13

The question is how much? I think the real question is that continuity is within the spiritual body of Israel and the church, the elect body, and the discontinuity is in the nation of Israel compared to unbelieving church.

48:27

Does that clarify things you think? I think it's very helpful. And I think just to point out, let's not lose this fundamental principle that did come out of the reformation and which is a defining characteristic of the true church, even in its modern expression.

48:46

And that's the fundamental principle of grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. That's drawn from scripture.

48:53

That's the premise. And that distinguishes the visible, invisible, the elect, the non -elect.

49:00

And I think your focus is helpful there. I definitely think so.

49:06

And so as we try to conclude our four -part series here, we'll have a special bonus episode next week that's still on topic.

49:15

There's five Sundays this month, so we got five weeks, kept that series to a month. That's good. Didn't plan it that way, but it works out well.

49:23

We call that God's providence, right? Providence, yeah. Another P. As preachers, we got to literate, right?

49:34

So as we try to see this definition of the church continue to change from the beginning of its usage all the way to the way we use it today, it became more and more specific.

49:46

And therefore, when some people say the church, it is a question of what they mean by that and what's their understanding.

49:56

As theologians continue to address these issues throughout church history, it became more and more specific what we mean.

50:04

I put in my book this, let me read from the conclusion in what do we believe this section on the church.

50:11

I say, quote, it should be noted that some use Matthew 1820 to explain what makes up the church, quote, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there

50:26

I am among them, unquote. The purpose of this passage, however, is to address church discipline.

50:34

It is not a passage that is about defining the church.

50:39

Nevertheless, it does affect the definition of the church by discussing its function, which the reformers added to the definition, arguing that the church is limited to any gathering of two or three believers ignores the context of Matthew 18, which presents the idea of church discipline as a vital part of church function, unquote.

51:05

And so this is saying that when we look at the church, people have a tendency, they just want to grab a verse like that and say, this defines church.

51:14

See, we have church defined by two or three, or at least two or three. And so if you don't have two or three, well, you don't have a church.

51:23

Well, if that's the case, where two or three are gathered, there I am among them.

51:29

If we take that verse, rip it out of its context and give it a new meaning, I can take another verse,

51:34

I could look, say to the same book of Matthew, I could look at Matthew 28 and look at that verse in verse 20.

51:46

I'm going to start in verse 19 just so we get that context because it's a familiar verse to everyone, but Matthew 28, 19, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

51:55

Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I've commanded you. And behold,

52:02

I am with you always to the end of the age. So, Bud, how many

52:08

Christians have to be present for Christ to be present according to that verse then? Wow, that's a tough one.

52:17

Because you know, you know where I'm going to go with this. But most people, when I ask this, will say one, right?

52:25

Oh, goodness. But the answer's really zero, isn't it? It's zero. See, this is the thing, if people say two or three are gathered, there

52:33

Christ is in the midst, well, I can go to that one and say, no, you only need one believer. But the fact is, God's omniscient and omnipresent,

52:39

I mean. And so he's everywhere. He doesn't need any believers for him to be present.

52:45

You see how people can grab something and they try to use something that's not meant as a definition for a definition, and that becomes a problem.

52:53

So we've done four episodes trying to define what is the church because there's that much complexity to this.

53:01

But clearly what we end up seeing is that the people are gathering for the worship of God.

53:09

That when we gather, there should be certain functions that we do and we need to be clear that what the church actually is.

53:17

You know, I have a quote there, Bud, since I've been doing a bunch of talking, I did this long introduction.

53:23

I've been taking notes. How about could you read the quote that I have in the book from Wayne Grudem?

53:29

Because I think this really does make a good case. Yeah, I think it does, too. That was a really good quote.

53:34

And I agree with Grudem here in speaking about the issue of Matthew 18 and two or three gathered together as a definition for the church.

53:43

But here's what Grudem counters with, quote, baptism and the

53:49

Lord's Supper also serve as membership controls for the church. Baptism is the means for admitting people into the church and the

53:57

Lord's Supper is the means for allowing people to give a sign of continuing in the membership of the church.

54:03

The church signifies that it considers those who receive baptism and the

54:09

Lord's Supper to be saved. Therefore, these activities indicate what a church thinks about salvation and they are appropriately listed as a mark of the church today as well.

54:20

By contrast, groups who do not administer baptism and the Lord's Supper signify that they are not intending to function as a church.

54:30

Someone may stand on a street corner with a small crowd and have true preaching and hearing of the word. But the people there would not be a church.

54:38

Even a neighborhood Bible study meeting in a home can have the true teaching and hearing of the word without becoming a church.

54:45

But if a local Bible study began baptizing its own new converts and regularly participating in the

54:51

Lord's Supper, these things would signify an intention to function as a church. And it would be difficult to say why it should not be considered a church in itself.

