WEBVTT 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:39.600 Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast. 00:00:39.600 --> 00:00:40.480 I am Corey J. 00:00:40.720 --> 00:00:44.640 Mahler. And I'm still Wood. 00:00:44.960 --> 00:00:48.480 On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the subject of 00:00:48.480 --> 00:00:52.480 the church, and we'll talk about the definition, the form, and the 00:00:52.480 --> 00:00:54.880 scope of the church and what we mean when we use that 00:00:54.880 --> 00:00:56.720 in different contexts. 00:00:56.720 --> 00:01:00.560 Before we get into the subject, just a brief bit of housekeeping. 00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:03.840 Uh this is the end of the calendar year, almost the end 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:06.320 of twenty twenty three as we're recording this. 00:01:06.320 --> 00:01:08.480 So Christmas is in a couple of weeks. 00:01:08.480 --> 00:01:11.600 The church calendar just began a couple weeks ago with the advent 00:01:11.600 --> 00:01:14.240 of Advent, because that's what that word means. 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:17.120 So we decide that next week we're going to be doing the 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:18.320 church calendar. 00:01:18.320 --> 00:01:21.440 And this week we thought that before getting into the details of 00:01:21.440 --> 00:01:24.800 the blessing of the calendar that the church has given us throughout 00:01:24.800 --> 00:01:27.760 history, we should probably define what church means first. 00:01:27.760 --> 00:01:30.640 So we are going to do that now and then next week 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:31.920 we'll have the calendar. 00:01:31.920 --> 00:01:34.560 These will probably both be shorter episodes, kind of give you guys 00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:37.360 a little bit of a break as we get into the Christmas 00:01:37.360 --> 00:01:41.440 season. And we're going to be taking two weeks off uh because 00:01:41.440 --> 00:01:44.640 the following week is going to be Kwanzaa where we would normally 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:46.480 record and I don't wrong Kwanzaa. 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:50.000 No, we're we we didn't want to uh we didn't want to 00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:54.320 record during Christmas week and because when we record we pretty much 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:56.960 immediately began worrying about the following recording. 00:01:56.960 --> 00:01:59.520 We're gonna take the next week off just so I can actually 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:02.480 we can both have a break kind of the week of Christmas. 00:02:02.480 --> 00:02:06.640 So after next week, the following recording that we release will be 00:02:06.640 --> 00:02:08.560 on the tenth of January. 00:02:08.560 --> 00:02:10.560 So just give you a heads up, there'll be a a two 00:02:10.640 --> 00:02:11.520 week break. 00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:13.760 You can go back and listen to previous episodes if you feel 00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:16.480 like there's good stuff back there. 00:02:16.480 --> 00:02:19.600 Today as we're discussing church, I want to give you just a 00:02:19.600 --> 00:02:22.000 very brief example in three 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:27.120 sentences that probably apply to virtually everyone listening. 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:33.680 You were baptized into the church, you joined a church, you attended 00:02:33.680 --> 00:02:34.800 a church. 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:38.560 Now, for virtually everyone, all three of those senses are true. 00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:42.720 All three of those senses, the direct object is the noun church. 00:02:42.720 --> 00:02:47.040 And yet in each of those, church means something slightly different. 00:02:47.040 --> 00:02:54.000 They're all fundamentally related, but they're all essentially different forms or different 00:02:54.000 --> 00:02:57.520 levels or layers of forms of the same thing. 00:02:57.520 --> 00:03:01.600 And so today we're going to be talking about the particular forms 00:03:01.600 --> 00:03:03.760 of the church. 00:03:03.760 --> 00:03:06.080 I want to say up front that this is not intended to 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:08.160 be a fiddly philosophical episode. 00:03:08.160 --> 00:03:11.200 This isn't, we're trying not trying to make some sort of big-brained, 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:13.920 needless taxonomy of things. 00:03:13.920 --> 00:03:18.320 The specific reason for tackling the different forms of church is that 00:03:18.560 --> 00:03:22.400 when there are discussions among Christians 00:03:23.600 --> 00:03:26.800 functionally you can only ever really talk about one of those at 00:03:26.800 --> 00:03:27.360 a time. 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:30.560 So we'll talk about those distinctions in this episode. 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:32.960 But when you're talking about them, like when you're talking about the 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:36.960 big C church, you're not talking about it in the same context 00:03:36.960 --> 00:03:41.040 as you're talking about you your local congregation or by your denomination, 00:03:41.040 --> 00:03:43.440 which are kind of the the first, you know, the first is 00:03:43.440 --> 00:03:47.920 the big C church, the second is a denomination or church body, 00:03:47.920 --> 00:03:51.440 and then the third is your local congregation. 00:03:51.440 --> 00:03:54.640 And we'll refer to those throughout this in places as first, second, 00:03:54.640 --> 00:03:57.280 and third, just for the sake of clarity. 00:03:57.760 --> 00:04:01.200 It's only really possible when you're in discussion to talk about one 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:04.560 of those or maybe two of them at once, but it's never 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:08.000 possible really to functionally talk about all three because there's there's not 00:04:08.000 --> 00:04:09.680 a context where all three of those apply. 00:04:09.680 --> 00:04:10.720 So we'll get into that. 00:04:10.720 --> 00:04:14.160 And so I just the reason that this is important is that 00:04:14.160 --> 00:04:17.440 a lot of people will try to set them against each other. 00:04:17.440 --> 00:04:22.080 You know, particularly there's long in particularly in the American context been 00:04:22.240 --> 00:04:27.520 a movement against organized church or organized religion, which is a new 00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:30.960 term. It's something that's I think probably fundamentally American. 00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:35.440 It certainly sounds American to sort of reject any form of joining 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:37.600 or partnership with others. 00:04:37.600 --> 00:04:38.800 Yeah, it's it's interesting. 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:43.280 If you ever see videos of uh public events in Europe, you 00:04:43.280 --> 00:04:47.680 know, maybe like a a concert or something, some sort of performance, 00:04:47.680 --> 00:04:53.920 when crowds start clapping, European crowds in particular will very frequently rapidly 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:58.880 start clapping in unison, where they're they're claps will all con will 00:04:59.280 --> 00:05:02.240 will all end up on the same beat. 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:04.320 So they're all clapping as one. 00:05:04.320 --> 00:05:06.080 Americans never ever ever do that. 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:08.720 That's not that's fundamentally different than us. 00:05:08.720 --> 00:05:12.560 We will d go different volumes, different rotations of the hands, different 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:16.240 loudness. Like it's we're gonna do our own thing when we're Americans. 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:18.320 It's very much a part of our spirit. 00:05:18.320 --> 00:05:21.360 And it's it's different than most of Europe. 00:05:21.360 --> 00:05:25.520 I don't know that that's necessarily always bad, but that spirit in 00:05:25.520 --> 00:05:29.280 the context of church in general is not good. 00:05:29.680 --> 00:05:31.040 We'll get into why that is. 00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:35.920 So it's a lot of times when someone says one version of 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:38.880 the church, they're going to be doing it in rejection to the 00:05:38.880 --> 00:05:41.440 other. And you're gonna say, I I don't want, you know, deeds, 00:05:41.440 --> 00:05:42.080 not creeds. 00:05:42.080 --> 00:05:44.720 I don't want anything that's come from an organized church. 00:05:44.720 --> 00:05:48.640 I'm a non-denominational, independent, whatever church. 00:05:48.640 --> 00:05:50.240 It's there's just one of us. 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:54.000 There's Pastor Jim in his King James Bible, and we believe what 00:05:54.000 --> 00:05:56.720 it says, and we're all by ourselves doing our own thing, and 00:05:56.720 --> 00:05:58.160 we're being faithful. 00:05:58.160 --> 00:06:01.200 We're gonna make the case for why that causes problems and it's 00:06:01.120 --> 00:06:03.040 not good for anyone. 00:06:03.040 --> 00:06:05.680 But first we have to understand kind of what the broader context 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:08.400 is. So this is again is not, we're not trying to be 00:06:08.400 --> 00:06:09.760 fiddly and philosophical. 00:06:09.760 --> 00:06:14.400 We're trying to help make everyone able to understand and to communicate 00:06:14.400 --> 00:06:18.160 clearly when we're talking about these things because if I say church 00:06:18.240 --> 00:06:20.880 and I mean one thing and you're thinking of church in another 00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:24.800 context, we're automatically going to talk past one another. 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:26.240 And that's it's needless. 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:32.000 it's frustrating and causes miscommunication and a a lot of times, you 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:34.640 know, arguments and hurt feelings when there's no need. 00:06:34.880 --> 00:06:38.240 It's important to understand where we disagree and there's plenty of disagreement 00:06:38.240 --> 00:06:42.240 among Christians for good reason, but when we not even using the 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:45.280 same words in the same way, we create a mess. 00:06:45.280 --> 00:06:48.560 So the first one we're going to talk about is the capital 00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:50.320 C church. 00:06:50.320 --> 00:06:53.840 And fundamentally, what is meant by that in all times and all 00:06:54.400 --> 00:06:59.440 places is all believers, the the bride of Christ, the body of 00:06:59.440 --> 00:07:03.520 Christ. We are members of one body with Christ as our head. 00:07:03.520 --> 00:07:05.440 That is the capital C church. 00:07:05.680 --> 00:07:07.920 That is all saints living and dead. 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:12.160 We are all unified, all Christians who have the Holy Spirit are 00:07:12.160 --> 00:07:14.320 members of that church. 00:07:14.320 --> 00:07:18.400 And this is the reason, for example, that we as Lutherans in 00:07:18.400 --> 00:07:25.040 particular, and I think most Protestants, Flatly refuse to acknowledge Rome's claims, 00:07:25.040 --> 00:07:29.200 for example, in the West, that Rome is the Catholic Church, capital 00:07:29.440 --> 00:07:32.240 C meaning universal or according to the whole. 00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:35.760 When Rome says Catholic, it is It is saying we're the whole 00:07:35.760 --> 00:07:37.600 thing. We're the capital C church. 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:41.680 And if you're outside of Rome, you are outside of the church. 00:07:41.680 --> 00:07:45.440 And that was what the Reformation was fundamentally about. 00:07:45.440 --> 00:07:48.640 Can you still be Christian without the Pope? 00:07:48.640 --> 00:07:51.600 That was a lot of young ink was spilled and blood was 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.320 shed over that question, because 00:07:55.200 --> 00:07:59.760 the argument was made, I obviously we believe correctly, that it is 00:07:59.760 --> 00:08:02.720 possible to be Christian without being Roman Catholic. 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:04.480 They're not mutually exclusive. 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:08.160 We certainly recognize that there were many Christians in Rome before that 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:10.560 day and since that day, including today. 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:15.120 Even in the state that Rome is in today, we still gladly 00:08:15.120 --> 00:08:18.560 and thankfully acknowledge that there are many Christians among them. 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:21.280 The only way that that works, as we talked in the Reformation 00:08:21.280 --> 00:08:26.560 episode, is if there's something larger than the denominations, which is the 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:30.080 second sort of church that we're now talking about, where Rome is 00:08:30.080 --> 00:08:33.840 one example the second, Lutheran is another, and you know, the the 00:08:33.840 --> 00:08:40.000 Catholic answers boilerplate snark is that after the Reformation, there were 30,000 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.000 dominations, which is complete nonsense. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:43.120 It's a lie. 00:08:43.120 --> 00:08:47.120 But we do agree that it was bad for that fracture to 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:50.800 exist. The reason for the fracture would be was because of disagreement 00:08:51.520 --> 00:08:54.720 over theology, over what scripture says. 00:08:54.720 --> 00:08:58.480 And that is the reason at the second split. 00:08:58.480 --> 00:09:02.640 And then at the third, you have the basic unit of Christian 00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:06.880 life, which is the local congregation, which in some ways 00:09:07.840 --> 00:09:11.440 to us as individuals matters the most because it's the one it's 00:09:11.360 --> 00:09:12.560 the one that's immediate. 00:09:12.560 --> 00:09:16.560 You know, the Capital C Church, the Eternal Church, the Bride of 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:19.520 Christ, you can't see it, you can't touch it, it doesn't have 00:09:19.520 --> 00:09:21.360 a mailing address. 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:23.360 Denominations have mailing addresses. 00:09:23.360 --> 00:09:27.760 They're men with names and addresses who are responsible for whatever those 00:09:27.760 --> 00:09:29.120 denominations do. 00:09:29.120 --> 00:09:33.680 So that's something that's concrete, but it's generally distant. 00:09:33.680 --> 00:09:37.120 What is local is your actual congregation. 00:09:37.120 --> 00:09:41.840 It's your family, it's your friends and your neighbors all gathering together 00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:47.360 in one physical place around hopefully the Word and Sacrament of God. 00:09:47.360 --> 00:09:53.040 That is where God comes among us in a particular way, akin 00:09:53.040 --> 00:09:57.440 to, not identical to, but akin to what was found in temple 00:09:57.440 --> 00:10:01.360 worship. Now, things have changed with with the advent of a new 00:10:01.360 --> 00:10:05.760 covenant. I'm not making a that sort of claim, but the gathering 00:10:05.760 --> 00:10:08.960 of the faithful Has always existed. 00:10:08.960 --> 00:10:12.960 You know, wherever, throughout the Old Testament, whenever something special happened, they 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:13.760 built an altar. 00:10:13.760 --> 00:10:16.560 They worshiped God right there and named the place. 00:10:16.560 --> 00:10:20.320 And from then on, that place was considered holy and special and 00:10:20.320 --> 00:10:25.520 had a name oriented around something godly. 00:10:25.520 --> 00:10:30.240 When Christians gather together, that is the local gathering of the faithful. 00:10:30.240 --> 00:10:34.320 And where that happens, it's participation in the first, it's participation in 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:36.000 the Capital C church. 