Transcript: Episode 0055

“The Church”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
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00:00:30 – 00:00:45:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Moeller, and I'm still woe. On today's Stone

00:00:45 – 00:00:51:	Choir, we're going to be discussing the subject of the church, and we'll talk about the definition,

00:00:51 – 00:00:55:	the form, and the scope of the church and what we mean when we use that in different contexts.

00:00:56 – 00:01:00:	Before we get into the subject, just a brief bit of housekeeping.

00:01:01 – 00:01:06:	This is the end of the calendar year, almost the end of 2023 as we're recording this. So

00:01:06 – 00:01:11:	Christmas isn't a couple weeks. The church calendar just began a couple weeks ago with the

00:01:11 – 00:01:16:	advent of Advent, because that's what that word means. So we decide that next week we're going to

00:01:16 – 00:01:21:	be doing the church calendar. And this week, we thought that before getting into the details of

00:01:21 – 00:01:25:	the blessing of the calendar that the church has given us throughout history, we should probably

00:01:25 – 00:01:31:	define what church means first. So we are going to do that now. And then next week, we'll have the

00:01:31 – 00:01:35:	calendar. These are probably both be shorter episodes, kind of give you guys a little bit of a

00:01:35 – 00:01:40:	break as we get into the Christmas season. And we're going to be taking two weeks off,

00:01:40 – 00:01:45:	because the following week is going to be Kwanzaa, where we would normally record, and I don't

00:01:45 – 00:01:52:	know wrong, Kwanzaa. No, we didn't want to record during Christmas week. And because

00:01:52 – 00:01:57:	when we record, we pretty much immediately began worrying about the following recording,

00:01:57 – 00:02:00:	we're going to take the next week off just so I can actually, we can both have a break,

00:02:00 – 00:02:06:	kind of week of Christmas. So after next week, the following recording that we release will be on

00:02:06 – 00:02:12:	the 10th of January. So just giving heads up, there will be a two week break. You can go back

00:02:12 – 00:02:17:	and listen to previous episodes if you feel like there's good stuff back there. Today, as we're

00:02:17 – 00:02:24:	discussing church, I want to give you just a very brief example in three sentences that probably apply

00:02:24 – 00:02:33:	to virtual everyone listening. You were baptized into the church, you joined a church, you attended

00:02:33 – 00:02:39:	a church. Now for virtual everyone, all three of those senses are true. All three of those senses,

00:02:39 – 00:02:46:	the direct object is the noun church. And yet in each of those, church means something slightly

00:02:46 – 00:02:53:	different. They're all fundamentally related. But they're all essentially different forms or

00:02:53 – 00:02:59:	different levels or layers of forms of the same thing. And so today, we're going to be talking

00:02:59 – 00:03:06:	about the particular forms of the church. I want to say up front that this is not intended to be

00:03:06 – 00:03:13:	a fiddly philosophical episode. We're not trying to make some sort of big brain, needless taxonomy

00:03:13 – 00:03:19:	of things. The specific reason for tackling the different forms of church is that when there are

00:03:19 – 00:03:27:	discussions among Christians, functionally, you can only ever really talk about one of those at a

00:03:27 – 00:03:32:	time. So we'll talk about those distinctions in this episode. But when you're talking about them,

00:03:32 – 00:03:37:	like when you're talking about the big C church, you're not talking about it in the same context

00:03:37 – 00:03:41:	as you're talking about your local congregation, or about your denomination, which are kind of the

00:03:43 – 00:03:48:	first is the big C church, the second is a denomination, or a church body. And then the third

00:03:48 – 00:03:54:	is your local congregation. And we'll refer to those throughout this in places as first, second,

00:03:54 – 00:04:00:	and third just for the sake of clarity. It's only really possible when you're in discussion to talk

00:04:00 – 00:04:06:	about one of those, or maybe two of them at once. But it's never possible really to functionally talk

00:04:06 – 00:04:10:	about all three, because there's not a context where all three of those apply. So we'll get into

00:04:10 – 00:04:16:	that. And so the reason that this is important is that a lot of people will try to set them against

00:04:16 – 00:04:25:	each other. Particularly in the American context, been a movement against organized church or

00:04:25 – 00:04:30:	organized religion, which is a new term. It's something that's, I think, probably fundamentally

00:04:30 – 00:04:36:	American. It certainly sounds American to sort of reject any form of joining or partnership with

00:04:36 – 00:04:45:	others. It's interesting, if you ever see videos of public events in Europe, maybe like a concert

00:04:45 – 00:04:51:	or something, some sort of performance, when crowds start clapping, European crowds in particular

00:04:51 – 00:05:01:	will very frequently rapidly start clapping in unison, where their claps will all end up on

00:05:01 – 00:05:06:	the same beat. So they're all clapping as one. Americans never, ever, ever do that. That's

00:05:06 – 00:05:11:	fundamentally different than us. We will go different volumes, different rotations of the

00:05:11 – 00:05:16:	hands, different loudness. We're going to do our own thing when we're Americans. It's very much a

00:05:16 – 00:05:23:	part of our spirit. And it's different than most of Europe. I don't know that that's necessarily

00:05:23 – 00:05:30:	always bad, but that spirit in the context of church in general is not good. We'll get into

00:05:30 – 00:05:37:	why that is. So it's a lot of times when someone says one version of the church, they're going to

00:05:37 – 00:05:41:	be doing it in rejection to the other. You're going to say, I don't want, you know, deeds not

00:05:41 – 00:05:46:	creeds. I don't want anything that's come from an organized church. I'm a non-denominational,

00:05:46 – 00:05:52:	independent, whatever church. There's just one of us. There's Pastor Jim in his King James Bible,

00:05:52 – 00:05:57:	and we believe what it says, and we're all by ourselves doing our own thing, and we're being

00:05:57 – 00:06:02:	faithful. We're going to make the case for why that causes problems, and it's not good for anyone.