55:01

And that's the end of the quote. Very helpful comment there. Yeah. And I think I think the reason that I wanted to include that is because some of what we're seeing is people who will go to that, they'll get two or three people.

55:15

They sit and watch some sermon online. You know, someone preaching at someone else's church and they call that church in their home.

55:24

Or you have people who go out on the streets and I know one person who on Sunday he goes out and does street evangelism and he calls that church and he sees himself as the pastor and the unbelievers are the people he's preaching to.

55:39

And he prepares sermons and some listen, some don't. But that's not what we see is the definition of church.

55:47

There's one person who wrote a book trying to make a case that women should not do open air evangelism.

55:53

Now, though I may come to a similar conclusion, I'm going to do it a different way. The reason the argument laid out was because when you're on the streets and you're evangelizing, there's two or three gathered and that makes a church.

56:06

We've already addressed that. There's singing that goes on. There's worship that goes on.

56:12

There's proclamation of God's word that goes on. There's praying that goes on. Now, here's the problem I have.

56:18

When you start defining church that way, notice the way that we historically define church and that way, because when you're on the street, you're not practicing church discipline, you're not practicing the ordinances, you're maybe proclaiming

56:32

God's word, but you're not doing these others. So is that really church in the function as we see how this idea of church has developed throughout time?

56:45

And some people are trying to say, well, that's church. Well, my argument is, you know, I used to, many, many, many years ago,

56:51

I worked for a company and there was three of us that were believers in a company of maybe 15 people.

56:58

Well, the three of us used to get to work early. We'd get about an hour early before anyone else was there.

57:05

We would get together, we prayed, we sang songs, we read and proclaim the scriptures together before anyone else came in.

57:14

Does that make that job site church? Did they discipline you? Well, I guess they did fire me.

57:23

You see, that's not church, though, right? I mean, who are the elders now? Who are the deacons?

57:30

You see, what we've done in these four episodes is to help you understand that church is not just where two or three are gathered.

57:39

It's more than that. And that really was the goal of giving you all this is so you can see this and see that the term church has become more and more specific throughout time.

57:50

So throughout history, it has gone from just being a local gathering for the purpose of voting to a local gathering for the functioning of the proclamation of God's word, the practice of ordinances, the purity of the church through church discipline.

58:05

And believers should be doing those functions. God's given a gift, a spiritual gift to every believer, the elect, to serve in the church.

58:16

This is what church is. And so we need to have a right definition of church.

58:23

Any other comments you want to add? I mean, I just was kind of doing a long introduction.

58:30

Yeah, because I thought I don't know how many episodes we're doing. We're on the modern church.

58:36

This is the fourth. Are we going to yeah. Are we going to do the postmodern church, which is just complete absurdity?

58:43

I don't I'm just kidding. I don't think we need to. Well, do they really feel that they're a church? Since they're all based on feelings.

58:51

I mean, emotionalism. I mean, you can have your true church and we can have our true church.

58:59

We'll see how that works out. Hey, so that maybe that's what Joel Steen's going to do. You say, Joel, you're a fake church.

59:05

He goes, well, I have my truth. I have my true church and you have your true church and therefore they both can be true. Exactly.

59:12

Oh, wow. But this is the thing. I mean, let's look at this. Look at some of the names you would think of with these mega churches and these false churches.

59:22

Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, you know, Creflo Dollar, name the names.

59:29

What do you see when they're saying they're a church? They may call a guy pastor, but is he proclaiming

59:37

God's word? Is he practicing the ordinances? And is there the purity of the church with church discipline?

59:44

That last one is kind of lacking in most of those because they're in it for the money, not for the souls.

59:51

You see, we care in the true church. We care about people's spiritual well -being and their spiritual maturity.

59:58

And therefore what we end up seeing is we care less about the things of this world and we care more about where people spend eternity.

01:00:08

That's our concern for you who may be listening if you don't know Christ. If you don't know Christ, ask yourself the question, where will you spend eternity?

01:00:16

You know, think about that quote we had at the beginning from Pastor Justin. You know, it is something to consider,

01:00:24

OK, because the odds of getting the coronavirus, coronavirus, whatever, the insanity virus, it's three percent.

01:00:36

Your odds of facing Christ, a hundred percent. That's the thing.

01:00:42

You want to make sure that as you look at this, that you're right with God.

01:00:48

And if you're not, get right with God today. Repent, believe. Yeah, repent.

01:00:55

It means to turn from trusting your good nature or your good works and trust in Jesus Christ.

01:01:01

Do that today because eternity is a really, really long time to be wrong.

01:01:09

Amen. And with that, bud, guess what? What's that?

01:01:15

That's a wrap. Take advantage of National Grid's incentives and save up to $550 on select natural gas water heaters.