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.720 Usually it's also a participation in the second. 00:10:38.720 --> 00:10:41.120 So as we talk about this today, we're kind of trying to 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:44.640 figure out where the boundaries are between those and where one slides 00:10:44.640 --> 00:10:50.080 into the other and what happens when you confuse them and sometimes 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:52.080 when they're frankly at odds with each other. 00:10:52.080 --> 00:10:54.400 You know, one of the fundamental reasons for doing this episode is 00:10:54.560 --> 00:10:58.400 not only to eliminate confusion, but frankly not to bury the lead, 00:10:58.400 --> 00:11:02.080 but we are in a position, all of us today where many 00:11:02.080 --> 00:11:07.920 of the second type of church, the other dominations, are departing the 00:11:07.920 --> 00:11:10.960 faith in small ways and in big ways. 00:11:10.960 --> 00:11:16.880 And as this happens, our local congregations are faced with a dire 00:11:17.040 --> 00:11:20.720 and unprecedented question: what do we do? 00:11:20.720 --> 00:11:25.600 If you're part of something bigger, and the bigger thing separates itself 00:11:25.600 --> 00:11:30.080 by its false confession from the biggest thing, from the first church, 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:32.400 what do you as is the third form of the church? 00:11:32.560 --> 00:11:33.520 what do you do? 00:11:33.520 --> 00:11:36.560 How do we as in the third position remain faithful to the 00:11:36.560 --> 00:11:38.720 first when the second's getting in the way? 00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:41.600 So there's been a lot of ink spilled over the years, over 00:11:41.600 --> 00:11:44.000 the centuries, about dealing with this stuff. 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:47.760 And thankfully as Lutherans, we have some of the best written theology 00:11:47.760 --> 00:11:50.000 from past centuries addressing this. 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:54.880 But it's important to understand why these things emerge, why they're important, 00:11:54.880 --> 00:11:57.680 and how we can preserve them faithfully. 00:11:58.160 --> 00:11:58.320 On 00:11:58.320 --> 00:12:03.040 the note of Lutheran theology written in the past on this particular 00:12:03.040 --> 00:12:07.200 topic, I I will again take the opportunity to point out that 00:12:07.200 --> 00:12:12.240 CPH needs to release many of their materials into the public domain 00:12:12.720 --> 00:12:16.000 because these are resources that belong to the church and should be 00:12:16.000 --> 00:12:17.760 available for any Christian to read. 00:12:17.760 --> 00:12:21.680 These are not things that should be copyright encumbered, particularly given some 00:12:21.680 --> 00:12:24.400 of them are written many years ago and really should not be 00:12:24.400 --> 00:12:27.040 in copyright at all, but that is a separate issue we've covered 00:12:27.040 --> 00:12:28.320 in another topic. 00:12:28.320 --> 00:12:32.080 We will link to some of those in the show notes, so 00:12:32.400 --> 00:12:35.920 unfortunately, you will have to purchase them because they are generally not 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:37.680 available publicly. 00:12:37.680 --> 00:12:39.280 You may be able to find a PDF. 00:12:39.280 --> 00:12:40.880 I don't know if those are available. 00:12:40.880 --> 00:12:44.160 At any rate, I want to start by reading a couple of 00:12:44.160 --> 00:12:48.480 paragraphs from Peeper, one of the dogmaticians of the LCMS, who does 00:12:48.480 --> 00:12:51.520 a great job on this and basically every other issue that he 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:54.720 addresses in his three volume work on dogmatics. 00:12:54.720 --> 00:12:55.760 The first is just a general 00:12:56.800 --> 00:13:00.160 definition of what the Christian Church is. 00:13:00.160 --> 00:13:04.880 The Christian Church consists of all those and only those who believe 00:13:04.880 --> 00:13:05.840 in Christ. 00:13:05.840 --> 00:13:10.800 Since, however, an anti-scriptural meaning is today given the words believe in 00:13:10.800 --> 00:13:15.280 Christ. We must make our definition more specific and say The Christian 00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:19.520 Church is composed of all those and only those in whom the 00:13:19.520 --> 00:13:22.960 Holy Spirit has worked the faith that for the sake of Christ's 00:13:22.960 --> 00:13:27.760 vicarious satisfaction their sins are forgiven. 00:13:27.760 --> 00:13:31.680 And so that's the definition of that first level of church, capital 00:13:31.840 --> 00:13:36.160 C church, it is composed of all believers throughout all time. 00:13:37.200 --> 00:13:43.360 Those who lived before Christ's life on earth, death and resurrection, believed 00:13:43.360 --> 00:13:45.440 in the Messiah who was to come. 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:49.200 Those of us living after that believe in the Messiah who has 00:13:49.200 --> 00:13:53.200 come. It's always belief in Christ that makes one a member of 00:13:53.200 --> 00:13:56.880 the church, and that faith is always a gift of the Holy 00:13:56.880 --> 00:14:00.720 Spirit. It's not a work of man. 00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:06.080 And then, second, a more extended definition of the Christian Church and 00:14:06.080 --> 00:14:09.200 commentary on a couple other matters from Pieper. 00:14:09.200 --> 00:14:13.520 In short, according to Lutheran teaching, it is faith in the gospel 00:14:13.600 --> 00:14:19.440 which in every case establishes membership in the Christian Church both C 00:14:19.680 --> 00:14:21.200 their uppercase. 00:14:21.200 --> 00:14:25.680 To him who believes the gospel, membership in the Christian Church may 00:14:25.680 --> 00:14:26.720 not be denied. 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:31.440 Of him who rejects the gospel, membership in the Christian Church may 00:14:31.440 --> 00:14:32.960 not be asserted. 00:14:32.960 --> 00:14:38.480 Excommunication pronounced against true believers does not deprive them of membership in 00:14:38.480 --> 00:14:39.440 the church. 00:14:39.360 --> 00:14:43.840 Also, those who in their ignorance believe false doctrines are members of 00:14:43.840 --> 00:14:48.560 the church, whether they belong to an orthodox or heterodox church body, 00:14:48.560 --> 00:14:52.560 if only they cling sincerely to God's grace in Christ. 00:14:52.560 --> 00:14:57.360 Also, lack of baptism, if there was no opportunity to receive baptism, 00:14:57.360 --> 00:15:02.000 does not deprive believers of membership in the Christian Church, because baptism 00:15:02.240 --> 00:15:07.360 is not absolutely necessary, as was shown in the Locus di Baptismo, 00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:11.600 the title or section on baptism. 00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:15.360 And so here we have a more extended version of what it 00:15:15.360 --> 00:15:19.280 means to be a member of that capital C church. 00:15:19.280 --> 00:15:22.560 Again, you enter the church through faith. 00:15:22.560 --> 00:15:27.040 It is belief in the gospel, which is to say Christ's vicarious 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:29.200 satisfaction for sin. 00:15:29.200 --> 00:15:32.480 That is what makes one a member of Christ Church. 00:15:32.480 --> 00:15:36.160 And you are a member of Christ Church by virtue of that 00:15:36.160 --> 00:15:42.080 faith, not by virtue of membership in a synod or an overarching 00:15:42.080 --> 00:15:46.880 church body, lowercase c or even a local congregation. 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:51.360 Now, it is good to be a member of those insofar as 00:15:51.360 --> 00:15:53.760 they are teaching rightly. 00:15:53.760 --> 00:15:58.160 But to be a member of Christ Church is to have faith. 00:15:58.160 --> 00:16:01.120 That is a matter of God, that is not a matter of 00:16:01.840 --> 00:16:04.560 men. Men do not get to declare whether you are a member 00:16:04.560 --> 00:16:07.200 of the church or not a member of the church. 00:16:07.200 --> 00:16:10.000 They can declare whether you are a member of a corporation or 00:16:10.000 --> 00:16:11.920 not, but that is a different matter. 00:16:11.920 --> 00:16:15.600 That is typically the form that the second level of church takes, 00:16:15.600 --> 00:16:18.560 so you have a synod or you have Rome or you have 00:16:18.560 --> 00:16:22.320 whatever the body happens to be in various traditions. 00:16:22.320 --> 00:16:27.600 That is a different thing from the uppercase capital C Church. 00:16:27.600 --> 00:16:32.800 Now, those second level bodies should be faithful, and insofar as they 00:16:32.800 --> 00:16:38.720 are faithful, they are in fact parts of the uppercase C church. 00:16:38.720 --> 00:16:43.200 But you, as an individual Christian, ultimately your membership in the church 00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:47.200 is a membership in that uppercase C church. 00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:50.640 Now, as we've mentioned already and will undoubtedly say a number of 00:16:50.640 --> 00:16:54.720 additional times in this episode, you should still be a member of 00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:59.520 a local congregation, and if possible, that local congregation should be a 00:16:59.520 --> 00:17:02.320 member of a larger community of churches. 00:17:02.320 --> 00:17:05.920 That's what it means to have that life together as Christians. 00:17:05.920 --> 00:17:09.840 We are not to forsake the gathering together of the saints. 00:17:09.840 --> 00:17:14.560 As a first order matter, that means don't forsake your local congregation 00:17:15.600 --> 00:17:18.720 Now we have to add the caveat, and this is unfortunate, but 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:20.560 we have to do it today. 00:17:20.560 --> 00:17:25.280 If you do not have any faithful local bodies, we are absolutely 00:17:25.280 --> 00:17:28.640 not saying that you have to attend an unfaithful or a faithless 00:17:28.720 --> 00:17:31.120 supposed church. 00:17:31.120 --> 00:17:34.720 It may be that for a certain amount of time you will 00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:37.600 have to have basically what is a home church. 00:17:37.600 --> 00:17:41.120 Now is it fully a church in the sense of a traditional 00:17:41.120 --> 00:17:45.280 congregation constituted of local believers. 00:17:45.280 --> 00:17:48.640 Over time perhaps it could become that, but to start off no, 00:17:48.640 --> 00:17:50.400 it's more of a Bible study. 00:17:50.400 --> 00:17:54.080 Now, that is still fellowship with the saints, that is still important, 00:17:54.080 --> 00:17:58.720 you can still study God's Word, but it is not that full 00:17:58.720 --> 00:18:03.520 communion that you should have with a local congregation. 00:18:03.520 --> 00:18:07.360 Because of the reality of the situation in which we find ourselves, 00:18:07.760 --> 00:18:10.720 that sort of thing may be necessary if not today than maybe 00:18:10.720 --> 00:18:12.800 in the not so distant future. 00:18:12.800 --> 00:18:18.000 And that is again better than the alternative of simply being isolated 00:18:18.000 --> 00:18:20.800 and not having that fellowship with other Christians. 00:18:20.800 --> 00:18:23.600 It's not ideal, that's the point. 00:18:23.600 --> 00:18:27.040 But sometimes the ideal is not an option. 00:18:27.040 --> 00:18:30.000 Sometimes we must do the best that we can with what we 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:33.760 have been given in the era, in the time in which we 00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:38.800 live. And house churches are not inappropriate. 00:18:38.800 --> 00:18:42.240 Those were what we had in the early days of Christendom. 00:18:42.240 --> 00:18:45.120 That is how things started in many of the Greek and Roman 00:18:45.120 --> 00:18:47.680 areas. They started with house churches. 00:18:47.680 --> 00:18:51.920 Over time they became more organized and became proper congregations, joined together 00:18:51.920 --> 00:18:57.440 and formed synods, larger groups, larger church bodies, all still part of 00:18:57.440 --> 00:19:01.280 that first sense of uppercase C church. 00:19:01.280 --> 00:19:05.440 We may be in a similar situation today in having to rebuild 00:19:05.440 --> 00:19:08.560 in the same way that they built originally. 00:19:09.280 --> 00:19:12.640 There are two specific examples in the New Testament that come That 00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:16.880 comes up frequently, usually in the context of baptism, but as we 00:19:16.880 --> 00:19:20.480 made the case in the baptism episode, which is functionally a part 00:19:20.480 --> 00:19:26.320 of this, is that the thief on the cross became a member 00:19:26.320 --> 00:19:30.480 of the Capital C Church with his confession of his sins and 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:33.200 with his confession of Jesus Christ as his savior. 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:36.000 He was also on the cross, he was about to die, he 00:19:36.000 --> 00:19:39.120 confessed. He became a Christian. 00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:40.320 He was saved. 00:19:40.320 --> 00:19:44.160 He was with all the saints of that day as Christ promised. 00:19:44.160 --> 00:19:48.240 He never joined a denomination or a congregation. 00:19:48.240 --> 00:19:50.400 He was never baptized. 00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:54.720 The crucial element there as we made the case in the baptism 00:19:54.720 --> 00:19:57.920 episode is that if by some miracle he had come down off 00:19:57.920 --> 00:20:00.240 that cross, he would have done those things. 00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:02.000 He would have gone and been baptized. 00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:07.920 He would have joined with other local believers every Sabbath, you know, 00:20:07.920 --> 00:20:10.160 every Sunday as things evolved. 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:14.560 He would have lived the Christian life that every Christian was also 00:20:14.560 --> 00:20:20.240 leading. So it's an example that the second and third are not 00:20:20.240 --> 00:20:22.880 absolutely necessary for the first. 00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:29.680 However, despising the third, despising the local gathering of the saints is 00:20:29.680 --> 00:20:32.800 condemned by scriptures, Corey just mentioned. 00:20:32.800 --> 00:20:35.120 And the Ethiopian eunuch is another example. 00:20:35.120 --> 00:20:38.080 He wasn't facing a death sentence, but he was from Ethiopia. 00:20:38.080 --> 00:20:40.000 He was from a place that had 00:20:41.280 --> 00:20:45.920 Jews, they had had the gospel, you know, for the from the 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:48.400 pre-incarnate Christ for a while. 00:20:48.400 --> 00:20:52.320 But when he was convinced by the gospel and said, Why should 00:20:52.320 --> 00:20:54.240 I not be baptized here? 00:20:54.240 --> 00:20:58.320 He desired baptism, he received baptism, but then he went home to 00:20:58.320 --> 00:21:03.120 Ethiopia, where probably not a lot of churches, at least not yet, 00:21:03.120 --> 00:21:04.480 they grew. 00:21:04.480 --> 00:21:07.040 And so he was in a position where 00:21:08.320 --> 00:21:11.040 he was He was going to a place that did not have 00:21:11.040 --> 00:21:12.240 a lot of believers. 00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:15.520 He probably went back as an evangelist in part, you know, he 00:21:15.520 --> 00:21:21.760 he didn't leave his vocation, but he now as a believer in 00:21:21.760 --> 00:21:26.080 Jesus Christ had something new to share with people to explain to 00:21:26.080 --> 00:21:30.080 them the scriptures that we already had have been fulfilled in this 00:21:30.080 --> 00:21:34.640 man. And here's this wonderful, incredible news that all those prophecies were 00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:36.160 fulfilled. And so And so 00:21:37.120 --> 00:21:41.920 he would have certainly desired to gather with other believers by virtue 00:21:41.920 --> 00:21:44.400 of making others around him Christian. 00:21:44.400 --> 00:21:48.160 And I think this is a good example for us today that 00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:50.560 he was going to a place where maybe there there weren't a 00:21:50.560 --> 00:21:51.280 lot of believers. 00:21:51.280 --> 00:21:54.640 Maybe in order for him to have a congregation locally, he might 00:21:54.640 --> 00:21:55.600 have had to make it. 00:21:55.600 --> 00:21:57.360 You know, again, there were Jews there. 