00:06:03 – 00:06:06:	But first, we have to understand kind of what the broader context is. So

00:06:06 – 00:06:10:	this, again, is not, we're not trying to be fiddly and philosophical. We're trying to

00:06:10 – 00:06:16:	help make everyone able to understand and to communicate clearly when we're talking about

00:06:16 – 00:06:20:	these things. Because if I say church, and I mean one thing, and you're thinking of church in

00:06:20 – 00:06:27:	other contexts, we're automatically going to talk past one another. And that's, it's needless. It's

00:06:27 – 00:06:33:	frustrating and causes miscommunication. And a lot of times, you know, arguments and hurt feelings

00:06:33 – 00:06:37:	when there's no need. It's important to understand where we disagree, and there's

00:06:37 – 00:06:42:	plenty of disagreement among Christians, for good reason. But when we're not even using the

00:06:42 – 00:06:48:	same words in the same way, we create a mess. So the first one we're going to talk about is the

00:06:48 – 00:06:55:	capital C church. And fundamentally, what is meant by that in all times and all places

00:06:55 – 00:07:01:	is all believers, the bride of Christ, the body of Christ. We are members of one body

00:07:01 – 00:07:07:	with Christ as our head. That is the capital C church. That is all saints living and dead.

00:07:07 – 00:07:14:	We are all unified. All Christians who have the Holy Spirit are members of that church. And

00:07:15 – 00:07:20:	this is the reason, for example, that we as Lutherans in particular, and I think most Protestants

00:07:21 – 00:07:28:	flatly refuse to acknowledge Rome's claims, for example, in the West, that Rome is the Catholic

00:07:28 – 00:07:34:	church, capital C, meaning universal or according to the whole. When Rome says Catholic, it is

00:07:34 – 00:07:40:	saying, we're the whole thing. We're the capital C church. And if you're outside of Rome, you are

00:07:40 – 00:07:45:	outside of the church. And that was what the Reformation was fundamentally about. Can you

00:07:45 – 00:07:52:	still be Christian without the Pope? That was a lot of being inquisitive and blood was shed

00:07:52 – 00:07:59:	over that question because the argument was made, obviously, we believe correctly, that

00:07:59 – 00:08:04:	it is possible to be Christian without being Rome and Catholic. They're not mutually exclusive.

00:08:04 – 00:08:08:	We certainly recognize that there were many Christians in Rome before that day and since

00:08:08 – 00:08:15:	that day, including today. Even in the state that Rome is in today, we still gladly and

00:08:15 – 00:08:19:	thankfully acknowledge that there are many Christians among them. The only way that that

00:08:19 – 00:08:26:	works as we talked in the Reformation episode is if there is something larger than the denominations,

00:08:26 – 00:08:30:	which is the second sort of church that we're now talking about, where Rome is one example,

00:08:30 – 00:08:38:	the second Lutheran is another, and the Catholic answer is boilerplate, snark is that after the

00:08:38 – 00:08:43:	Reformation, there were 30,000 dominations, which is complete nonsense. It's a lie. But

00:08:43 – 00:08:50:	we do agree that it was bad for that fracture to exist. The reason for the fracture was because

00:08:50 – 00:08:56:	of disagreement over theology, over what Scripture says. And that is the reason that the second

00:08:57 – 00:09:04:	split. And at the third, you have the basic unit of Christian life, which is the local

00:09:04 – 00:09:10:	congregation, which in some ways, to us as individuals matters the most because it's the

00:09:11 – 00:09:17:	one that's immediate. The Capitol C church, the eternal church, the bride of Christ,

00:09:17 – 00:09:20:	you can't see it. You can't touch it. It doesn't have a mailing address.

00:09:21 – 00:09:26:	Denominations have mailing addresses. There are men with names and addresses who are responsible

00:09:26 – 00:09:32:	for whatever those denominations do. So that's something that's concrete, but is generally

00:09:32 – 00:09:39:	distant. What is local is your actual congregation. It's your family. It's your friends and your

00:09:39 – 00:09:46:	neighbors, all gathering together in one physical place around, hopefully, the Word and sacrament

00:09:46 – 00:09:54:	of God. That is where God comes among us in a particular way akin to, not identical to,

00:09:54 – 00:10:01:	but akin to what was found in temple worship. Now, things have changed with the advent of a

00:10:01 – 00:10:08:	new covenant. I'm not making that sort of claim, but the gathering of the faithful has always

00:10:08 – 00:10:12:	existed. You know, wherever, throughout the Old Testament, whenever something special happened,

00:10:12 – 00:10:17:	they built an altar. They worship God right there and named the place. And from then on,

00:10:17 – 00:10:24:	that place was considered holy and special and had a name oriented around something godly.

00:10:25 – 00:10:31:	When Christians gather together, that is the local gathering of the faithful. And where that

00:10:31 – 00:10:35:	happens, it's participation in the first. It's participation in the Capitol C church.