00:21:57.360 --> 00:22:02.080 There were some who had certainly had faith to that point, but 00:22:02.080 --> 00:22:05.680 with the birth of Christ it became an inflection point for the 00:22:05.680 --> 00:22:10.560 Jews. Were they going to recognize the Messiah who was promised, or 00:22:10.560 --> 00:22:13.760 were they going to rebel against God, as they had done their 00:22:13.760 --> 00:22:15.120 entire history. 00:22:15.120 --> 00:22:17.520 Most continued to rebel. 00:22:17.520 --> 00:22:19.360 Some became Christians. 00:22:19.360 --> 00:22:23.040 Some continued in their belief in the Messiah and were known by 00:22:23.040 --> 00:22:26.000 a new name as Christians, but it was the same faith. 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:27.520 They didn't switch faiths. 00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:32.720 Their faith was fulfilled in the moment of that being delivered in 00:22:32.720 --> 00:22:34.720 the body of Christ. 00:22:34.720 --> 00:22:39.520 So he was blessed that that information was transmitted to him by 00:22:39.520 --> 00:22:42.800 witnesses. But then he was going to a place where you know 00:22:42.880 --> 00:22:46.320 the gathering of the of the faithful might have been, you know, 00:22:46.320 --> 00:22:47.520 a long road to hoe. 00:22:47.520 --> 00:22:49.600 It might have taken a while for there to be others. 00:22:49.600 --> 00:22:55.040 And yet as we face similar circumstances, certainly in a day where 00:22:55.040 --> 00:23:00.240 more and more the second order church bodies have gotten weaker and 00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:03.360 weaker and more and more have apostatized, some of us are living 00:23:03.360 --> 00:23:04.800 in the wilderness now. 00:23:04.800 --> 00:23:08.000 And one of the points we want to make today is that 00:23:08.000 --> 00:23:11.840 that is no excuse for despising the gathering of the faithful. 00:23:11.840 --> 00:23:16.160 As Cory said, it may not be immediately possible for you. 00:23:16.160 --> 00:23:19.680 But insofar as it depends on you, as much as you're able, 00:23:19.680 --> 00:23:22.080 it is important to gather with others. 00:23:22.320 --> 00:23:27.280 I want to go into a little more detail, just briefly, on 00:23:27.280 --> 00:23:31.120 the issue of what it means to be in schism or to 00:23:31.120 --> 00:23:36.800 be a schismatic, because this obviously is at least tangentially related to 00:23:36.800 --> 00:23:38.080 the topic we are discussing. 00:23:38.080 --> 00:23:39.920 It was already mentioned. 00:23:39.920 --> 00:23:43.760 A short paragraph from Pieper on specifically this issue. 00:23:43.760 --> 00:23:47.280 He's actually only he has only two paragraphs in his section in 00:23:47.280 --> 00:23:51.520 his dogmatics on schism in this context of the church. 00:23:51.520 --> 00:23:53.840 I'm just going to read the second one. 00:23:53.840 --> 00:23:58.400 Such, however, as separate from a church body because it tenaciously clings 00:23:58.400 --> 00:24:04.000 to false doctrine are unjustly called schismatics, separatists, etc. 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:08.880 This separation is commanded in Scripture Romans sixteen seventeen, and is the 00:24:08.880 --> 00:24:13.360 only means of restoring and maintaining the true unity in the Christian 00:24:13.360 --> 00:24:19.040 church. And so the reason this is important, this is something that 00:24:19.040 --> 00:24:22.560 is vital to understand in this context, particularly for us today, but 00:24:22.560 --> 00:24:26.240 throughout the entire history of the Church, Capital C 00:24:28.480 --> 00:24:33.600 it is not those who dissent from false doctrine, or said another 00:24:33.600 --> 00:24:37.040 way, it is not those who insist on right doctrine who are 00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:43.840 schismatics? It is always those who insist on false doctrine or reject 00:24:43.840 --> 00:24:45.120 right doctrine. 00:24:45.120 --> 00:24:50.240 It doesn't matter if you are the only one speaking God's truth, 00:24:50.240 --> 00:24:53.600 everyone else would then be schismatics. 00:24:53.600 --> 00:24:57.840 You would be the only person not in schism, because when it 00:24:57.840 --> 00:25:02.160 comes down to the issue of schism, it is with regard to 00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:07.760 the uppercase C church, with regard to that first sense, the grand 00:25:07.760 --> 00:25:09.920 umbrella over all things. 00:25:09.920 --> 00:25:13.920 It is Christ Church, with which you agree or with which you 00:25:13.920 --> 00:25:17.840 disagree, and that makes you a member or not a member. 00:25:17.840 --> 00:25:22.400 If you disagree with the teachings of Christ Church, you are in 00:25:22.400 --> 00:25:28.080 schism. It doesn't matter if you agree with every other person who 00:25:28.080 --> 00:25:31.600 calls himself a Christian on earth, if all of you are wrong 00:25:31.600 --> 00:25:35.840 and disagree with Scripture, you are in schism, and it can be 00:25:35.840 --> 00:25:38.480 one man who stands up and speaks the truth. 00:25:38.480 --> 00:25:42.560 That man is not in schism because he is speaking the truth 00:25:42.560 --> 00:25:44.640 of Christ Church. 00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:48.800 And so today, when we face all of these second level bodies 00:25:48.960 --> 00:25:52.880 that are becoming apostate, or in many cases have been apostate for 00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:53.200 years 00:25:54.800 --> 00:25:59.440 recognize that if you dissent from the false teachings of those churches, 00:25:59.440 --> 00:26:01.840 you are not in schism. 00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:05.040 Because your duty as a Christian is to hear the voice of 00:26:05.040 --> 00:26:08.800 the shepherd and listen to what he says, your duty is to 00:26:08.800 --> 00:26:12.720 listen to God's word, to listen to Christ's word. 00:26:12.720 --> 00:26:18.240 It does not matter what that second level church body says if 00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:20.640 it is in conflict with Scripture. 00:26:21.680 --> 00:26:27.440 Now, insofar as there are issues of adiaphora, something that is not 00:26:27.520 --> 00:26:30.480 in fact binding on the Christian, because it is not in fact 00:26:30.560 --> 00:26:32.320 something that is stated in God's Word. 00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:36.240 in those we should bear with these second level bodies. 00:26:36.240 --> 00:26:38.320 And so if you don't like the color of the candles that 00:26:38.320 --> 00:26:41.040 are used in Advent, deal with it. 00:26:41.040 --> 00:26:41.840 Ignore it. 00:26:41.840 --> 00:26:44.480 They can be blue or purple or whatever they happen to be. 00:26:44.480 --> 00:26:48.400 It should be one of those colors, but If you disagree with 00:26:48.400 --> 00:26:50.960 something like that, let it slide. 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:54.880 That is something where you bear with others in Christian patience. 00:26:54.880 --> 00:26:57.760 That is not something where you leave and say, Well, I'm going 00:26:57.760 --> 00:27:00.480 to form my own church because I want the paramets to be 00:27:00.480 --> 00:27:04.720 this color or I don't like this design of the stained glass. 00:27:04.720 --> 00:27:06.080 That is not what it means. 00:27:06.080 --> 00:27:09.360 That is not the matter here. 00:27:09.360 --> 00:27:12.560 Those sorts of issues, those are atiaphora. 00:27:12.560 --> 00:27:16.880 They're important in many cases, because it does matter how you decorate 00:27:16.880 --> 00:27:17.440 the church. 00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:19.840 We will get into a little bit more of that in next 00:27:19.840 --> 00:27:22.720 week's episode on the church calendar, because some of these things are 00:27:22.720 --> 00:27:26.240 for teaching, a preview of that episode. 00:27:26.240 --> 00:27:31.120 But they're not things over which you split from the church. 00:27:31.360 --> 00:27:34.800 The things over which you split from the church you must split 00:27:34.800 --> 00:27:39.680 from a false church, because Scripture commands it, are false doctrine, false 00:27:39.680 --> 00:27:44.720 teaching. First First and foremost, if they do not teach rightly on 00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:46.960 the gospel. 00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:51.120 Because to stay in a church that teaches falsely with regard to 00:27:51.120 --> 00:27:54.560 the core matters of the truth of Christ, to God's matters, to 00:27:54.560 --> 00:27:59.200 God's things, is to violate your own conscience. 00:27:59.200 --> 00:28:00.880 And that is the problem here. 00:28:00.880 --> 00:28:04.080 And so if you split because of that, you are not a 00:28:04.080 --> 00:28:06.960 schismatic. You need to be comfortable with that. 00:28:06.960 --> 00:28:10.640 Because we live in a time where again these church bodies are 00:28:10.640 --> 00:28:16.000 teaching falsely, are becoming apostate, and it may be that you will 00:28:16.000 --> 00:28:18.160 be forced out or have to leave. 00:28:18.160 --> 00:28:21.200 That does not make you a schismatic. 00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:25.440 That does not separate you from Christ or from his church. 00:28:25.440 --> 00:28:30.320 It just separates you from a corporation And that hardly matters to 00:28:30.320 --> 00:28:31.520 a Christian. 00:28:31.840 --> 00:28:32.000 I 00:28:32.000 --> 00:28:35.120 won't read the entire thing here, but I commend all of uh 00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:36.880 1 Corinthians 12 to everyone. 00:28:36.880 --> 00:28:37.360 Go read it. 00:28:37.360 --> 00:28:40.480 I'm just going to read a couple verses, uh, disconnect a little 00:28:40.480 --> 00:28:44.480 bit. For just as the body is one and has many members, 00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:48.160 and all the members, and all the members of the body, though 00:28:48.160 --> 00:28:51.440 many are one body, so it is with Christ, for in one 00:28:51.440 --> 00:28:55.040 spirit we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves 00:28:55.040 --> 00:28:58.240 or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. 00:28:58.240 --> 00:29:02.000 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 00:29:02.320 --> 00:29:05.920 This is clearly one of the many passages that deals with the 00:29:05.920 --> 00:29:09.200 Capital C Church and with us being direct members 00:29:10.080 --> 00:29:11.440 of it. 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:17.200 And crucially, this is a sort of spiritual connection that it doesn't 00:29:17.120 --> 00:29:22.880 bypass the local congregation, but the local congregation is where It is 00:29:22.880 --> 00:29:26.480 visible because the rest of that passage talks about the different gifts 00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:28.160 that God gives to us 00:29:29.120 --> 00:29:35.840 being practiced in our local congregation, in our lives with our neighbors. 00:29:35.840 --> 00:29:37.440 That's crucial because Well because 00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:42.400 this is where God has placed us and these the gifts that 00:29:42.400 --> 00:29:47.520 were given as members of Christ's body, the church, are for the 00:29:47.520 --> 00:29:50.640 benefit of our brothers in Christ and our neighbors. 00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:57.120 And as Corey was saying, there's there come times where there's error 00:29:57.200 --> 00:29:59.440 and sometimes it's small and sometimes it's great. 00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:03.840 It if if if you live in a wasteland of Christianity, which 00:30:03.840 --> 00:30:08.880 is increasingly much of the world, it may be that your local 00:30:08.880 --> 00:30:12.400 congregation you can no longer say amen to many of the things 00:30:12.400 --> 00:30:13.840 that are there. 00:30:13.840 --> 00:30:19.440 Nevertheless, if that's still the closest to a faithful congregation in your 00:30:19.440 --> 00:30:24.160 area, maybe you know that again, as Corey said, these are matters 00:30:24.160 --> 00:30:24.880 of conscience. 00:30:24.880 --> 00:30:27.920 There's no there's no script for how to deal with 00:30:28.880 --> 00:30:32.960 with an environment where we see churches dying, the second and third 00:30:32.960 --> 00:30:36.720 type of churches, where they are where their hearts are growing cold, 00:30:36.720 --> 00:30:40.640 where men are becoming evil, even as they proclaim that they are 00:30:40.640 --> 00:30:45.280 acting in the name of God the beginning of uh John sixteen 00:30:45.280 --> 00:30:48.320 is something I quoted online earlier today. 00:30:48.320 --> 00:30:52.320 Jesus after giving some end times prophecies says I have said all 00:30:52.320 --> 00:30:54.880 these things to you to keep you from falling away. 00:30:54.880 --> 00:30:58.240 They will put you out of the synagogues, indeed the hours coming 00:30:58.240 --> 00:31:02.160 when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God, 00:31:02.160 --> 00:31:04.480 and they will do these things because they have not known the 00:31:04.480 --> 00:31:05.680 Father nor me. 00:31:05.680 --> 00:31:08.800 But I've said these things to you, that when your hour comes 00:31:08.880 --> 00:31:11.920 you may remember that I told them to you. 00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:14.800 I think there are two crucial things going on there that don't 00:31:14.800 --> 00:31:16.960 are necessarily the two that stand out. 00:31:17.440 --> 00:31:21.920 The first is that whoever kills you will think he's serving God. 00:31:22.240 --> 00:31:27.360 the men who will persecute believers in the church will do it 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:30.160 in the name of God in many times and places. 00:31:30.160 --> 00:31:32.720 And we've seen that in the past, and we will continue to 00:31:32.720 --> 00:31:35.440 see it in the future just as we see it right now. 00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:40.880 Often the persecution of the church comes from within what calls itself 00:31:40.880 --> 00:31:44.160 the church, which again is the distinction between the second, the first 00:31:44.320 --> 00:31:45.600 and the third. 00:31:45.600 --> 00:31:50.640 We believe as Lutherans that the persecution of the faithful that occurred 00:31:50.640 --> 00:31:56.000 during the Reformation came from the second falsely embodying the first. 00:31:56.000 --> 00:32:00.240 We believe that there were acts of that pope in that time 00:32:00.480 --> 00:32:04.880 that were evil and it was necessary for Christians to separate themselves. 00:32:04.880 --> 00:32:08.480 You know, initially, as we said in the Reformation episode, Luther didn't 00:32:08.400 --> 00:32:10.560 want to separate, he just wanted them to behave. 00:32:10.640 --> 00:32:13.360 It's like, hey, the Bible says this, and you're doing the other 00:32:13.360 --> 00:32:15.440 thing. Let's do the thing the Bible says. 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:19.360 And when the response was, We're gonna kill you, you know, this 00:32:19.360 --> 00:32:23.120 was John 16 being fulfilled, they threw him out and they tried 00:32:23.120 --> 00:32:24.240 to have him murdered. 00:32:24.240 --> 00:32:26.400 Well, okay. 00:32:26.400 --> 00:32:30.720 The other thing that Jesus mentions here that I think we all 00:32:30.720 --> 00:32:34.160 need to hear is that he says when their hour comes you 00:32:34.160 --> 00:32:36.560 may remember that I told them to you. 00:32:36.560 --> 00:32:40.480 He said these things so that when they're fulfilled we would remember. 00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:43.840 He didn't say, I'm telling you these things and I'm gonna spare 00:32:43.840 --> 00:32:49.920 you. Some of us will be sacrificed as an example for others. 00:32:50.240 --> 00:32:51.200 Is that a good thing? 00:32:51.200 --> 00:32:55.040 I mean it it might not feel like it at the time, 00:32:55.040 --> 00:32:55.360 but 00:32:56.640 --> 00:33:00.320 crucially this is within the context of the church. 00:33:00.320 --> 00:33:04.560 This is the second church persecuting those who are members of the 00:33:04.560 --> 00:33:06.880 first in the context of the third. 00:33:07.200 --> 00:33:10.000 I hope this numbering scheme isn't confusing you. 00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:16.800 All believers, capital C, when denominations and local congregations go after individual 00:33:16.800 --> 00:33:22.400 members in ways that are ungodly, that is a fulfillment of Christ's 00:33:22.400 --> 00:33:25.840 prophecy, of in particular of an end times prophecy. 00:33:25.840 --> 00:33:28.880 This was certainly true in Jesus' day. 00:33:28.880 --> 00:33:33.040 It was something that came to the believers in those synagogues as 00:33:33.040 --> 00:33:37.440 they realized that being a faithful Jew meant ceasing to be a 00:33:37.440 --> 00:33:40.720 Jew and being a Christian and living a Christian life. 00:33:40.800 --> 00:33:45.520 You know, when you look at the extant populations in the territory 00:33:45.520 --> 00:33:51.360 of Palestine, they are the oldest genetic links back to this day. 00:33:51.360 --> 00:33:53.840 They are the people who have always lived there. 00:33:54.160 --> 00:33:56.320 They ceased to be Jews in many cases. 00:33:56.320 --> 00:34:00.000 They're still related by blood, if you go back far enough, but 00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:03.280 not one of them would say I'm Jewish, because they're just they 00:34:03.280 --> 00:34:06.080 became Christian and then they just stayed where they lived. 00:34:06.160 --> 00:34:10.240 That's why we had so many Palestinian and Syrian Christians until fairly 00:34:10.240 --> 00:34:13.840 recently, when they were rounded up and murdered by the evil people 00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:16.240 in that part of the world. 00:34:16.240 --> 00:34:19.920 This is something that's continuously happening in the church. 00:34:19.920 --> 00:34:24.320 And that's part of why I think it's always important for Christians 00:34:24.320 --> 00:34:28.960 to read those end times prophecies and to understand that there's always 00:34:28.960 --> 00:34:30.720 an immediacy to them as well. 00:34:30.720 --> 00:34:34.240 It's not simply judgment day is going to be next week. 00:34:34.240 --> 00:34:37.600 It's that we should always be prepared to have an answer for 00:34:37.600 --> 00:34:38.880 our faith because 00:34:40.160 --> 00:34:43.200 if you are a part of the first, if you are a 00:34:43.200 --> 00:34:47.360 member of Christ Body, the Capital C Church, there may well come 00:34:47.200 --> 00:34:51.280 a day when you face isolation or persecution. 00:34:51.280 --> 00:34:54.480 You know, there are many in history who have not, who have 00:34:54.480 --> 00:34:58.240 had godly princes, they've had godly kingdoms. 00:34:58.240 --> 00:35:03.600 Their entire lives were surrounded by other Christians being relatively faithful, you 00:35:03.600 --> 00:35:07.600 know, certainly not perfect by any stretch, but compared to today, a 00:35:07.600 --> 00:35:12.480 wonderland. What we face today, I think, is in many ways unprecedented, 00:35:12.480 --> 00:35:19.440 where the second order churches, the denominations, are crumbling in almost all 00:35:19.440 --> 00:35:23.600 cases. We see things happening today in the church where people who 00:35:23.600 --> 00:35:28.800 are mostly mounting good defenses are still doing things like letting in 00:35:28.800 --> 00:35:30.160 the Trojan horse. 00:35:30.160 --> 00:35:34.800 They are receiving gifts from those who bear them ill will and 00:35:34.800 --> 00:35:36.640 saying, Ah yes, I want to take this. 00:35:36.640 --> 00:35:38.640 I'm gonna put this under the Christmas tree. 00:35:38.640 --> 00:35:39.600 It's a nice present. 00:35:39.600 --> 00:35:41.440 I wonder what's inside. 00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:45.040 These traps that are being invited in, I'm thinking in particular guys 00:35:45.040 --> 00:35:50.000 like Doug Wilson, who whatever else they've gotten correct, when they their 00:35:50.160 --> 00:35:54.240 new big effort is to do some of the things that are 00:35:54.240 --> 00:36:01.360 openly hostile to Christian belief, to historic belief, they're leaving themselves 00:36:01.360 --> 00:36:06.880 open. they're creating a vulnerability, even among places that are trying to 00:36:06.880 --> 00:36:08.320 be faithful. 00:36:08.320 --> 00:36:11.200 And this is something that's very tricky for us in the in 00:36:11.200 --> 00:36:15.520 the congregational and in the denominational context to figure out where do 00:36:15.520 --> 00:36:16.640 you draw the line. 00:36:16.640 --> 00:36:19.440 And I think one of the hardest things for all of us 00:36:19.440 --> 00:36:20.080 is that 00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:25.680 most men are not equipped to weigh these matters. 00:36:25.680 --> 00:36:30.000 We're simply not equipped by ourselves to figure this stuff out. 00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:33.440 And frankly, it's one of the reasons that the historic church has 00:36:33.440 --> 00:36:35.440 given us things like creeds. 00:36:35.440 --> 00:36:39.120 You know, the the apostles in the Nicene and also the Athanasian 00:36:39.120 --> 00:36:40.400 creeds exist 00:36:41.360 --> 00:36:47.520 specifically so that all preaching and teaching could be measured against them, 00:36:47.520 --> 00:36:53.280 because every word of those creeds was designed to repudiate specific heresies 00:36:53.440 --> 00:36:54.480 in those days. 00:36:54.480 --> 00:36:57.600 Now the heresies were old, you know, maybe they came roaring back 00:36:57.600 --> 00:37:02.720 in some cases, but the lies that Satan tells to believers are 00:37:03.280 --> 00:37:06.000 uh they're not eternal, they're as old as Satan, but he's always 00:37:06.000 --> 00:37:09.280 telling the same lies over and over because they keep working. 00:37:09.680 --> 00:37:14.800 And so the beauty of the creeds is that brilliant and faithful 00:37:14.800 --> 00:37:19.520 men put together something very simple that a child can memorize that 00:37:19.520 --> 00:37:24.080 can be used as a benchmark to evaluate everything around it. 00:37:24.080 --> 00:37:27.680 It's one of the reasons that for well, you know, almost 2,000 00:37:27.680 --> 00:37:32.080 years, the vast majority of Christian churches have confessed at least one 00:37:32.080 --> 00:37:34.000 of the creeds every Sunday. 00:37:34.000 --> 00:37:39.600 It's crucial to say those words out loud in the collective context 00:37:39.600 --> 00:37:45.040 of the third order congregation of the church as a benchmark. 00:37:45.040 --> 00:37:48.320 Because whatever the pastor said during his sermon, if 00:37:49.200 --> 00:37:54.160 the creed contradicts something that he said, even the Christian man in 00:37:54.160 --> 00:37:57.840 the pews, who's not that engaged, he's not a theologian by any 00:37:57.840 --> 00:38:02.000 stretch, if Pastor Jim said something that you hear and you're like, 00:38:02.000 --> 00:38:05.200 that's this creed says the opposite of what that guy just said. 00:38:05.200 --> 00:38:06.320 What's going on? 00:38:06.320 --> 00:38:08.880 He may not be the man to articulate a defense for why 00:38:08.880 --> 00:38:12.800 the pastor did something false, but he can ask the question, and 00:38:12.800 --> 00:38:16.400 it's a question that's crucial in all times and all places. 00:38:16.400 --> 00:38:17.040 Like these 00:38:18.000 --> 00:38:22.080 because Satan's not creative, he's he's gonna keep doing stuff that keeps 00:38:22.080 --> 00:38:26.320 working. These old forms that the church has given us, you know, 00:38:26.320 --> 00:38:30.080 this is one of the debates that some modern, especially in the 00:38:30.080 --> 00:38:33.760 American context Christians, say things like deeds, not creeds. 00:38:33.840 --> 00:38:37.600 We've talked in past episodes about why the creeds are so important 00:38:39.680 --> 00:38:42.960 The creeds are quotations from Scripture. 00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:46.160 They're a distillation of the words of God Himself. 00:38:46.160 --> 00:38:49.760 And they're put together in a way that is entirely consistent with 00:38:49.760 --> 00:38:53.280 Scripture. And again, they were done specifically because men are gonna come 00:38:53.280 --> 00:38:56.480 along and say things that are contrary to scripture. 00:38:56.480 --> 00:39:00.560 When you can have something that's a condensed version of the entire 00:39:00.560 --> 00:39:03.360 Christian faith that a child can memorize. 00:39:03.360 --> 00:39:04.720 I know because I did it. 00:39:04.640 --> 00:39:08.720 and even like kids, you know, average kids by ten years old 00:39:08.960 --> 00:39:12.720 can all have easily learned both of the creeds. 00:39:12.720 --> 00:39:15.360 When that is the case, when it's on your lips and it's 00:39:15.360 --> 00:39:18.000 in your heart and it's in your mind, when you hear something 00:39:18.400 --> 00:39:22.880 that sounds contrary to it, God is going to help you realize 00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:27.280 it. And that is something that is missing when you try to 00:39:27.280 --> 00:39:28.720 go off by yourself. 00:39:28.720 --> 00:39:33.280 When you say, I don't want any denominational affiliation, I don't want 00:39:33.280 --> 00:39:35.600 any of this other stuff, I'm just gonna do it by myself 00:39:35.600 --> 00:39:37.920 and figure it out, and I got my Bible and I'm gonna 00:39:37.920 --> 00:39:38.640 be okay. 00:39:38.640 --> 00:39:42.800 Well, in some ways that's where Satan wants you, because you've been 00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:46.960 separated from not only the other believers who can help to strengthen 00:39:46.960 --> 00:39:51.360 your faith, but you've been separated historically from all the different ways 00:39:51.360 --> 00:39:56.960 that the church has established protections for us. 00:39:56.880 --> 00:40:00.160 And church in that context, it's almost splitting the s difference between 00:40:00.160 --> 00:40:01.040 the first and second. 00:40:01.040 --> 00:40:04.080 It kind of goes to some of the arguments that Rome made, 00:40:04.080 --> 00:40:07.840 saying, no, we are the universal church. 00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:09.040 I think that 00:40:10.640 --> 00:40:15.360 Personally, I think that the appropriate Protestant view of the councils is 00:40:15.360 --> 00:40:20.480 that the ones that produced faithful doctrine were Christian men with the 00:40:20.480 --> 00:40:24.000 indwelling of the Holy Spirit and with sound reason who were gifted. 00:40:24.720 --> 00:40:29.120 I don't think that those men needed any new special revelation to 00:40:29.120 --> 00:40:33.120 come up with the specific things like the creeds that they issued 00:40:33.120 --> 00:40:36.880 on behalf of the church because they were making arguments from scripture. 00:40:36.880 --> 00:40:39.920 Any man can make an argument from scripture, and it may well 00:40:39.920 --> 00:40:40.560 be true. 00:40:40.560 --> 00:40:45.600 You don't have to be a genius, but it's important that scripture 00:40:45.600 --> 00:40:50.800 and reason in that order are what is producing the thing. 00:40:50.800 --> 00:40:53.840 Now you don't just go around making arguments for for the sake 00:40:53.840 --> 00:40:57.280 of making arguments, but when there's a controversy, as as Corey was 00:40:57.280 --> 00:41:02.080 saying, or when there's a clear error that must be repudiated. 00:41:02.080 --> 00:41:03.840 Somebody's got to do it. 00:41:03.840 --> 00:41:08.080 And thankfully, when you look at church history, almost all the errors 00:41:08.080 --> 00:41:09.200 have already been made. 00:41:09.200 --> 00:41:11.040 There's very rarely some new error. 00:41:11.040 --> 00:41:13.680 We've talked in past episodes that there are a few new errors 00:41:13.520 --> 00:41:17.920 prayers that are creeping in, the things that are assaulting creation itself, 00:41:17.920 --> 00:41:20.960 assaulting the body, that are assaulting how we are made. 00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:22.640 Are we made male and female? 00:41:22.640 --> 00:41:24.640 Are we made a particular race? 00:41:24.640 --> 00:41:27.600 Is there anything different about different types of people and did God 00:41:27.600 --> 00:41:28.480 want to do that? 00:41:28.480 --> 00:41:32.400 That's what Satan's attacking today on egalitarian grounds. 00:41:32.400 --> 00:41:37.520 So it's not that there's never any opportunity for new discussion of 00:41:37.520 --> 00:41:42.240 the assaults, but all Almost everything can be predicated on past arguments 00:41:42.480 --> 00:41:45.040 because again, they the old lies work. 00:41:45.040 --> 00:41:46.720 People keep gobbling and them up. 00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:51.440 And so when we separate ourselves from the historic views of the 00:41:51.440 --> 00:41:54.320 church, it's you're in uncharted waters. 00:41:54.800 --> 00:41:58.560 you're literally off the map when you're like, I'm gonna go do 00:41:58.560 --> 00:41:59.680 this by myself. 00:41:59.680 --> 00:42:01.680 Because there is a map of that place, but if you say 00:42:01.840 --> 00:42:05.360 I'm not gonna look at it, you're gonna be blind and you're 00:42:05.360 --> 00:42:10.560 gonna fall into the traps that wiser, more faithful men were successfully 00:42:10.560 --> 00:42:12.240 able to navigate. 00:42:12.240 --> 00:42:18.880 And in the local congregation, w whatever your denomination, whatever your church 00:42:18.880 --> 00:42:23.760 polity, it's important for you to recognize that you, as a member 00:42:23.760 --> 00:42:26.400 of the Capital C church, as a member of the body of 00:42:26.400 --> 00:42:29.840 Christ, you are a part of all of that, whether you like 00:42:29.840 --> 00:42:33.360 it or not, whether you agree or disagree with Christians of the 00:42:33.360 --> 00:42:37.120 past, if you're gonna reject the arguments that they made, you should 00:42:37.120 --> 00:42:38.560 have a good reason for it. 00:42:38.560 --> 00:42:42.800 Yeah, they weren't necessarily infallible, but if they said something like I 00:42:42.800 --> 00:42:46.320 don't care about any of that, if It's you're separating yourself from 00:42:46.320 --> 00:42:50.720 something that in all likelihood God put there for your protection. 00:42:51.040 --> 00:42:55.360 You mentioned deeds, not creeds, and really that is at the opposite 00:42:55.360 --> 00:42:58.400 end of the spectrum from some of the new heresies we see 00:42:58.720 --> 00:43:02.320 arising in the church today because in reality that's just a new 00:43:02.320 --> 00:43:04.640 catchphrase for an ancient heresy. 00:43:04.640 --> 00:43:06.240 It's just works righteousness. 00:43:06.240 --> 00:43:10.880 That's all deeds not creeds ultimately is, and that ties into the 00:43:10.880 --> 00:43:13.520 episode that we did last week really. 00:43:13.520 --> 00:43:17.360 It's in part this is one of the arguments to which Pieper 00:43:17.520 --> 00:43:21.600 is responding, and that was referenced in one of the quotations I 00:43:21.600 --> 00:43:25.360 read from Pieper earlier, implicitly and not explicitly, but 00:43:27.120 --> 00:43:31.760 there are those who argue that Christ came to give us an 00:43:31.760 --> 00:43:36.400 example, and that it is following his example that will bring us 00:43:36.400 --> 00:43:39.920 back into communion with God and ultimately save us. 00:43:39.920 --> 00:43:42.720 That's works righteousness, that is a heresy. 00:43:42.720 --> 00:43:44.000 That is not Christian. 00:43:44.000 --> 00:43:47.280 Believing that puts you outside the church. 00:43:47.280 --> 00:43:50.080 And that is exactly what Deeds, not Creeds is. 00:43:50.320 --> 00:43:55.040 Because saying deeds not creeds ultimately is saying I am saved by 00:43:55.040 --> 00:43:58.720 the things I do, not by the things I believe. 00:43:58.720 --> 00:44:00.000 And that's false. 00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:01.680 You are saved by faith. 00:44:02.400 --> 00:44:04.240 Faith is belief. 00:44:04.240 --> 00:44:07.360 Again, to give the three levels of this, because this is an 00:44:07.360 --> 00:44:11.120 important thing to understand, so it bears repeating. 00:44:11.120 --> 00:44:14.560 There is notitia, which is to take notice of the fact that 00:44:14.960 --> 00:44:19.840 is to recognize that it is said that Christ died and that 00:44:19.840 --> 00:44:21.440 he died for these reasons. 00:44:21.440 --> 00:44:25.040 There is a sensus, which is to assent to the fact that 00:44:25.040 --> 00:44:28.560 Christ died and he died for these reasons, and then there is 00:44:28.560 --> 00:44:32.800 fiducia, which is belief, that is trust. 00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:34.320 That is what saves you. 00:44:34.320 --> 00:44:36.080 That is salvific faith. 00:44:36.080 --> 00:44:40.720 Again, that is the belief that Christ died for sinners, and that 00:44:40.720 --> 00:44:45.760 you were a sinner, and that he in that death vicariously atoned 00:44:45.760 --> 00:44:47.680 for your sins. 00:44:47.680 --> 00:44:51.760 Yes, the fullness, of course, of his sacrifice is the incarnation life 00:44:51.840 --> 00:44:52.880 and death. 00:44:53.200 --> 00:44:57.200 But to speak in the shorthand, it is Christ crucified for sinners. 00:44:57.200 --> 00:44:59.120 That is the gospel. 00:44:59.120 --> 00:45:01.200 That is a belief. 00:45:01.200 --> 00:45:03.920 That is not a deed, except on the part of Christ. 00:45:03.920 --> 00:45:05.440 It's not one of your deeds. 00:45:05.440 --> 00:45:06.880 Your deeds will not save you. 00:45:06.880 --> 00:45:07.600 And so in fact it is 00:45:08.560 --> 00:45:15.120 creeds and deeds because again a living faith will produce good works 00:45:15.520 --> 00:45:20.880 and I do want to turn to the creeds briefly to make 00:45:20.880 --> 00:45:26.000 another argument with regard to the uppercase C church for those who 00:45:26.000 --> 00:45:30.880 are concerned about really the second level of these things. 