00:10:36 – 00:10:40:	Usually, it's also a participation in the second. So as we talk about this today, we're kind of

00:10:40 – 00:10:45:	trying to figure out where the boundaries are between those, where one slides into the other,

00:10:45 – 00:10:51:	and what happens when you confuse them. And sometimes when they're frankly at odds with each

00:10:51 – 00:10:55:	other. You know, one of the fundamental reasons for doing this episode is not only to eliminate

00:10:55 – 00:11:01:	confusion, but frankly, not to bury the lead, but we're in a position, all of us today, where

00:11:01 – 00:11:09:	many of the second type of church, the other denominations, are departing the faith in small

00:11:09 – 00:11:17:	ways and in big ways. And as this happens, our local congregations are faced with a dire and

00:11:17 – 00:11:23:	unprecedented question of, what do we do? If you're part of something bigger, and the bigger thing

00:11:24 – 00:11:29:	separates itself by its false confession from the biggest thing from the first church,

00:11:30 – 00:11:35:	what do you, as the third form of the church, what do you do? How do we, in the third position,

00:11:35 – 00:11:40:	remain faithful to the first when the second's getting in the way? So there's been a lot of

00:11:40 – 00:11:44:	inks spilled over the years, over the centuries, about dealing with this stuff. And thankfully,

00:11:44 – 00:11:49:	as Lutherans, we have some of the best written theology from past centuries addressing this.

00:11:50 – 00:11:55:	But it's important to understand why these things emerge, why they're important, and how we can

00:11:55 – 00:12:02:	preserve them faithfully. On the note of Lutheran theology written in the past on this particular

00:12:02 – 00:12:10:	topic, I will again take the opportunity to point out that CPH needs to release many of their materials

00:12:10 – 00:12:16:	into the public domain, because these are resources that belong to the church and should be available

00:12:16 – 00:12:21:	for any Christian to read. These are not things that should be copyright encumbered, particularly

00:12:21 – 00:12:25:	given some of them were written many years ago and really should not be in copyright at all.

00:12:25 – 00:12:30:	But that is a separate issue. We've covered another topic. We will link to some of those in

00:12:30 – 00:12:35:	the show notes. So unfortunately, you will have to purchase them because they are generally not

00:12:35 – 00:12:42:	available publicly. You may be able to find a PDF. I don't know if those are available at any rate.

00:12:42 – 00:12:48:	I want to start by reading a couple of paragraphs from Peeper, one of the dogmaticians of the LCMS,

00:12:48 – 00:12:52:	who does a great job on this and basically every other issue that he addresses in his

00:12:52 – 00:12:58:	three-volume work on dogmatics. The first is just a general definition of what the Christian

00:12:58 – 00:13:05:	Church is. The Christian Church consists of all those and only those who believe in Christ.

00:13:05 – 00:13:11:	Since, however, an anti-scriptural meaning is today given the words believe in Christ,

00:13:11 – 00:13:17:	we must make our definition more specific and say, the Christian Church is composed of all those

00:13:17 – 00:13:23:	and only those in whom the Holy Spirit has worked the faith that for the sake of Christ's vicarious

00:13:23 – 00:13:30:	satisfaction their sins are forgiven. And so that's the definition of that first level of

00:13:30 – 00:13:38:	Church, capital C, Church. It is composed of all believers throughout all time. Those who lived

00:13:38 – 00:13:44:	before Christ's life on earth, death and resurrection, believed in the Messiah who was to come,

00:13:45 – 00:13:51:	those of us living after that believe in the Messiah who has come. It's always belief in Christ

00:13:51 – 00:13:58:	that makes one a member of the Church and that faith is always a gift of the Holy Spirit. It's not

00:13:58 – 00:14:06:	a work of man. And then second, a more extended definition of the Christian Church and commentary

00:14:06 – 00:14:12:	on a couple other matters from Peeper. In short, according to Lutheran teaching, it is faith in

00:14:12 – 00:14:18:	the Gospel which in every case establishes membership in the Christian Church, both

00:14:19 – 00:14:25:	sees their uppercase. To him who believes the Gospel, membership in the Christian Church

00:14:25 – 00:14:31:	may not be denied. Of him who rejects the Gospel, membership in the Christian Church may not be

00:14:31 – 00:14:38:	asserted. Excommunication pronounced against true believers does not deprive them of membership in

00:14:38 – 00:14:44:	the Church. Also, those who in their ignorance believe false doctrines are members of the Church,

00:14:44 – 00:14:50:	whether they belong to an Orthodox or heterodox Church body, if only they cling sincerely to

00:14:50 – 00:14:57:	God's grace in Christ. Also lack of baptism, if there was no opportunity to receive baptism,

00:14:57 – 00:15:02:	does not deprive believers of membership in the Christian Church, because baptism is not

00:15:02 – 00:15:09:	absolutely necessary, as was shown in the Locus di Baptismo, the title or section on baptism.

00:15:11 – 00:15:18:	And so here we have a more extended version of what it means to be a member of that capital C

00:15:18 – 00:15:25:	Church. Again, you enter the Church through faith. It is belief in the Gospel, which is to say

00:15:25 – 00:15:31:	Christ's vicarious satisfaction for sin. That is what makes one a member of Christ's Church.

00:15:32 – 00:15:39:	And you are a member of Christ's Church by virtue of that faith, not by virtue of membership in a

00:15:39 – 00:15:48:	synod or an overarching Church body lowercase C, or even a local congregation. Now, it is good to

00:15:48 – 00:15:55:	be a member of those insofar as they are teaching rightly. But to be a member of Christ's Church

00:15:56 – 00:16:03:	is to have faith. That is a matter of God. That is not a matter of men. Men do not get to declare

00:16:03 – 00:16:08:	whether you are a member of the Church or not a member of the Church. They can declare whether

00:16:08 – 00:16:13:	you are a member of a corporation or not. But that is a different matter. That is typically the form

00:16:13 – 00:16:18:	that the second level of Church takes. So you have a synod, or you have Rome, or you have whatever

00:16:18 – 00:16:26:	the body happens to be in various traditions. That is a different thing from the uppercase

00:16:26 – 00:16:32:	capital C Church. Now, those second level bodies should be faithful. And insofar as they are

00:16:32 – 00:16:40:	faithful, they are in fact parts of the uppercase C Church. But you as an individual Christian,

00:16:41 – 00:16:46:	ultimately your membership in the Church is a membership in that uppercase C Church.

00:16:46 – 00:16:50:	Now, as we've mentioned already, and will undoubtedly say a number of additional times in

00:16:50 – 00:16:56:	this episode, you should still be a member of a local congregation. And if possible,

00:16:56 – 00:17:02:	that local congregation should be a member of a larger community of churches. That's what it means

00:17:02 – 00:17:07:	to have that life together as Christians. We are not to forsake the gathering together of the saints.

00:17:08 – 00:17:13:	As a first order matter, that means don't forsake your local congregation.

00:17:13 – 00:17:19:	Now, we have to add the caveat, and this is unfortunate, but we have to do it today.

00:17:20 – 00:17:27:	If you do not have any faithful local bodies, we are absolutely not saying that you have to attend

00:17:27 – 00:17:34:	an unfaithful or a faithless supposed Church. It may be that for a certain amount of time,

00:17:34 – 00:17:40:	you will have to have basically what is a home Church. Now, is it fully a Church in the sense

00:17:40 – 00:17:47:	of a traditional congregation constituted of local believers? Over time, perhaps it could become that,

00:17:47 – 00:17:52:	but to start off, no, it's more of a Bible study. Now, that is still fellowship with the saints,

00:17:52 – 00:17:59:	that is still important. You can still study God's Word, but it is not that full communion that you

00:17:59 – 00:18:06:	should have with a local congregation. Because of the reality of the situation in which we find

00:18:06 – 00:18:11:	ourselves, that sort of thing may be necessary if not today, then maybe in the not so distant future.

00:18:12 – 00:18:19:	And that is, again, better than the alternative of simply being isolated and not having that

00:18:19 – 00:18:26:	fellowship with other Christians. It's not ideal, that's the point. But sometimes the ideal is not

00:18:26 – 00:18:32:	an option. Sometimes we must do the best that we can with what we have been given in the era,

00:18:32 – 00:18:40:	in the time in which we live. And house churches are not inappropriate. Those were what we had

00:18:40 – 00:18:45:	in the early days of Christendom. That is how things started in many of the Greek and Roman

00:18:45 – 00:18:50:	areas. They started with house churches. Over time, they became more organized and became

00:18:50 – 00:18:55:	proper congregations joined together and formed synods, larger groups, larger church bodies,

00:18:56 – 00:19:03:	all still part of that first sense of Upper KC Church. We may be in a similar situation

00:19:03 – 00:19:07:	today in having to rebuild in the same way that they built originally.

00:19:09 – 00:19:14:	There are two specific examples in the New Testament that come up frequently,

00:19:14 – 00:19:19:	usually in the context of baptism. But as we made the case in the baptism episode, which is

00:19:19 – 00:19:27:	functionally a part of this, is that the thief on the cross became a member of the Capitol C

00:19:27 – 00:19:33:	Church with his confession of his sins and with his confession of Jesus Christ as a Savior. He

00:19:33 – 00:19:40:	was also on the cross. He was about to die. He confessed. He became a Christian. He was saved.

00:19:40 – 00:19:46:	He was with all the saints of that day, as Christ promised. He never joined a denomination or a

00:19:46 – 00:19:54:	congregation. He was never baptized. The crucial element there is we made the case in the baptism

00:19:54 – 00:19:59:	episode is that if by some miracle he had come down off that cross, he would have done those

00:19:59 – 00:20:04:	things. He would have gone and been baptized. He would have joined with other local believers

00:20:05 – 00:20:13:	every Sabbath, every Sunday as things evolved. He would have lived the Christian life that every

00:20:13 – 00:20:20:	Christian was also leading. It's an example that the second and third are not absolutely

00:20:20 – 00:20:28:	necessary for the first. However, despising the third, despising the local gathering of the saints,

00:20:29 – 00:20:35:	is condemned by scriptures, Corey just mentioned. The Ethiopian eunuch is another example. He wasn't

00:20:35 – 00:20:42:	facing a death sentence, but he was from Ethiopia. He was from a place that had Jews. They had had

00:20:42 – 00:20:51:	the gospel from the pre-incarnate Christ for a while. When he was convinced by the gospel and said,

00:20:51 – 00:20:58:	why should I not be baptized here? He desired baptism. He received baptism. But then he went home

00:20:58 – 00:21:06:	to Ethiopia where probably not a lot of churches, at least not yet, they grew. He was in a position

00:21:06 – 00:21:13:	where he was going to a place that did not have a lot of believers. He probably went back as an

00:21:13 – 00:21:23:	evangelist. In part, he didn't leave his vocation, but he now as a believer in Jesus Christ had

00:21:23 – 00:21:28:	something new to share with people, to explain to them the scriptures that we already had have

00:21:28 – 00:21:34:	been fulfilled in this man. Here's this wonderful, incredible news that all those prophecies were

00:21:34 – 00:21:42:	fulfilled. He would have certainly desired to gather with other believers by virtue of making

00:21:42 – 00:21:49:	others around him Christian. I think this is a good example for us today that he was going to a

00:21:49 – 00:21:53:	place where maybe there weren't a lot of believers. Maybe in order for him to have a congregation

00:21:53 – 00:21:59:	locally, he might have had to make it. Again, there were Jews there. There were some who certainly had

00:21:59 – 00:22:06:	faith to that point. But with the birth of Christ, it became an inflection point for the Jews. Were

00:22:06 – 00:22:12:	they going to recognize the Messiah who was promised? Or were they going to rebel against God

00:22:12 – 00:22:19:	as they had done their entire history? Most continued to rebel. Some became Christians.