00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:35.680 What is it that we confess with regard to the church in 00:45:35.680 --> 00:45:37.200 the creeds? 00:45:37.200 --> 00:45:42.960 Well, in the apostles' creed, it's I believe in the holy Catholic 00:45:43.040 --> 00:45:46.960 or Christian Church, depending on which term you use in your version, 00:45:46.960 --> 00:45:51.520 and then there is I believe in the Nicene Creed, I believe 00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:58.640 in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. 00:45:58.640 --> 00:46:03.520 If I were to hand you a coin and you look at 00:46:03.520 --> 00:46:06.480 that coin, you're holding it in your hands, do you believe in 00:46:06.480 --> 00:46:07.760 that coin? 00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:11.600 The answer is no, because you don't believe in something you're holding 00:46:11.600 --> 00:46:12.720 and can see. 00:46:12.720 --> 00:46:16.400 You know the coin exists because you're holding it. 00:46:16.400 --> 00:46:21.360 If I tell you that tomorrow I will give you a coin, 00:46:21.360 --> 00:46:25.840 you can believe me or not believe me. 00:46:25.840 --> 00:46:31.520 And so belief is not in something that you have and hold 00:46:31.680 --> 00:46:37.200 necessarily. There's a distinction there between having and holding that coin and 00:46:37.200 --> 00:46:41.360 having the promise of the coin, the belief that I will give 00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:42.640 it to you. 00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:46.240 Now in the case of Christ, it is the difference between those 00:46:46.240 --> 00:46:50.160 in paradise no longer have belief that they will one day see 00:46:50.160 --> 00:46:51.600 paradise because they're there. 00:46:51.920 --> 00:46:57.040 We'll ignore for now the issue of how time works for an 00:46:57.040 --> 00:46:59.120 eternal God and paradise and those things. 00:46:59.120 --> 00:47:01.040 Set that aside for the moment. 00:47:01.040 --> 00:47:04.880 But the distinction is between those who are still living here on 00:47:04.880 --> 00:47:09.600 earth in time and those who are already in paradise, or if 00:47:09.600 --> 00:47:12.880 you want to think of it that way, will be in paradise. 00:47:12.880 --> 00:47:15.680 For those of us living here, it is a matter of belief 00:47:15.680 --> 00:47:19.040 that We have belief in the promises of God. 00:47:19.040 --> 00:47:21.920 We have belief in the things of Christ. 00:47:21.920 --> 00:47:25.840 And that is the same thing we see here in the creeds. 00:47:25.840 --> 00:47:32.400 When it says, I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, 00:47:32.400 --> 00:47:36.960 you are saying you believe in something that you cannot grasp with 00:47:36.960 --> 00:47:37.520 your hands. 00:47:37.520 --> 00:47:40.560 You cannot go and find a building and say this is the 00:47:40.560 --> 00:47:42.480 building that contains the church. 00:47:42.480 --> 00:47:46.960 Just as there is no throne currently on earth where you can 00:47:46.960 --> 00:47:50.080 go and say, This is the throne of Christ, this is where 00:47:50.080 --> 00:47:55.680 he sits, this is the exact physical location from which he reigns. 00:47:55.680 --> 00:47:59.280 And so when you say in the creeds, when we confess as 00:47:59.280 --> 00:48:04.160 Christians in the creeds that we believe in one holy Catholic and 00:48:04.160 --> 00:48:08.800 Apostolic Church, what we are saying is we believe in this first 00:48:08.880 --> 00:48:12.880 order uppercase C church. 00:48:12.880 --> 00:48:19.760 We are not confessing belief in any second order synod or church 00:48:19.760 --> 00:48:23.920 body, tradition or denomination. 00:48:23.920 --> 00:48:26.640 Because those are things we can say, there it is, that's a 00:48:26.640 --> 00:48:28.320 physical thing, I can see that. 00:48:28.320 --> 00:48:30.560 And there are those are going to say, Well a corporation is 00:48:30.560 --> 00:48:31.840 an abstraction. 00:48:31.840 --> 00:48:35.920 No. Because a corporation you can go and physically grasp the documents 00:48:35.920 --> 00:48:37.280 that constitute the thing. 00:48:37.280 --> 00:48:39.200 You can go and look at the corporate headquarters. 00:48:39.200 --> 00:48:42.240 You can go and shake hands with the corporate officers. 00:48:42.240 --> 00:48:44.080 These are things that physically exist. 00:48:44.080 --> 00:48:46.960 You don't believe in a synod. 00:48:47.040 --> 00:48:51.840 You believe in the holy, Christian, and Apostolic Church. 00:48:51.840 --> 00:48:54.080 You believe in the upper KC church. 00:48:54.080 --> 00:48:56.320 That is what we confess in the creeds. 00:48:56.320 --> 00:48:59.920 When we confess this in the creeds, we are not confessing that 00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:03.360 we believe in any one earthly institution. 00:49:03.360 --> 00:49:07.680 Rather, we are confessing that we believe in the Church of Christ. 00:49:07.680 --> 00:49:10.000 We believe in the Christian Church. 00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.960 We believe in the congregation of all saints throughout all time, and 00:49:14.960 --> 00:49:19.200 we, by faith, are members of that very church, and that is 00:49:19.200 --> 00:49:22.720 why we confess belief in it, because that is our church, because 00:49:22.720 --> 00:49:25.200 that is Christ's church. 00:49:25.600 --> 00:49:31.040 The reason that things like denominational organizations are so important for the 00:49:31.040 --> 00:49:35.360 Christian life is not that by themselves they are 00:49:36.240 --> 00:49:42.400 a particular body of faith, but that the collect collective wisdom and 00:49:42.400 --> 00:49:47.280 strength of believers gathered together in greater numbers than you can amass 00:49:47.440 --> 00:49:51.920 in a congregation is what is necessary for the perpetuation of the 00:49:51.920 --> 00:49:54.720 faith. We see this going back to the very beginning. 00:49:54.720 --> 00:49:57.120 The church rapidly expanded. 00:49:57.120 --> 00:50:01.120 And as local congregations got bigger and bigger, more and more of 00:50:01.120 --> 00:50:03.120 them spread and they banded together. 00:50:03.120 --> 00:50:07.040 And from the earliest days in the New Testament, we see councils 00:50:07.040 --> 00:50:07.280 forming 00:50:08.240 --> 00:50:13.360 where the men and the bishops of the various churches in various 00:50:13.360 --> 00:50:16.960 places came together to hammer out issues. 00:50:16.960 --> 00:50:22.560 That is a clear acknowledgement that some form of organization beyond the 00:50:22.560 --> 00:50:26.400 local congregation is fundamentally Christian. 00:50:26.400 --> 00:50:30.480 Now, it's fundamentally Christian in the sense that it serves a Christian 00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:34.000 end and not that it is by itself a mark of the 00:50:34.000 --> 00:50:36.720 Christian church, as Corey was just saying. 00:50:36.720 --> 00:50:41.440 So the reason that it's so important to have some form of 00:50:41.440 --> 00:50:46.960 church body is that if you are a solo congregation, you're on 00:50:46.960 --> 00:50:51.840 your own, you have a great pastor, you have great elders, when 00:50:52.720 --> 00:50:59.040 the leadership ages out, dies, moves away, whatever happens, you want to 00:50:59.040 --> 00:51:02.080 assume, you want to guarantee, you don't want to assume, you want 00:51:02.080 --> 00:51:06.160 to be able to guarantee as best as possible that those beliefs 00:51:06.160 --> 00:51:08.720 and that faithfulness will be perpetuated. 00:51:08.720 --> 00:51:12.240 And it is very often the case that the local congregation simply 00:51:12.560 --> 00:51:14.000 can't do that by itself. 00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:16.320 You know, if you have say you have a congregation of a 00:51:16.320 --> 00:51:22.160 hundred men, maybe once every twenty generations there would be a true 00:51:22.160 --> 00:51:25.520 theologian that would emerge emerge in such a small place. 00:51:25.520 --> 00:51:27.440 Even that, frankly, is is preposterous. 00:51:27.440 --> 00:51:30.800 I there may be thirty theologians alive today. 00:51:30.800 --> 00:51:35.120 They just in terms of being able to actually do solid faithful 00:51:35.120 --> 00:51:38.960 work and not make a hash of things, it it's an incredibly 00:51:38.960 --> 00:51:40.320 rare gift. 00:51:40.880 --> 00:51:44.720 The benefit of having someone who understands the stakes is that pastors 00:51:44.720 --> 00:51:46.320 shouldn't be doing anything new. 00:51:46.320 --> 00:51:48.640 Pastors don't need to be doing new theology. 00:51:48.640 --> 00:51:52.320 They need to know enough theology that they don't reinvent old heresies 00:51:52.640 --> 00:51:54.080 because they didn't know any better. 00:51:54.080 --> 00:51:54.960 Because it's really easy. 00:51:54.960 --> 00:51:57.040 Like the old heresies make sense. 00:51:57.040 --> 00:52:02.480 They didn't catch on because they were tricky, wacky, crazy lies, they 00:52:02.800 --> 00:52:04.240 seemed plausible. 00:52:04.240 --> 00:52:09.040 The heretics were generally smart guys who made seemingly good arguments. 00:52:09.040 --> 00:52:14.240 They were false, they were falsifiable from scripture, but a naive listener 00:52:14.240 --> 00:52:17.760 is usually going to gobble it up, some of them will. 00:52:17.760 --> 00:52:21.360 And so, in the local context, like you're just congreg- your congregation 00:52:21.360 --> 00:52:25.920 by itself cannot assume that it's going to be able to continue 00:52:26.160 --> 00:52:30.800 generation after generation, to keep raising up faithful men who have the 00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:35.520 gift and the ability to receive a call from God to preach 00:52:35.520 --> 00:52:38.720 and teach and shepherd that flock. 00:52:38.720 --> 00:52:42.160 You can assure that sort of thing by gathering together with other 00:52:42.160 --> 00:52:43.360 similar believers. 00:52:43.360 --> 00:52:46.240 And that's the reason for, you know, in the in the very 00:52:46.240 --> 00:52:48.800 first century way why we had the church councils. 00:52:48.800 --> 00:52:51.760 And on to this day, there are denominations. 00:52:51.760 --> 00:52:53.440 Christians have always gathered together 00:52:54.480 --> 00:52:59.280 more broadly than the local congregational context because you need the best 00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:02.720 men from each congregation to come together and hammer things out. 00:53:02.720 --> 00:53:06.000 You know, maybe the best guy in your congregation is gonna get 00:53:06.000 --> 00:53:08.560 something wrong wrong when it comes up. 00:53:08.560 --> 00:53:11.280 But when that guy is put in a room with 20 other 00:53:11.280 --> 00:53:15.040 guys from the other congregations who are the best in theirs, when 00:53:15.040 --> 00:53:18.480 the right arguments are made, you're your best guy, even if he 00:53:18.480 --> 00:53:21.840 didn't get it by himself, when someone else articulates it, well, he's 00:53:21.760 --> 00:53:23.440 like he's gonna say, Yeah, that's it. 00:53:23.440 --> 00:53:24.640 That is what I believe. 00:53:24.640 --> 00:53:26.880 And then he will be able to bring that back to your 00:53:26.880 --> 00:53:31.840 congregation. If you lack the benefit of the more broad wisdom of 00:53:31.840 --> 00:53:34.400 the gifts that God has given, again, you know, back to the 00:53:34.400 --> 00:53:37.680 first Corinthians 12 passage, when you go read that, it talks about 00:53:37.680 --> 00:53:40.400 the disparate gifts that God gives men. 00:53:40.400 --> 00:53:44.320 You may be in a situation where there's no one who happens 00:53:44.320 --> 00:53:49.120 to have the specific gift that your congregation needs to perpetuate itself 00:53:49.120 --> 00:53:51.280 indefinitely? And that's okay. 00:53:51.280 --> 00:53:53.280 Because those gifts are elsewhere. 00:53:53.280 --> 00:53:56.560 God will send men from somewhere else to come to you if 00:53:56.560 --> 00:53:58.000 that's what's needed. 00:53:58.000 --> 00:54:02.160 When When we eschew the notion of any sort of joining together, 00:54:02.160 --> 00:54:06.880 for one thing, we're not we're departing from all of Christian history. 00:54:06.880 --> 00:54:11.200 It's simply not what Christians have done again until fairly recently. 00:54:11.600 --> 00:54:15.840 it's not exclusively in Americanism, but it's pretty close to it. 00:54:15.840 --> 00:54:19.200 The idea that you just have these crazy little solo groups that 00:54:19.200 --> 00:54:25.120 don't listen to anybody else, it's bad, it's abnormal, and it's novel. 00:54:25.120 --> 00:54:30.000 When we gather together, it's for the sake of helping each other. 00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:33.040 You know, if and I think this is one of the it's 00:54:33.040 --> 00:54:37.120 both a strength and a weakness of these earthly gatherings, these these 00:54:37.120 --> 00:54:44.080 earthly denominations or synods or whatever they are, when you concentrate any 00:54:44.240 --> 00:54:47.200 form of authority, even if it's only perceived authority, that yeah, I'm 00:54:47.120 --> 00:54:49.920 gonna listen to that guy because he's good at it, it's going 00:54:49.920 --> 00:54:53.040 to tend to naturally attract the sort of men who pursue that 00:54:53.040 --> 00:54:54.240 kind of authority. 00:54:54.240 --> 00:54:56.880 And that's exactly the wrong kind of man to be in those 00:54:56.880 --> 00:54:59.680 positions. You don't want men who want glory. 00:54:59.680 --> 00:55:03.360 You don't want men who want to be in charge. 00:55:03.360 --> 00:55:09.120 You want men who understand the burden of leading others in Christ. 00:55:09.120 --> 00:55:14.160 It's a tremendous burden to have someone listen to you because it's 00:55:14.160 --> 00:55:16.720 one thing if you get something wrong and it's just your own 00:55:16.880 --> 00:55:19.840 it's inside your head and it's your soul on the line. 00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:22.640 When you speak to others and get them to listen to what 00:55:22.640 --> 00:55:26.000 you say, you are now accountable to God for all those souls 00:55:26.160 --> 00:55:31.200 too. That is why teachers face the stricter judgment, because they are 00:55:31.200 --> 00:55:35.040 endangering with false teaching everyone who will listen to him, everyone within 00:55:35.040 --> 00:55:39.200 nearshot, anyone who would be influenced by a teacher who teaches something 00:55:39.200 --> 00:55:42.560 false, he's going to have to give an account for why he 00:55:42.560 --> 00:55:46.800 lied to those people in God's name, which is incidentally prohibited by 00:55:46.800 --> 00:55:48.880 the Ten Commandments. 00:55:48.880 --> 00:55:54.000 Cursing in God's name, lying in God's name is telling lies about 00:55:54.000 --> 00:55:55.360 what God says. 00:55:55.360 --> 00:55:58.720 It's far worse than using foul language. 00:55:58.720 --> 00:56:02.880 That's bad, but to lie about what God said is far more 00:56:02.880 --> 00:56:06.800 damaging. Because it's not it's not as offensive to the ears if 00:56:06.800 --> 00:56:10.480 the ears are not practiced to hear false teaching. 00:56:10.480 --> 00:56:13.040 When you can pick up on false teaching, it becomes much more 00:56:13.040 --> 00:56:17.440 offensive than someone who's just using very foul and blasphemous language against 00:56:17.440 --> 00:56:22.960 God. The true blasphemy, the greatest blasphemy, is that which masquerades as 00:56:22.960 --> 00:56:27.040 being Christian and leads people away from Christ because it just happens 00:56:27.120 --> 00:56:28.640 and no one notices. 00:56:29.040 --> 00:56:32.640 that's the most terrifying form of this thing, which is why every 00:56:32.640 --> 00:56:36.400 congregation needs to focus on having men who are good to the 00:56:36.720 --> 00:56:40.800 best of their ability at judging these things, but also banding together 00:56:40.800 --> 00:56:44.240 with others and monitoring up and down the chain, making sure that 00:56:44.240 --> 00:56:48.880 whatever sort of alliance or grouping that you have, the other men 00:56:48.880 --> 00:56:52.800 in other places are being faithful and committed to scripture as you 00:56:52.800 --> 00:56:54.800 are because heirs will always creep in. 00:56:55.120 --> 00:56:56.400 It's constant. 00:56:56.400 --> 00:57:00.160 In numerous places in scripture, and throughout all of history, we witness 00:57:00.400 --> 00:57:05.040 this. Men will creep in and try to mislead people because that's 00:57:05.040 --> 00:57:06.800 how Satan works. 00:57:06.800 --> 00:57:09.200 He's not he doesn't care about the pagans. 