00:22:19 – 00:22:24:	Some continued in their belief in the Messiah and were known by a new name as Christians.

00:22:24 – 00:22:30:	But it was the same faith. They didn't switch faiths. Their faith was fulfilled in the moment of

00:22:30 – 00:22:38:	that being delivered in the body of Christ. So he was blessed that that information was transmitted

00:22:38 – 00:22:44:	to him by witnesses. But then he was going to a place where the gathering of the faithful

00:22:45 – 00:22:49:	might have been a long road to hoe. It might have taken a while for there to be others. Yet,

00:22:50 – 00:22:57:	as we face similar circumstances, certainly in a day where more and more the second-order

00:22:58 – 00:23:02:	church bodies have gotten weaker and weaker and more and more have apostatized,

00:23:02 – 00:23:08:	some of us are living in the wilderness now. One of the points we want to make today is that

00:23:08 – 00:23:14:	that is no excuse for despising the gathering of the faithful. As Corey said, it may not be

00:23:14 – 00:23:19:	immediately possible for you. But insofar as it depends on you, as much as you're able,

00:23:19 – 00:23:26:	it is important to gather with others. I want to go into a little more detail, just briefly,

00:23:27 – 00:23:34:	on the issue of what it means to be in schism or to be a schismatic, because this obviously is

00:23:34 – 00:23:39:	at least tangentially related to the topic we are discussing. It was already mentioned.

00:23:40 – 00:23:46:	A short paragraph from Peeper on specifically this issue. He has only two paragraphs in his

00:23:46 – 00:23:52:	section in his dogmatics on schism in this context of the church. I'm just going to read the second

00:23:52 – 00:23:59:	one. Such, however, as separate from a church body because it tenaciously clings to false doctrine

00:23:59 – 00:24:06:	are unjustly called schismatics, separatists, etc. This separation is commanded in Scripture,

00:24:06 – 00:24:13:	Romans 16, 17, and is the only means of restoring and maintaining the true unity in the Christian

00:24:13 – 00:24:20:	church. And so the reason this is important, this is something that is vital to understand

00:24:20 – 00:24:25:	in this context, particularly for us today, but throughout the entire history of the church,

00:24:25 – 00:24:34:	capital C. It is not those who dissent from false doctrine, or said another way, it is not those

00:24:34 – 00:24:42:	who insist on right doctrine, who are schismatics. It is always those who insist on false doctrine

00:24:42 – 00:24:49:	or reject right doctrine. It doesn't matter if you are the only one speaking God's truth.

00:24:50 – 00:24:57:	Everyone else would then be schismatics. You would be the only person not in schism,

00:24:57 – 00:25:03:	because when it comes down to the issue of schism, it is with regard to the upper case C

00:25:03 – 00:25:10:	church, with regard to that first sense, the grand umbrella over all things. It is Christ

00:25:10 – 00:25:16:	church, with which you agree, or with which you disagree, and that makes you a member or not a

00:25:16 – 00:25:24:	member. If you disagree with the teachings of Christ church, you are in schism. It doesn't

00:25:24 – 00:25:30:	matter if you agree with every other person who calls himself a Christian on earth. If all of

00:25:30 – 00:25:36:	you are wrong and disagree with scripture, you are in schism, and it can be one man who stands

00:25:36 – 00:25:43:	up and speaks the truth. That man is not in schism, because he is speaking the truth of Christ

00:25:43 – 00:25:50:	church. And so today, when we face all of these second level bodies that are becoming apostate,

00:25:50 – 00:25:57:	or in many cases have been apostate for years, recognize that if you dissent from the false

00:25:57 – 00:26:04:	teachings of those churches, you are not in schism, because your duty as a Christian is to

00:26:04 – 00:26:10:	hear the voice of the shepherd and listen to what he says. Your duty is to listen to God's word,

00:26:10 – 00:26:17:	to listen to Christ's word. It does not matter what that second level church body says,

00:26:18 – 00:26:26:	if it is in conflict with scripture. Now, in so far as there are issues of adiaphora,

00:26:26 – 00:26:30:	something that is not in fact binding on the Christian, because it is not in fact something

00:26:30 – 00:26:36:	that is stated in God's word, in those we should bear with these second level bodies. And so if

00:26:36 – 00:26:41:	you don't like the color of the candles that are used in Advent, deal with it, ignore it,

00:26:41 – 00:26:45:	they can be blue or purple or whatever they happen to be. It should be one of those colors, but

00:26:47 – 00:26:53:	if you disagree with something like that, let it slide. That is something where you bear with others

00:26:53 – 00:26:58:	in Christian patience. That is not something where you leave and say, well, I'm going to form my own

00:26:58 – 00:27:03:	church because I want the pyramids to be this color, or I don't like this design of the stained glass.

00:27:04 – 00:27:11:	That is not what it means. That is not the matter here. Those sorts of issues, those are adiaphora.

00:27:12 – 00:27:18:	They're important in many cases, because it does matter how you decorate the church. We will get

00:27:18 – 00:27:21:	into a little bit more of that in next week's episode on the church calendar, because some

00:27:21 – 00:27:28:	of these things are for teaching a preview of that episode. But they're not things over which

00:27:28 – 00:27:35:	you split from the church. The things over which you split from the church, you must split from a

00:27:35 – 00:27:42:	false church, because Scripture commands it, are false doctrine, false teaching, first and foremost,

00:27:42 – 00:27:50:	if they do not teach rightly on the gospel. Because to stay in a church that teaches falsely with

00:27:50 – 00:27:55:	regard to the core matters of the truth of Christ, to God's matters, to God's things,

00:27:56 – 00:28:03:	is to violate your own conscience. And that is the problem here. And so if you split because of that,

00:28:03 – 00:28:09:	you are not a schismatic, you need to be comfortable with that. Because we live in a time where again,

00:28:09 – 00:28:15:	these church bodies are teaching falsely, are becoming apostate. And it may be that you will

00:28:15 – 00:28:23:	be forced out or have to leave. That does not make you a schismatic. That does not separate you

00:28:23 – 00:28:30:	from Christ or from his church. It just separates you from a corporation. And that hardly matters to

00:28:30 – 00:28:36:	a Christian. I won't read the entire thing here, but I commend all of 1 Corinthians 12 to everyone.

00:28:36 – 00:28:41:	Go read it. I'm just going to read a couple of verses. Disconnect a little bit. For just as the

00:28:41 – 00:28:49:	body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body,

00:28:49 – 00:28:54:	so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks,

00:28:54 – 00:29:00:	slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit. Now you are the body of Christ and

00:29:00 – 00:29:06:	individually members of it. This is clearly one of the many passages that deals with the

00:29:06 – 00:29:14:	Capitol C church and with us being direct members of it. And crucially, this is a sort of spiritual

00:29:14 – 00:29:21:	connection that it doesn't bypass the local congregation, but the local congregation is

00:29:21 – 00:29:26:	where it is visible. Because the rest of that passage talks about the different gifts that God

00:29:26 – 00:29:35:	gives to us being practiced in our local congregation, in our lives with our neighbors.

00:29:36 – 00:29:42:	That's crucial because this is where God has placed us. And the gifts that we're given

00:29:43 – 00:29:49:	as members of Christ's body, the church, are for the benefit of our brothers in Christ and our

00:29:49 – 00:29:58:	neighbors. And as Corrie was saying, there come times where there's air and sometimes it's small

00:29:58 – 00:30:04:	and sometimes it's great. If you live in a wasteland of Christianity, which is increasingly

00:30:04 – 00:30:11:	much of the world, it may be that your local congregation, you can no longer say amen to

00:30:11 – 00:30:18:	many of the things that are there. Nevertheless, if that's still the closest to a faithful congregation

00:30:18 – 00:30:25:	in your area, maybe, again, as Corrie said, these are matters of conscience. There's no

00:30:26 – 00:30:32:	script for how to deal with an environment where we see churches dying, the second and

00:30:32 – 00:30:38:	third type of churches, where their hearts are growing cold, where men are becoming evil,

00:30:38 – 00:30:45:	even as they proclaim that they are acting in the name of God. The beginning of John 16 is

00:30:45 – 00:30:51:	something I quoted online earlier today. Jesus, after giving some End Times prophecies, says,

00:30:51 – 00:30:56:	I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the

00:30:56 – 00:31:01:	synagogues. Indeed, the hours coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to

00:31:01 – 00:31:06:	God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me. But I've said

00:31:06 – 00:31:10:	these things to you that when your hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you.

00:31:12 – 00:31:16:	I think there are two crucial things going on there that don't, are necessarily the two that

00:31:16 – 00:31:23:	stand out. The first is that whoever kills you will think he's serving God. The men who will

00:31:23 – 00:31:30:	persecute believers in the church will do it in the name of God in many times and places. We've

00:31:30 – 00:31:34:	seen that in the past and we will continue to see it in the future just as we see it right now.

00:31:35 – 00:31:41:	Often the persecution of the church comes from within what calls itself the church,

00:31:41 – 00:31:44:	which again is the distinction between the second, the first, and the third.

00:31:45 – 00:31:50:	We believe as Lutherans that the persecution of the faithful that occurred during the

00:31:50 – 00:31:58:	Reformation came from the second, falsely embodying the first. We believe that there were acts of that

00:31:58 – 00:32:05:	pope in that time that were evil and it was necessary for Christians to separate themselves.

00:32:05 – 00:32:08:	Initially, as we said in the Reformation episode, Luther didn't want to separate,

00:32:08 – 00:32:13:	he just wanted them to behave. It's like, hey, the Bible says this and you're doing the other thing,

00:32:13 – 00:32:18:	let's do the thing the Bible says. And when the response was, we're going to kill you,

00:32:19 – 00:32:24:	this was John 16 being fulfilled. They threw him out and they tried to have him murdered.

00:32:24 – 00:32:32:	Well, okay. The other thing that Jesus mentions here that I think we all need to hear is that

00:32:32 – 00:32:38:	he says, when there hour comes, you may remember that I told them to you. He said these things

00:32:38 – 00:32:42:	so that when they're fulfilled, we would remember. He didn't say, I'm telling you these things and

00:32:42 – 00:32:48:	I'm going to spare you. Some of us will be sacrificed as an example for others.