00:57:09.200 --> 00:57:11.280 He's like he's already destroying them. 00:57:11.280 --> 00:57:15.040 What he despises is when there are Christians gathered together who are 00:57:15.040 --> 00:57:19.920 speaking and teaching and living faithfully, that is the greater threat to 00:57:19.920 --> 00:57:23.360 him. Because if you have true Christians who are going to be 00:57:23.360 --> 00:57:26.000 the salt and light of the earth around them, they're going to 00:57:26.480 --> 00:57:27.680 pollute his pagans. 00:57:27.680 --> 00:57:32.320 They're going to turn his pagans into Christians by spreading the gospel. 00:57:32.320 --> 00:57:35.200 And so if you destroy the place where the gospel is being 00:57:35.200 --> 00:57:38.720 preserved, he can ensure that he can keep everybody. 00:57:38.720 --> 00:57:43.440 He can get more souls for his kingdom in hell. 00:57:43.440 --> 00:57:50.080 We must work together in in these synthetic groups, in these groups 00:57:50.080 --> 00:57:55.760 that do not have a particular they're groups that don't necessarily have 00:57:55.760 --> 00:58:00.160 God's sanction in that they were ordained by God, but we were 00:58:00.160 --> 00:58:04.000 ordained to be participants in them for the sake of the Christian 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:06.400 church, if that makes sense. 00:58:06.400 --> 00:58:11.280 So we we necessarily reject, for example, Rome's claims that it is 00:58:11.280 --> 00:58:12.560 a top-down thing. 00:58:12.560 --> 00:58:16.320 Nevertheless, that is not the same thing as rejecting hierarchy or authority. 00:58:16.320 --> 00:58:20.800 Frankly, I think the Protestantism in general has far too little hierarchy 00:58:20.800 --> 00:58:25.680 and far too little authority, which today is actually a blessing because 00:58:25.680 --> 00:58:28.400 there are basically no good men who would be in those positions. 00:58:28.400 --> 00:58:32.400 The men who are in the positions that should have greater authority 00:58:32.560 --> 00:58:33.760 are already wicked. 00:58:33.760 --> 00:58:36.080 So if they had more authority, they would be doing even more 00:58:36.080 --> 00:58:40.320 damage. So in this moment, I'm thankful that they can't do more 00:58:40.320 --> 00:58:41.760 harm than they're doing. 00:58:41.760 --> 00:58:48.080 Nevertheless, that sort of creeping decay, sometimes it's from the top down, 00:58:48.080 --> 00:58:52.000 and sometimes it's from the middle up, where the institution gets captured, 00:58:52.000 --> 00:58:54.160 and then you replace the guy at the top. 00:58:54.160 --> 00:58:57.520 And eventually that they're no more good men who can rise to 00:58:57.520 --> 00:58:58.480 that level. 00:58:58.480 --> 00:58:59.200 So So 00:59:00.480 --> 00:59:04.720 the capture of the institution is in some ways, it's it shows 00:59:04.720 --> 00:59:05.920 how important they are. 00:59:05.920 --> 00:59:07.840 We've talked about this in the past as well. 00:59:08.720 --> 00:59:12.800 if these organizations, if these, if the second-tier church in the third 00:59:12.880 --> 00:59:17.360 tier, like the local congregation, if these things had no value to 00:59:17.360 --> 00:59:21.040 us as Christians, Satan wouldn't care about destroying them. 00:59:21.040 --> 00:59:23.280 So even if you know nothing else, if you see that Satan 00:59:23.280 --> 00:59:27.360 is going after those things, it's a very good indication that there's 00:59:27.360 --> 00:59:29.920 actually something that God was trying to do with that. 00:59:29.920 --> 00:59:32.400 That's not the same thing as saying this is exactly what God 00:59:32.400 --> 00:59:35.120 wants and is perfect, and you must submit it on under all 00:59:35.120 --> 00:59:40.480 circumstances. But is saying that in general the gathering together of those 00:59:40.480 --> 00:59:45.360 who have greater gifts of spiritual wisdom and teaching, that is something 00:59:45.360 --> 00:59:47.280 that should be preserved and defended. 00:59:47.280 --> 00:59:50.160 But it must also be kept in check because those are the 00:59:50.160 --> 00:59:53.520 very places where Satan is going to try the very hardest to 00:59:53.520 --> 00:59:56.880 sneak in the false doctrines that are going to cause everyone else 00:59:56.880 --> 00:59:58.400 to uh to collapse. 00:59:58.400 --> 01:00:00.800 And we see it happen over and over again. 01:00:00.800 --> 01:00:05.760 So watchfulness is a part of being in a body. 01:00:05.760 --> 01:00:07.520 There's no way around it. 01:00:07.520 --> 01:00:10.640 And again, some men have these gifts and some men don't. 01:00:10.640 --> 01:00:14.160 If you don't, you need as best you can to orient your 01:00:14.160 --> 01:00:17.520 life and your and your belief around things that you know you 01:00:17.520 --> 01:00:21.040 can trust, which is why you know scripture by itself is is 01:00:21.040 --> 01:00:24.720 vital. Creeds are just another example of something that's vital. 01:00:24.720 --> 01:00:28.640 We believe as Lutherans that the book of Concord is also something 01:00:28.640 --> 01:00:32.640 that is essential for helping to understand a lot of these conversations. 01:00:32.640 --> 01:00:34.960 We'll put a link in the show notes to a couple of 01:00:34.960 --> 01:00:39.200 different parts of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology to it that 01:00:39.600 --> 01:00:42.480 deals specifically with what is the church. 01:00:42.480 --> 01:00:45.600 And I think it's a really interesting example of kind of the 01:00:45.600 --> 01:00:48.880 three parts that we're talking about here because the fight that they 01:00:48.880 --> 01:00:52.960 were having in the 16th century was that Rome was claiming to 01:00:52.960 --> 01:00:55.520 be the first and the second church and the third. 01:00:55.520 --> 01:00:57.680 They're claiming to be the whole shooting match. 01:00:57.680 --> 01:01:01.760 And the Lutherans and the other reformers were necessarily saying, No, we 01:01:01.760 --> 01:01:05.600 believe that we're still Christian, we're still part of the first, but 01:01:05.600 --> 01:01:09.360 we do reject the second that you're holding up in Rome. 01:01:09.360 --> 01:01:15.040 We're saying we don't believe that your authority is coming from God. 01:01:15.040 --> 01:01:20.800 Nevertheless, it is important that we maintain continuity with the first, with 01:01:20.800 --> 01:01:22.160 the Capital C church. 01:01:22.160 --> 01:01:25.760 And so they there's a lot of good scriptural arguments laying out 01:01:25.760 --> 01:01:27.680 the case for the 01:01:28.960 --> 01:01:30.960 relationship of the first to the second. 01:01:30.960 --> 01:01:35.680 What's conspicuous is that in those days the notion of the local 01:01:35.680 --> 01:01:42.240 congregation being something radically different from the larger church body was pretty 01:01:42.240 --> 01:01:43.600 much unthinkable. 01:01:43.600 --> 01:01:48.000 Now there are obviously different denominations that were emerging, particularly things like, 01:01:48.000 --> 01:01:52.480 you know, some of the Anabaptists that went completely off the rails, 01:01:52.480 --> 01:01:56.400 doing things that were utterly utterly alien to the Christian faith into 01:01:56.560 --> 01:01:58.880 all of Christian history. 01:01:58.880 --> 01:02:06.080 However, when the Reformers were thinking about church denominations, they understood that 01:02:06.080 --> 01:02:10.800 within a body, the individual congregations that made up the larger whole 01:02:11.200 --> 01:02:12.960 were gonna be doing the same thing. 01:02:12.960 --> 01:02:15.840 And yet today we don't even see that level of continuity. 01:02:15.840 --> 01:02:19.440 You know, within even the Missouri Synod, you will have congregations that 01:02:19.440 --> 01:02:23.040 are doing things that look for all the world like a concert. 01:02:23.040 --> 01:02:26.560 And And you'll have others that look like a 16th century church 01:02:26.560 --> 01:02:30.240 service. And they're claiming to be in communion together, and they're clearly 01:02:30.240 --> 01:02:33.920 not. You know, one of the things that Lutherans talk about is 01:02:33.920 --> 01:02:40.960 altar and pulpit fellowship, because as the Augsburg Confession discusses when talking 01:02:40.960 --> 01:02:43.760 about the church, two of the marks of the church are the 01:02:43.760 --> 01:02:48.400 proper preaching of the word and the proper administration of the sacrament. 01:02:48.400 --> 01:02:53.600 That those are where the church is found, the true church. 01:02:53.600 --> 01:02:57.680 Word and sacrament is the same as pulpit and altar, because the 01:02:57.680 --> 01:03:00.480 altar is where the communion meal is found. 01:03:00.480 --> 01:03:04.240 So today we have churches in in our own church body that 01:03:04.240 --> 01:03:07.520 tear out the pulpits and they do away with the altars and 01:03:07.520 --> 01:03:11.840 then pretend that they're in communion and unity with churches that are 01:03:11.840 --> 01:03:14.800 still doing what Christians have done for a thousand years. 01:03:14.800 --> 01:03:16.160 It's preposterous. 01:03:16.160 --> 01:03:18.080 Roman Catholics are in the same boat. 01:03:18.320 --> 01:03:23.440 You have the Novosordo masses that are just completely abominable in contrast 01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:27.280 to the Latin mass congregations, which as Lutherans we would reject them 01:03:27.360 --> 01:03:30.000 not doing in the vernacular, but at least they're trying to be 01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:32.000 faithful to what they did in the past. 01:03:32.000 --> 01:03:35.600 Given the choice between Novo Sordo and TLM, I would take the 01:03:35.600 --> 01:03:37.600 Latin. Like you can learn Latin. 01:03:37.600 --> 01:03:40.320 You can't you should not learn the evil that's being done in 01:03:40.320 --> 01:03:41.840 some of those other parishes. 01:03:41.840 --> 01:03:48.240 And so we're all facing similar problems of a disruption of unity 01:03:48.240 --> 01:03:51.680 that should exist at the middle level, at the second level. 01:03:51.680 --> 01:03:55.520 And so the in the article in the Apology and the Augsburg 01:03:55.600 --> 01:03:59.440 Confession, when it discusses the church, it doesn't even talk about the 01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:04.720 churches going, the individual churches, congregations, going in wild different directions, because 01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:09.440 it was just it was inconceivable to them in that day. 01:04:09.760 --> 01:04:10.000 As 01:04:10.000 --> 01:04:16.880 another exhortation not to forsake local congregations when and where that is 01:04:16.880 --> 01:04:22.880 possible, I want to point out that scripture presupposes the existence of 01:04:23.280 --> 01:04:28.960 such local congregations, the existence of that third level of the church 01:04:29.280 --> 01:04:31.440 from Matthew 18. 01:04:31.440 --> 01:04:35.360 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, 01:04:35.360 --> 01:04:37.360 between you and him alone. 01:04:37.360 --> 01:04:40.880 If he listens to you, you have gained your brother, but if 01:04:40.880 --> 01:04:44.320 he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, 01:04:44.320 --> 01:04:47.760 that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or 01:04:47.760 --> 01:04:49.360 three witnesses. 01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:52.960 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, 01:04:52.960 --> 01:04:56.400 and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him 01:04:56.400 --> 01:04:59.040 be to you as a heathen and a tax collector Father. 01:04:59.040 --> 01:05:02.480 Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be 01:05:02.480 --> 01:05:05.760 bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed 01:05:05.760 --> 01:05:06.560 in heaven. 01:05:06.560 --> 01:05:09.840 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth 01:05:09.840 --> 01:05:12.640 about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my 01:05:12.640 --> 01:05:16.000 Father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in my 01:05:16.000 --> 01:05:19.360 name, there am I among them. 01:05:19.360 --> 01:05:23.440 And so you can clearly see Scripture here the words of Christ 01:05:23.680 --> 01:05:25.760 presuppose the existence of a church 01:05:26.640 --> 01:05:32.400 to which you can appeal in the instance of a conflict. 01:05:32.400 --> 01:05:37.600 If at all possible you should not forsake that local congregation, even 01:05:37.600 --> 01:05:42.960 if there are heterodoxies or problems in that congregation, you should work 01:05:42.960 --> 01:05:45.760 to correct those. 01:05:45.760 --> 01:05:48.640 But do not go off on your own and just sit with 01:05:48.640 --> 01:05:49.760 your Bible under a tree. 01:05:49.760 --> 01:05:50.640 Yes, you can do that. 01:05:50.640 --> 01:05:53.840 That's good study, but that's not church. 01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:56.000 That's not the communion of the saints. 01:05:56.000 --> 01:05:58.960 That's not what it means to be a Christian because Christian life 01:05:58.960 --> 01:06:01.840 is lived out together with other Christians. 01:06:01.840 --> 01:06:05.360 It is not just you, the Bible, and God. 01:06:05.680 --> 01:06:07.680 It's you and other Christians. 01:06:07.680 --> 01:06:11.360 That local congregation is incredibly important. 01:06:11.360 --> 01:06:14.720 And so we do not want to have anyone listen to this 01:06:14.720 --> 01:06:18.240 and think, oh, well, there are X, Y, and Z problems in 01:06:18.240 --> 01:06:21.440 my local church, so I have to leave and start my own. 01:06:21.440 --> 01:06:25.680 If those issues are egregious enough, then you've probably already left that 01:06:25.680 --> 01:06:28.480 church quite frankly, but if this is the first episode to which 01:06:28.480 --> 01:06:33.600 you're listening, unless those issues are so egregious that you cannot stay 01:06:33.600 --> 01:06:38.560 in that body without violating your conscience, stay and try to improve 01:06:38.560 --> 01:06:41.600 things. Try to correct your erring brothers. 01:06:41.600 --> 01:06:44.960 Try to make that church a better church. 01:06:45.440 --> 01:06:49.120 That may be the local congregation where God has placed you to 01:06:49.120 --> 01:06:50.720 do some good. 01:06:50.720 --> 01:06:54.160 Again, these are matters of wisdom and matters of conscience. 01:06:54.160 --> 01:06:56.960 We cannot give you a hard and fast rule because there is 01:06:56.960 --> 01:07:00.880 no hard and fast rule that applies to every situation. 01:07:00.880 --> 01:07:03.920 Some things are left to human wisdom. 01:07:03.920 --> 01:07:07.920 And again, this is one of the reasons that having that second 01:07:07.920 --> 01:07:12.320 level is so important and why historically it has been a bulwark 01:07:12.320 --> 01:07:15.760 against many problems in the church. 01:07:15.760 --> 01:07:20.080 Because you had the ability to appeal to authority, to appeal to 01:07:20.080 --> 01:07:23.840 a hierarchy, whether when there were problems in the local church. 01:07:23.840 --> 01:07:27.360 To some degree we do not have that today, and certainly many 01:07:27.360 --> 01:07:31.200 denominations in the US do not have it at all because you 01:07:31.200 --> 01:07:35.760 just don't have that hierarchy in many traditions. 01:07:35.840 --> 01:07:40.560 But given the realities of the situation in which we find ourselves, 01:07:40.560 --> 01:07:45.520 there are going to be certain demands placed on Christians, particularly Christian 01:07:45.520 --> 01:07:50.960 men, heads of households, and it is incumbent on you to do 01:07:50.960 --> 01:07:53.440 the best you can with what God has given you, with the 01:07:53.440 --> 01:07:56.480 wisdom He has given you, with the resources He has given you. 01:07:56.480 --> 01:07:59.760 Because do bear in mind, you're not alone in this. 01:07:59.760 --> 01:08:04.720 Even if you are in a situation where your local congregation is 01:08:04.720 --> 01:08:09.920 becoming apostate, issues are creeping in, false teachings are creeping in, you're 01:08:09.920 --> 01:08:11.200 still not alone. 01:08:11.200 --> 01:08:17.760 We have the advantage of living Two thousand years after the birth, 01:08:17.760 --> 01:08:22.000 death, and resurrection of Christ, we have a wealth of resources from 01:08:22.000 --> 01:08:23.920 faithful Christians of the past. 01:08:23.920 --> 01:08:25.680 We have other Christians. 01:08:25.680 --> 01:08:29.840 We do have the advantage, it's an advantage and disadvantage, but we 01:08:29.840 --> 01:08:32.000 do have the advantage of the internet. 01:08:32.000 --> 01:08:35.440 We can communicate with other Christian men. 01:08:35.440 --> 01:08:40.240 No your telegram chatroom or please don't use it, but your Discord 01:08:40.400 --> 01:08:44.640 chat room, whatever it happens to be, that's not church, that's not 01:08:44.640 --> 01:08:48.160 a local congregation, that is not the gathering together of the saints. 01:08:48.160 --> 01:08:51.520 It can be edifying, it can be important, it can be Christian 01:08:51.520 --> 01:08:55.680 fellowship, but it does not replace your local congregation. 01:08:55.680 --> 01:08:59.200 It does not replace that third order of the church. 