00:32:49 – 00:32:55:	Is that a good thing? I mean, it might not feel like it at the time, but

00:32:56 – 00:33:01:	crucially, this is within the context of the church. This is the second church,

00:33:01 – 00:33:08:	persecuting those who were members of the first in the context of the third. I hope this numbering

00:33:08 – 00:33:14:	scheme isn't confusing you. All believers, capital C, when denominations and local congregations

00:33:15 – 00:33:22:	go after individual members in ways that are ungodly, that is a fulfillment of Christ's prophecy,

00:33:23 – 00:33:29:	in particular of an end times prophecy. This was certainly true in Jesus' day. It was something

00:33:29 – 00:33:36:	that came to the believers in those synagogues as they realized that being a faithful Jew meant

00:33:36 – 00:33:42:	ceasing to be a Jew and being a Christian and living a Christian life. When you look at the

00:33:42 – 00:33:50:	extant populations in the territory of Palestine, they are the oldest genetic links back to this

00:33:50 – 00:33:56:	day. They are the people who have always lived there. They ceased to be Jews in many cases.

00:33:56 – 00:34:01:	They're still related by blood if you go back far enough, but not one of them would say,

00:34:01 – 00:34:06:	I'm Jewish because they became Christian and they just stayed where they lived. That's why

00:34:06 – 00:34:11:	we had so many Palestinian and Syrian Christians until fairly recently when they were rounded up

00:34:11 – 00:34:18:	and murdered by the evil people in that part of the world. This is something that's continuously

00:34:18 – 00:34:24:	happening in the church. That's part of why I think it's always important for Christians to

00:34:24 – 00:34:30:	read those end times prophecies and to understand that there's always an immediacy to them as well.

00:34:30 – 00:34:36:	It's not simply judgment day is going to be next week. It's that we should always be prepared

00:34:36 – 00:34:43:	to have an answer for our faith because if you are a part of the first, if you are a member of

00:34:43 – 00:34:50:	Christ's body, the capital C church, there may well come a day when you face isolation or persecution.

00:34:51 – 00:34:57:	There are many in history who have not, who have had godly princes, they've had godly kingdoms.

00:34:58 – 00:35:04:	Their entire lives were surrounded by other Christians being relatively faithful, certainly

00:35:04 – 00:35:10:	not perfect by any stretch, but compared to today, a wonderland. What we face today, I think, is in

00:35:10 – 00:35:18:	many ways unprecedented where the second order churches, the denominations, are crumbling in

00:35:18 – 00:35:25:	almost all cases. We see things happening today in the church where people who are mostly mounting

00:35:25 – 00:35:32:	good defenses are still doing things like letting in a Trojan horse. They are receiving gifts from

00:35:32 – 00:35:37:	those who bear them ill will and saying, yes, I want to take this. I'm going to put this under

00:35:37 – 00:35:43:	the Christmas tree. It's a nice present. I wonder what's inside. These traps that are being invited

00:35:43 – 00:35:48:	in, I'm thinking in particular of guys like Doug Wilson, who whatever else they've gotten correct

00:35:49 – 00:35:56:	when their new big effort is to do some of the things that are openly hostile to

00:35:57 – 00:36:03:	Christian belief, to historic belief, they're leaving themselves open. They're creating a

00:36:03 – 00:36:10:	vulnerability even among places that are trying to be faithful. This is something that's very

00:36:10 – 00:36:15:	tricky for us in the congregational and in the denominational context to figure out where do

00:36:15 – 00:36:22:	you draw the line. I think one of the hardest things for all of us is that most men are not

00:36:22 – 00:36:29:	equipped to weigh these matters. We're simply not equipped by ourselves to figure this stuff out.

00:36:30 – 00:36:35:	And frankly, it's one of the reasons that the historic church has given us things like creeds.

00:36:35 – 00:36:43:	The apostles in the Nicene and also the Athanasian creeds exist specifically so that

00:36:44 – 00:36:49:	all preaching and teaching could be measured against them. Because every word of those creeds

00:36:49 – 00:36:56:	was designed to repudiate specific heresies in those days. Now the heresies were old,

00:36:56 – 00:37:02:	maybe they came roaring back in some cases, but the lies that Satan tells to believers are

00:37:03 – 00:37:07:	they're not eternal. They're as old as Satan, but he's always telling the same lies

00:37:07 – 00:37:14:	over and over because they keep working. And so the beauty of the creeds is that brilliant and

00:37:14 – 00:37:20:	faithful men put together something very simple that a child can memorize that can be used as a

00:37:20 – 00:37:27:	benchmark to evaluate everything around it. It's one of the reasons that for almost 2000 years,

00:37:28 – 00:37:33:	the vast majority of Christian churches have confessed at least one of the creeds every Sunday.

00:37:34 – 00:37:41:	It's crucial to say those words out loud in the collective context of the third order

00:37:41 – 00:37:47:	congregation of the church as a benchmark. Because whatever the pastor said during his sermon,

00:37:48 – 00:37:55:	if the creed contradicts something that he said, even the Christian man in the pews who's

00:37:55 – 00:38:01:	not that engaged, he's not a theologian by any stretch, if Pastor Jim said something that you

00:38:01 – 00:38:06:	hear, you're like, this creed says the opposite of what that guy just said. What's going on?

00:38:06 – 00:38:10:	He may not be the man to articulate a defense for why the pastor did something false,

00:38:10 – 00:38:16:	but he can ask the question. And it's a question that's crucial in all times and all places.