01:08:59.200 --> 01:09:04.160 Do not think that that is an alternative to attending church or 01:09:04.160 --> 01:09:08.400 an alternative to having a local congregation, an alternative to having a 01:09:08.400 --> 01:09:10.240 local Bible study. 01:09:10.240 --> 01:09:14.240 Yes, there are many good resources, many good Bible studies that you 01:09:14.240 --> 01:09:19.440 can access online or via logos, whatever it happens to be, whatever 01:09:19.440 --> 01:09:21.280 platform you're using. 01:09:21.280 --> 01:09:24.640 But that is not the same as having that flesh and blood 01:09:24.640 --> 01:09:27.040 fellowship with other Christians. 01:09:27.040 --> 01:09:29.600 That is vitally important to the Christian life. 01:09:29.600 --> 01:09:30.720 You need that. 01:09:30.720 --> 01:09:34.480 You need that for accountability, and in the case of the congregation, 01:09:34.480 --> 01:09:36.880 you need it for the Word and Sacrament. 01:09:36.880 --> 01:09:40.240 Yes, again, you can study the Word by yourself or at a 01:09:40.240 --> 01:09:44.320 home Bible study, whatever it happens to be, but part of how 01:09:44.320 --> 01:09:48.880 the Word has always been proclaimed, part of the system God has 01:09:48.880 --> 01:09:54.480 instituted, is that faithful pastors are to preach the Word publicly in 01:09:54.480 --> 01:09:57.520 the assembled congregation of the saints. 01:09:57.680 --> 01:10:02.720 That is a vitally important part of the Christian life. 01:10:02.720 --> 01:10:05.920 But to give you some encouragement, I'm not going to read the 01:10:05.920 --> 01:10:07.360 entire chapter. 01:10:07.360 --> 01:10:11.280 In fact, multiple chapters, I recommend you go and read John 9, 01:10:11.360 --> 01:10:14.080 10, ten and eleven, but I will read just a little bit 01:10:14.080 --> 01:10:18.080 from John ten as an encouragement. 01:10:18.720 --> 01:10:22.400 truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold 01:10:22.400 --> 01:10:25.840 by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is 01:10:25.840 --> 01:10:29.360 a thief and a robber, but he who enters by the door 01:10:29.360 --> 01:10:31.280 is the shepherd of the sheep. 01:10:31.280 --> 01:10:35.280 To him the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he 01:10:35.280 --> 01:10:37.840 calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 01:10:38.240 --> 01:10:41.920 When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, 01:10:41.920 --> 01:10:44.880 and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 01:10:44.880 --> 01:10:48.560 A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, 01:10:48.560 --> 01:10:52.880 for they do not know the voice of strangers. 01:10:52.880 --> 01:10:56.720 And then again later in the same chapter, my sheep hear my 01:10:56.720 --> 01:11:00.320 voice, and I know them, and they follow me, I give them 01:11:00.320 --> 01:11:04.320 eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch 01:11:04.320 --> 01:11:05.760 them out of my hand. 01:11:05.760 --> 01:11:09.600 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, 01:11:09.600 --> 01:11:12.240 and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's 01:11:12.240 --> 01:11:15.840 hand. I and the Father are one. 01:11:15.840 --> 01:11:24.240 two. This passage, these passages, give us the definition of a Christian. 01:11:24.240 --> 01:11:28.160 A Christian is a sheep, a sheep who hears the voice of 01:11:28.160 --> 01:11:32.000 the true shepherd, of the good shepherd, the voice of Christ. 01:11:32.000 --> 01:11:35.440 That is the voice we hear in Scripture, because Scripture is the 01:11:35.440 --> 01:11:40.880 true testimony about Christ, the true testimony about God and His plan, 01:11:40.880 --> 01:11:46.000 the true testimony about God's intentions for us, His children. 01:11:46.000 --> 01:11:48.800 And we hear the voice of the good shepherd, that is what 01:11:48.800 --> 01:11:52.880 makes us Christians, that is what distinguishes the sheep from the goats, 01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:54.880 the believer from the unbeliever. 01:11:54.880 --> 01:12:00.160 And you will note, it says that the Good Shepherd calls the 01:12:00.160 --> 01:12:02.800 sheep by name. 01:12:02.800 --> 01:12:07.760 Christ knows the name of every single Christian. 01:12:07.760 --> 01:12:10.000 This is the God who named the stars. 01:12:10.000 --> 01:12:14.480 He can most certainly name and number the elect, those who are 01:12:14.480 --> 01:12:17.040 Christians, those who believe. 01:12:17.040 --> 01:12:21.040 He calls you by name, and you hear his voice because you 01:12:21.040 --> 01:12:25.040 are a sheep, because you are a believer. 01:12:25.040 --> 01:12:27.680 That is what makes you a Christian. 01:12:27.680 --> 01:12:33.440 It's not participation in any particular corporation, any particular overarching 01:12:34.400 --> 01:12:37.040 human entity. 01:12:37.040 --> 01:12:40.400 You are a member of the church, you are a sheep, because 01:12:40.400 --> 01:12:43.040 you hear the voice of the good shepherd. 01:12:43.040 --> 01:12:46.240 And that is great news because as it says in the second 01:12:46.240 --> 01:12:51.360 passage I read, Christ will lose none out of his hand. 01:12:51.360 --> 01:12:54.800 And so you are a sheep, you hear his voice, he will 01:12:54.800 --> 01:12:56.320 not lose you. 01:12:56.320 --> 01:13:00.480 No matter what happens to the church bodies today, no matter what 01:13:00.480 --> 01:13:04.800 happens to these various man made entities, and a lot of them 01:13:04.800 --> 01:13:07.200 are indeed in dire straits. 01:13:07.200 --> 01:13:11.920 Regardless of all that, the good shepherd remains, and he still knows 01:13:11.920 --> 01:13:15.120 your name, he still calls you by name, and he will not 01:13:15.120 --> 01:13:17.360 lose you from his hands. 01:13:17.360 --> 01:13:20.400 And so that is excellent good news. 01:13:20.400 --> 01:13:25.200 That is something always to bear in mind, no matter the conditions 01:13:25.200 --> 01:13:30.320 of life and the church, lowercase c as we find it today. 01:13:30.800 --> 01:13:34.000 I want to reiterate what Corey just said a minute ago about 01:13:34.000 --> 01:13:36.160 doing the best that you can. 01:13:36.160 --> 01:13:39.520 I I hope that in this brief time we've made the case 01:13:39.520 --> 01:13:42.160 that the best is all three. 01:13:42.160 --> 01:13:46.000 The first form of the church, the capital C, you basically get 01:13:46.000 --> 01:13:47.680 for free if you're a Christian. 01:13:47.680 --> 01:13:50.400 If you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, if you are 01:13:50.400 --> 01:13:54.400 among the among the elect, which if you're a Christian, then you 01:13:54.400 --> 01:13:59.920 are. That is that's that's the free square. 01:13:59.920 --> 01:14:04.800 The second and third, the the broader forms of the church and 01:14:04.800 --> 01:14:07.600 then the immediate congregation are 01:14:09.200 --> 01:14:16.320 vital. they're necessary to a properly functioning Christian society, but 01:14:16.320 --> 01:14:18.000 they are not necessarily givens 01:14:18.960 --> 01:14:22.640 in the Christian lives that some of us are facing. 01:14:22.640 --> 01:14:27.760 And so the the best that you can do may be only 01:14:28.480 --> 01:14:32.160 hopefully the best you can do as a faithful congregation. 01:14:32.160 --> 01:14:35.280 Ideally, the best that you can do is a faithful congregation in 01:14:35.280 --> 01:14:37.600 a faithful denomination. 01:14:37.600 --> 01:14:42.160 If you are without one or both of those things, the best 01:14:42.160 --> 01:14:48.080 that you can do should still be working towards figuring out how 01:14:48.080 --> 01:14:50.240 to achieve the other two. 01:14:50.240 --> 01:14:52.320 You know, and for most men, this is, you know, maybe it's 01:14:52.240 --> 01:14:53.040 a long-term thing. 01:14:53.040 --> 01:14:55.360 It's a thing that is above your pay grade. 01:14:55.360 --> 01:14:58.640 It's not something you're able to do, you should still be 01:14:59.840 --> 01:15:02.560 working with other men to try to figure out how to get 01:15:02.560 --> 01:15:08.080 there. Because if everything were working, all these would be givens. 01:15:08.080 --> 01:15:11.040 You know, I would I think that, you know, if I lived 01:15:11.040 --> 01:15:15.200 in 1580, I would be able to attend, you know, if I 01:15:15.280 --> 01:15:18.560 if I'm a German in 1580 at least, I would be able 01:15:18.560 --> 01:15:24.000 to attend a church where these doctrines of these men were being 01:15:24.160 --> 01:15:29.440 faithfully taught and practiced, and there was support from the prince, from 01:15:29.440 --> 01:15:33.600 the community, from a broad swath of society. 01:15:33.600 --> 01:15:36.560 That's a luxury that's been lost today. 01:15:36.560 --> 01:15:40.560 And so in some cases, the best that we can do isn't 01:15:40.560 --> 01:15:41.920 the best that could be. 01:15:41.920 --> 01:15:46.160 But if that is where we are, we should still be doing 01:15:46.160 --> 01:15:47.680 what we can to work towards it. 01:15:47.680 --> 01:15:50.480 You know, if you were if you have a good congregation, if 01:15:50.480 --> 01:15:55.440 you have a good congregation that's a part of a bad denomination, 01:15:55.440 --> 01:15:58.880 you should be thinking about some sort of exit strategy. 01:15:58.880 --> 01:16:04.560 Again, as Corey's talking about schism, it's not that you have introduced 01:16:04.560 --> 01:16:08.080 error or you have introduced disagreement. 01:16:08.080 --> 01:16:14.000 When a man introduces false doctrine that contradicts scripture, he is the 01:16:14.000 --> 01:16:17.120 schismatic. He's the one who is separated from God. 01:16:17.120 --> 01:16:21.200 And if the only Christian thing that you as a believer, as 01:16:21.200 --> 01:16:25.360 a pastor, as a congregation can do in the third position to 01:16:25.360 --> 01:16:27.760 maintain your status as a capital C 01:16:28.640 --> 01:16:33.680 church member is to separate from the second party to separate from 01:16:33.680 --> 01:16:39.360 your denomination, you should be willing to do that at some point. 01:16:39.920 --> 01:16:42.640 Again, this is these things are always matters of wisdom. 01:16:42.640 --> 01:16:47.200 There's timing, they're consciences, they're weakly informed consciences. 01:16:47.200 --> 01:16:49.600 You're not always going to be able to do exactly what you 01:16:49.600 --> 01:16:51.120 want, exactly when you want to do it. 01:16:51.120 --> 01:16:53.840 This is never something for impetuous men. 01:16:53.840 --> 01:16:54.480 But But 01:16:55.440 --> 01:16:59.600 if you can see the writing on the wall, you should still 01:16:59.600 --> 01:17:01.280 be thinking about the next steps. 01:17:01.280 --> 01:17:02.960 Where do we go from here? 01:17:02.960 --> 01:17:07.440 In your congregation, in your context, if you see airs coming down 01:17:07.440 --> 01:17:10.560 the pike, if you think that you can tell that something is 01:17:10.560 --> 01:17:13.760 going to go wrong, if you just have a bad feeling, start 01:17:13.760 --> 01:17:14.880 talking to guys. 01:17:14.880 --> 01:17:18.080 Ideally, you'd be able to fix your denomination. 01:17:18.080 --> 01:17:21.280 Yeah, that's that is the best case is to say, hey, we're 01:17:21.280 --> 01:17:22.400 not being faithful here. 01:17:22.400 --> 01:17:23.520 Let's get back on track. 01:17:23.520 --> 01:17:26.240 That should always be step one, two, and three. 01:17:26.240 --> 01:17:28.400 Separation is never done lightly. 01:17:28.400 --> 01:17:31.120 You know, I is I've as much crap as I'll give the 01:17:31.280 --> 01:17:36.400 Declaration of Independence, where it talks about long trains of usurpations and 01:17:36.400 --> 01:17:38.560 abuses, it's not wrong. 01:17:38.560 --> 01:17:43.200 Men should put up with crap if it's better than the alternative. 01:17:43.200 --> 01:17:43.920 For a time. 01:17:43.920 --> 01:17:47.360 You want to fix the problem, but it's better to put up 01:17:47.360 --> 01:17:50.880 with a thing you know than to go off into the wilderness 01:17:50.880 --> 01:17:51.840 and face 01:17:52.800 --> 01:17:56.800 other things that you know will go horribly wrong without the protections 01:17:56.800 --> 01:17:58.960 of organization. 01:17:58.960 --> 01:17:59.280 So 01:18:00.800 --> 01:18:04.240 it's never desirable to split. 01:18:04.240 --> 01:18:06.320 It's sometimes necessary. 01:18:06.320 --> 01:18:11.120 And so when those moments come, make sure that you have been 01:18:11.120 --> 01:18:14.480 talking to others and that you're in a position that you can 01:18:14.480 --> 01:18:18.640 do it without losing track of what it was that that body 01:18:18.640 --> 01:18:21.280 was originally formed for in the first place. 01:18:21.280 --> 01:18:24.800 You know, every church body w however it was formed, they had 01:18:24.800 --> 01:18:27.120 some good intent in their own minds. 01:18:27.120 --> 01:18:30.880 You know, obviously we would have doctrinal disagreements, but they thought they 01:18:30.880 --> 01:18:34.320 were doing something good when they did it, and then later on, 01:18:34.320 --> 01:18:38.400 when it ceases to be faithful to the original intention, even if 01:18:38.400 --> 01:18:43.440 perhaps the original intention necessarily painted the trajectory that they ended up 01:18:43.440 --> 01:18:48.480 on, if something turns out to have betrayed its roots, if getting 01:18:48.480 --> 01:18:52.400 back to its roots is the best way to approach things, you 01:18:52.400 --> 01:18:55.920 should be willing to talk to others about doing that. 01:18:55.920 --> 01:18:59.200 It should never be done lightly, but it must always be in 01:18:59.200 --> 01:19:02.800 view of I'm at the local congregational level. 01:19:03.120 --> 01:19:06.480 How can I be faithful to all the saints in time and 01:19:06.480 --> 01:19:07.760 all the saints in eternity? 01:19:07.760 --> 01:19:09.360 How can I be faithful to God? 01:19:09.360 --> 01:19:12.320 How can I be one with them as part of the body 01:19:12.320 --> 01:19:17.040 of Christ in preaching and teaching and confessing faithfully. 01:19:17.040 --> 01:19:21.360 If it involves splitting from the second, if it involves condemning the 01:19:21.360 --> 01:19:23.760 second, maybe condemnation is enough. 01:19:23.760 --> 01:19:27.440 You know, we're in such a conflict-averse world today where men are 01:19:27.440 --> 01:19:30.240 terrified to tell other men that they're wrong. 01:19:30.240 --> 01:19:31.840 It's the worst thing anyone could imagine. 01:19:31.840 --> 01:19:33.360 It's pathetic. 01:19:33.360 --> 01:19:36.960 It may be that if you point out an error, people will 01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:41.360 be so terrified of conflict, maybe they'll capitulate, which isn't ideal. 01:19:41.360 --> 01:19:43.760 I mean it's probably not gonna happen. 01:19:43.760 --> 01:19:48.800 But you as a matter of conscience are obligated to first condemn 01:19:48.800 --> 01:19:51.760 the error that you see before you say, I'm out of here. 01:19:51.760 --> 01:19:53.680 That's you can't just get mad and leave. 01:19:53.920 --> 01:19:54.960 That's petulant. 01:19:54.960 --> 01:19:56.560 It violates Matthew 18. 01:19:56.560 --> 01:20:00.000 Where you see error, it must be publicly rebuked for the benefit 01:20:00.000 --> 01:20:00.640 of all. 01:20:00.640 --> 01:20:04.800 Because again, most people don't don't have the aptitude for this stuff. 01:20:04.800 --> 01:20:07.360 And maybe most of you don't have the aptitude, you probably don't 01:20:07.440 --> 01:20:09.040 just statistically, that's fine. 01:20:09.040 --> 01:20:12.400 We're not saying you must all be individual little popes judging all 01:20:12.400 --> 01:20:13.520 this stuff. 01:20:13.520 --> 01:20:16.960 You can gather together and you can among yourselves recognize who are 01:20:16.960 --> 01:20:20.320 the faithful Christian men who have their heads on straight, who have 01:20:20.320 --> 01:20:24.720 faithfulness to God in their hearts and minds, who can, if not 01:20:24.720 --> 01:20:29.200 be leaders, at least be voices that will engage elsewhere to figure 01:20:29.200 --> 01:20:33.760 out where does your local congregation go from wherever you are to 01:20:33.760 --> 01:20:36.880 wherever you think you need to be. 01:20:36.880 --> 01:20:40.000 When things go wrong in the world, it's not an excuse for 01:20:40.000 --> 01:20:41.520 us to just give up and say I'm done. 01:20:41.520 --> 01:20:42.480 I I'm fed up. 01:20:42.480 --> 01:20:44.480 I'm I'm not doing this this anymore. 01:20:44.480 --> 01:20:45.600 That's not Christian. 01:20:46.240 --> 01:20:48.960 that's again, that's what Job's wife said to him. 01:20:48.960 --> 01:20:50.880 Why don't you just curse God and die? 01:20:50.880 --> 01:20:52.640 No, that's not what believers do. 01:20:52.640 --> 01:20:54.320 That's not what Christians do. 01:20:54.320 --> 01:20:56.160 You belong to God. 01:20:56.160 --> 01:21:01.360 Your congregation, insofar as everyone who is there is a Christian, belongs 01:21:01.360 --> 01:21:02.480 to God. 01:21:02.480 --> 01:21:03.760 Those are his sheep. 01:21:03.760 --> 01:21:07.440 And his sheep deserve to have a shepherd, whom he will send 01:21:07.600 --> 01:21:09.040 to guard them. 01:21:09.040 --> 01:21:12.480 And you must actively be a participant in that. 01:21:12.480 --> 01:21:15.520 It's to whatever extent those things are miraculous. 01:21:15.520 --> 01:21:17.200 We don't see the miracle part. 01:21:17.200 --> 01:21:18.720 We see the functional part. 01:21:18.720 --> 01:21:23.040 We see men in places doing things good or ill, and we 01:21:23.200 --> 01:21:26.960 have to judge that based on scripture. 01:21:26.960 --> 01:21:30.480 As we work through these things, it's it's just vital not to 01:21:30.480 --> 01:21:33.520 give up, not to say, well, I don't think that you know 01:21:33.600 --> 01:21:35.200 the second level's work and I'm done. 01:21:35.200 --> 01:21:36.800 I'm just gonna be by myself. 01:21:36.800 --> 01:21:38.640 You can't do that. 01:21:38.640 --> 01:21:41.920 If you can straighten out the second level through the third level, 01:21:41.920 --> 01:21:42.880 that's great. 01:21:42.880 --> 01:21:44.800 You should always be focused on the first. 01:21:44.800 --> 01:21:48.960 You should always be focused on capital C church because that is 01:21:48.960 --> 01:21:53.520 your eternal soul, but is not your daily life. 01:21:53.520 --> 01:21:57.280 The participation that we have with that is spiritual in a way 01:21:57.520 --> 01:22:02.400 that is very different in form than what we have at the 01:22:02.400 --> 01:22:04.240 local congregational level. 01:22:04.240 --> 01:22:07.200 So as you're interacting with other Christians in your neighborhood, in your 01:22:07.200 --> 01:22:11.360 community, with your own family, that is where your actual Christian life 01:22:11.360 --> 01:22:12.320 is being led. 01:22:12.320 --> 01:22:14.480 And that's what you have to keep straight. 01:22:14.480 --> 01:22:18.560 So to the best of your ability, be faithful to God, be 01:22:18.560 --> 01:22:23.040 faithful to scripture, be faithful to the creeds, hopefully you can be 01:22:23.040 --> 01:22:28.000 faithful to a confession that itself is faithful, and you can use 01:22:28.000 --> 01:22:32.560 those things to order all of your activities at the individual level, 01:22:32.560 --> 01:22:35.200 at the family level, at the congregational level. 01:22:35.200 --> 01:22:41.120 And if that means reforming or rebuilding or forming anew the second 01:22:41.120 --> 01:22:45.680 level churches, the denominations, such that they will continue to preserve that 01:22:45.680 --> 01:22:49.280 which we know is faithful to God, then that is where we 01:22:49.280 --> 01:22:51.120 should be spending our time. 01:22:51.120 --> 01:22:54.400 We do the best that we can, and we're always working towards 01:22:54.400 --> 01:22:57.600 what God wants because this is none of this is about our 01:22:57.600 --> 01:22:59.920 egos or about winning arguments. 01:22:59.920 --> 01:23:02.560 It's about making sure that we can pass on the faith to 01:23:02.560 --> 01:23:04.240 future generations. 01:23:04.240 --> 01:23:07.520 This stuff is not just about us in you know, the inheritance 01:23:07.760 --> 01:23:12.000 that we've gotten from past generations isn't shambles because many of them 01:23:12.000 --> 01:23:12.880 just didn't care. 01:23:12.880 --> 01:23:16.080 They paid lip service to this stuff, easy even as they were 01:23:16.080 --> 01:23:20.560 burning down the very institutions that had been erected by prior generations 01:23:20.560 --> 01:23:22.000 to them to preserve them. 01:23:22.000 --> 01:23:24.560 When they got a hold of them, they've turned them inside out 01:23:24.560 --> 01:23:28.160 and turned them into things that are destroying what would have been 01:23:28.160 --> 01:23:29.280 our future. 01:23:29.280 --> 01:23:29.600 So 01:23:30.960 --> 01:23:34.080 either we put out the fire or we move down the road, 01:23:34.080 --> 01:23:35.680 we gotta do something. 01:23:35.680 --> 01:23:38.480 Because what we're inheriting is a disaster. 01:23:38.480 --> 01:23:40.880 And it's not okay to just walk away. 01:23:40.880 --> 01:23:42.640 It's not okay to accept it. 01:23:42.640 --> 01:23:44.000 We have to fight it. 01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:45.120 We have to fix it. 01:23:45.120 --> 01:23:49.040 And we have to preserve and keep something, even if it means 01:23:49.040 --> 01:23:50.320 building anew. 01:23:50.320 --> 01:23:54.960 Because faithfulness to God means making sure that the future generations after 01:23:54.960 --> 01:23:58.960 us can have something better than what we have been given. 01:23:58.960 --> 01:24:02.240 I think that's a today that is a universal statement. 01:24:02.240 --> 01:24:04.640 In past generations, perhaps it wouldn't have. 01:24:04.640 --> 01:24:08.000 Typically, you would hope that you wouldn't be messing with anything. 01:24:08.000 --> 01:24:10.080 You could just pass on what you would inherited. 01:24:10.080 --> 01:24:14.160 When you've inherited something that's in shambles, you gotta fix it up 01:24:14.160 --> 01:24:14.960 before you pass it on. 01:24:15.920 --> 01:24:19.920 And so, as we're working through that, as in as Christians in 01:24:19.920 --> 01:24:25.440 our own local congregations, it's a lot of hard work. 01:24:25.440 --> 01:24:30.160 But just remember that when things are going wrong, in in an 01:24:30.160 --> 01:24:32.160 ironic way, that's a good sign. 01:24:32.160 --> 01:24:35.840 If Satan is messing with your church body or with your congregation, 01:24:35.840 --> 01:24:38.400 it means that there's something that Satan fears. 01:24:38.400 --> 01:24:41.280 Focus on the thing that was good there and try to get 01:24:41.280 --> 01:24:41.920 that back. 01:24:41.920 --> 01:24:44.000 Try to do more of what Satan fears. 01:24:44.000 --> 01:24:45.440 Don't do the things that he loves. 01:24:45.440 --> 01:24:46.640 He tells us that too. 01:24:46.640 --> 01:24:49.200 If it's in accord with the world, which is if you go 01:24:49.200 --> 01:24:53.600 back and read John 15 before John 16, the passage I read, 01:24:53.600 --> 01:24:56.000 it talks about that the world will love you if you do 01:24:56.000 --> 01:24:57.600 what Satan wants from you. 01:24:57.600 --> 01:25:00.640 When the world is coming after you, it means you're doing the 01:25:00.720 --> 01:25:04.720 the things that are actually beneficial to the kingdom of God, to 01:25:04.720 --> 01:25:05.920 obeying God, and to 01:25:07.280 --> 01:25:09.520 ruining Satan's day. 01:25:09.520 --> 01:25:13.280 These edifices that we have inherited that are in bad shape, we 01:25:13.280 --> 01:25:14.480 gotta shore them up. 01:25:14.480 --> 01:25:18.800 We got to give the future something that will preserve their faith, 01:25:18.800 --> 01:25:20.560 even if they're dumb or lazy. 01:25:20.560 --> 01:25:24.560 If you build a big enough and strong enough structure, it can 01:25:24.560 --> 01:25:25.760 coast for a little while. 01:25:25.760 --> 01:25:27.440 I mean that's that's no excuse. 01:25:27.440 --> 01:25:30.560 Ideally the best thing is for it to be shoring up future 01:25:30.560 --> 01:25:34.320 generations of men to preserve it, so that we would have more 01:25:34.320 --> 01:25:36.320 men who are competent than we have today. 01:25:36.320 --> 01:25:37.920 That should be the goal. 01:25:37.920 --> 01:25:43.120 But when you build up a strong foundation of organization and faithful 01:25:43.120 --> 01:25:47.520 confession, even in the very worst case, it would still preserve itself 01:25:47.520 --> 01:25:51.280 for a few generations if men just said the words. 01:25:51.280 --> 01:25:53.920 That's we know that that will work. 01:25:53.920 --> 01:25:57.680 And therefore how much more important is it for us to do 01:25:57.680 --> 01:26:00.800 better to say, look, let's do more than just mouth the words, 01:26:00.800 --> 01:26:05.920 let's create families and communities and congregations that are gonna build this 01:26:05.920 --> 01:26:07.760 stuff up and preserve it. 01:26:07.760 --> 01:26:11.600 So that if the world is still around in 100, 200 years, 01:26:11.600 --> 01:26:13.440 churches will be in better shape. 01:26:13.440 --> 01:26:15.840 On the current trajectory, there won't be any. 01:26:15.840 --> 01:26:18.560 Christianity is going to go extinct in 100 years. 01:26:18.560 --> 01:26:20.880 On the current trajectory, I don't think it's going to happen. 01:26:20.880 --> 01:26:22.400 God won't permit it. 01:26:22.400 --> 01:26:26.400 But we today are part of making sure that that doesn't happen. 01:26:26.400 --> 01:26:28.400 Not because we can do it by ourselves. 01:26:28.400 --> 01:26:33.040 In obedience to God, we are members of the body of Christ, 01:26:33.040 --> 01:26:34.240 with him as the head. 01:26:34.240 --> 01:26:37.360 And when we obey what the head says and we act as 01:26:37.360 --> 01:26:42.560 the hands and the lips and the instruments of God's will in 01:26:42.560 --> 01:26:48.320 these places, we're going to be preserving the sort of teaching that 01:26:48.320 --> 01:26:49.760 he wants to see. 01:26:49.760 --> 01:26:54.400 And that benefits you, your family, your community, and everyone around you. 01:26:54.400 --> 01:26:56.880 When we build something good, people are going to see it and 01:26:56.880 --> 01:26:58.480 say, I want to be a part of that. 01:26:58.480 --> 01:27:00.720 And that is one of the best ways to spread the gospel 01:27:01.440 --> 01:27:05.040 simply by being a place that is in opposition to the terrible 01:27:05.040 --> 01:27:06.000 world around 01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:06.640 you. 01:27:07.280 --> 01:27:12.240 As we've been going over this topic and particularly with regard to 01:27:12.240 --> 01:27:19.920 that second level, it brought to mind a quote variously attributed Tradition 01:27:20.240 --> 01:27:25.040 is Nishtian Betung de Asha Zundivitaba des Foyas 01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:31.680 translated into English, tradition is not the worship of ashes, rather it 01:27:31.680 --> 01:27:34.880 is the passing on of fire. 01:27:34.880 --> 01:27:38.640 And I want to make certain that we were entirely clear in 01:27:38.640 --> 01:27:42.960 this episode that while it is true that it is that first 01:27:42.960 --> 01:27:47.440 level of the church, the uppercase C church that is most important, 01:27:47.440 --> 01:27:50.240 the others are also vitally important. 01:27:50.240 --> 01:27:54.640 We've gone over repeatedly very clearly why the third level is important, 01:27:54.640 --> 01:27:59.040 and Wo just mentioned why the second level is important, but I 01:27:59.040 --> 01:28:01.920 want to emphasize that. 01:28:01.920 --> 01:28:08.160 It is vitally important to pass forward to future generations, Christian traditions, 01:28:08.160 --> 01:28:11.040 Christian institutions. 01:28:11.040 --> 01:28:15.120 Because if you do not do that, the odds that future generations 01:28:15.120 --> 01:28:20.080 will be Christian, or at the very least remain Christian, fall off 01:28:20.080 --> 01:28:26.240 precipitously. You will wind up with apostate grandchildren if you do not 01:28:26.240 --> 01:28:28.240 pass these things forward. 01:28:28.240 --> 01:28:32.800 Tradition is by and large good, tradition is something that is passed 01:28:32.800 --> 01:28:34.080 forward to future generations 01:28:34.960 --> 01:28:38.880 to maintain your culture, to maintain your way of life, to maintain 01:28:38.880 --> 01:28:40.560 the faith. 01:28:40.560 --> 01:28:43.840 These are things that we pass to our children and then to 01:28:43.840 --> 01:28:48.960 our grandchildren, our great grandchildren So that they can build on the 01:28:48.960 --> 01:28:53.120 foundation that we inherited and pass forward to them. 01:28:53.120 --> 01:28:56.640 Because ideally, that is what each generation is supposed to do. 01:28:56.640 --> 01:28:59.600 Pass forward the good that was passed to it by the previous 01:28:59.600 --> 01:29:06.160 generations, and also whatever additions, good additions have been built by that 01:29:06.160 --> 01:29:09.920 generation, you are supposed to leave a world that is better for 01:29:09.920 --> 01:29:12.400 your children than the one that was left to you by your 01:29:12.400 --> 01:29:17.280 parents. We live in a time where we are going to have 01:29:17.280 --> 01:29:21.120 to rebuild many of these institutions because they have been left to 01:29:21.120 --> 01:29:26.000 decay or deliberately torn down by previous generations. 01:29:26.000 --> 01:29:28.480 We've gone over that in previous episodes. 01:29:28.480 --> 01:29:31.520 That is the unfortunate reality. 01:29:31.520 --> 01:29:36.160 But we are not making the point that these are unnecessary or 01:29:36.160 --> 01:29:37.440 harmful things. 01:29:37.440 --> 01:29:42.160 We are not saying that the organization, the higher level organization, the 01:29:42.160 --> 01:29:49.200 hierarchical organization of congregations into larger bodies ultimately all part 01:29:49.200 --> 01:29:50.640 of the Capital C Church. 01:29:51.040 --> 01:29:52.240 We're not saying that's bad. 01:29:52.240 --> 01:29:53.280 That is a good thing. 01:29:53.280 --> 01:29:54.560 We need that. 01:29:54.560 --> 01:29:58.960 As human beings, we were designed to live in hierarchy. 01:29:58.960 --> 01:30:01.040 Everything in the universe is hierarchical. 01:30:01.040 --> 01:30:02.560 That is how God designed it. 01:30:02.560 --> 01:30:05.360 God, of course, sitting at the apex of it. 01:30:05.360 --> 01:30:08.480 But in all things there is hierarchy, in all things there is 01:30:08.480 --> 01:30:11.920 order, and we should wish to maintain that, to carry it forward, 01:30:11.920 --> 01:30:14.720 to pass it on to future generations. 01:30:14.720 --> 01:30:17.520 Yes, we can do only the best that we can with what 01:30:17.520 --> 01:30:20.160 we have been given, and that is what God demands of us. 01:30:20.160 --> 01:30:24.000 He is not demanding of us the impossible. 01:30:24.000 --> 01:30:27.360 We can do only what is possible with what we have been 01:30:27.360 --> 01:30:29.280 given in the time in which we are lived. 01:30:30.240 --> 01:30:35.040 So don't despair because it looks like the odds are insurmountable. 01:30:35.040 --> 01:30:40.160 They've been insurmountable before and God has carried through his church. 01:30:40.160 --> 01:30:42.880 Just take every day as it comes. 01:30:43.120 --> 01:30:46.800 We've read many times that the trouble is sufficient for the day. 01:30:46.800 --> 01:30:48.880 You don't need to look for more trouble. 01:30:48.880 --> 01:30:51.200 You don't need to worry about tomorrow. 01:30:51.200 --> 01:30:54.480 That's not what Christians do. 01:30:54.720 --> 01:30:58.480 You trust in God and you do the work in front of 01:30:58.480 --> 01:31:03.440 you. As a father that is instructing your children and your wife, 01:31:03.440 --> 01:31:06.240 your servants, if you have them, to use the wording of the 01:31:06.240 --> 01:31:10.720 catechisms. It is to be the head of the household, to lead 01:31:10.720 --> 01:31:12.720 as you are supposed to. 01:31:12.720 --> 01:31:15.680 If you're the wife that is to submit to your husband, and 01:31:15.680 --> 01:31:20.000 also to help him work out his faith in fear and trembling, 01:31:20.000 --> 01:31:22.640 that is one of the duties of a faithful wife. 01:31:22.640 --> 01:31:27.120 Not to usurping the headship of your husband, but helping him be 01:31:27.120 --> 01:31:29.680 the head of the household as he should be, and if your 01:31:29.760 --> 01:31:32.640 children your duty, of course, is to submit to and honor your 01:31:32.640 --> 01:31:36.080 parents. This is all hierarchy, this is all order. 01:31:36.080 --> 01:31:38.480 We know how all of these things work. 01:31:38.480 --> 01:31:41.920 Our duty as Christians is to do the work that has been 01:31:41.920 --> 01:31:45.040 set before us by God as best we can with the gifts 01:31:45.040 --> 01:31:47.040 that He has given us. 01:31:47.040 --> 01:31:49.280 And we are to do this in joy. 01:31:49.280 --> 01:31:53.200 Again, not necessarily happiness at all times, because happiness is a different 01:31:53.200 --> 01:31:57.520 thing. Yes, find happiness in the things that God has given you. 01:31:57.520 --> 01:31:59.600 But ultimately is a matter of joy. 01:31:59.600 --> 01:32:04.160 It is that expectation, the looking forward to the fulfillment of things, 01:32:04.160 --> 01:32:05.920 the promises of God. 01:32:05.920 --> 01:32:09.600 It is belief in Christ, because his word has never failed and 01:32:09.600 --> 01:32:11.200 never will. 01:32:11.200 --> 01:32:14.480 And so I'll close out this episode with a brief reading from 01:32:14.480 --> 01:32:17.280 the Epistle of James. 01:32:17.280 --> 01:32:20.880 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various 01:32:20.880 --> 01:32:25.440 kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, 01:32:25.440 --> 01:32:29.600 and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect 01:32:29.600 --> 01:32:32.800 and complete, lacking in nothing.