00:38:18 – 00:38:22:	Because Satan's not creative, he's going to keep doing stuff that keeps working.

00:38:22 – 00:38:29:	These old forms that the church has given us, this is one of the debates that some modern,

00:38:29 – 00:38:34:	especially in the American context, Christians say things like deeds not creeds. We've talked in

00:38:34 – 00:38:43:	past episodes about why the creeds are so important. The creeds are quotations from Scripture.

00:38:43 – 00:38:48:	They're a distillation of the words of God himself. And they're put together in a way

00:38:48 – 00:38:52:	that is entirely consistent with Scripture. And again, they were done specifically because

00:38:52 – 00:38:57:	men are going to come along and say things that are contrary to Scripture. When you can have

00:38:57 – 00:39:03:	something that's a condensed version of the entire Christian faith that a child can memorize,

00:39:03 – 00:39:09:	I know because I did it. And even like kids, you know, average kids by 10 years old can all have

00:39:09 – 00:39:15:	easily learned both of the creeds. When that is the case, when it's on your lips and it's in your

00:39:15 – 00:39:21:	heart and it's in your mind, when you hear something that sounds contrary to it, God is going to help

00:39:21 – 00:39:28:	you realize it. And that is something that is missing when you try to go off by yourself.

00:39:28 – 00:39:34:	When you say, I don't want any denominational affiliation. I don't want any of this other

00:39:34 – 00:39:37:	stuff. I'm just going to do it by myself and figure it out. And I got my Bible and I'm going to be

00:39:37 – 00:39:44:	okay. Well, in some ways, that's where Satan wants you, because you've been separated from

00:39:44 – 00:39:48:	not only the other believers who can help to strengthen your faith, but you've been separated

00:39:48 – 00:39:56:	historically from all the different ways that the church has established protections for us.

00:39:57 – 00:40:01:	In church in that context, it's almost splitting the difference between the first and second. It

00:40:01 – 00:40:07:	kind of goes to some of the arguments that Rome made saying, you know, we are the universal church.

00:40:08 – 00:40:15:	I think that personally, I think that the appropriate Protestant view of the councils is that

00:40:16 – 00:40:21:	the ones that produced faithful doctrine were Christian men with the indwelling of the Holy

00:40:21 – 00:40:27:	Spirit and with sound reason who were gifted. I don't think that those men needed any new special

00:40:27 – 00:40:33:	revelation to come up with the specific things like the creeds that they issued on behalf of the

00:40:33 – 00:40:38:	church because they were making arguments from Scripture. Any man can make an argument from

00:40:38 – 00:40:44:	Scripture and it may well be true. You don't have to be a genius, but it's important that

00:40:44 – 00:40:52:	Scripture and reason in that order are what is producing the thing. Now, you don't just go around

00:40:52 – 00:40:57:	making arguments for the sake of making arguments, but when there's a controversy, as Cory was saying,

00:40:57 – 00:41:04:	or when there's a clear error that must be repudiated, somebody's got to do it. And thankfully,

00:41:04 – 00:41:10:	when you look at church history, almost all the errors have already been made. There's very rarely

00:41:10 – 00:41:15:	some new error. We've talked in past episodes that there are a few new errors that are creeping in,

00:41:15 – 00:41:20:	the things that are assaulting creation itself, assaulting the body, that are assaulting how we

00:41:20 – 00:41:25:	are made. Are we made male and female? Are we made a particular race? Is there anything different

00:41:25 – 00:41:30:	about different types of people and do God want to do that? That's what Satan's attacking today,

00:41:30 – 00:41:35:	on egalitarian grounds. So it's not that there's never any opportunity for new

00:41:35 – 00:41:42:	discussion of the assaults, but almost everything can be predicated on past arguments because,

00:41:42 – 00:41:49:	again, the old lies work. People keep gobbling them up. And so when we separate ourselves from the

00:41:49 – 00:41:57:	historic views of the church, you're in uncharted waters, and you're literally off the map when

00:41:57 – 00:42:01:	you're like, I'm going to go do this by myself, because there is a map of that place. But if you

00:42:01 – 00:42:06:	say, I'm not going to look at it, you're going to be blind, and you're going to fall into the traps

00:42:07 – 00:42:14:	that wiser, more faithful men were successfully able to navigate. And in the local congregation,

00:42:16 – 00:42:22:	whatever your denomination, whatever your church polity, it's important for you to recognize that

00:42:22 – 00:42:28:	you, as a member of the Capital C Church, as a member of the body of Christ, you are a part of

00:42:28 – 00:42:33:	all of that, whether you like it or not, whether you agree or disagree with Christians of the past.

00:42:34 – 00:42:38:	If you're going to reject the arguments that they made, you should have a good reason for it.

00:42:38 – 00:42:43:	You know, they weren't necessarily infallible. But if they said something like, I don't care

00:42:43 – 00:42:48:	about any of that, it's you're separating yourself from something that in all likelihood, God put

00:42:48 – 00:42:55:	there for your protection. You mentioned deeds, not creeds. And really, that is at the opposite

00:42:55 – 00:43:00:	end of the spectrum from some of the new heresies we see arising in the church today.

00:43:00 – 00:43:04:	Because in reality, that's just a new catchphrase for an ancient heresy.

00:43:04 – 00:43:10:	It's just works righteousness. That's all deeds, not creeds, ultimately is. And that ties into

00:43:10 – 00:43:16:	the episode that we did last week, really. It's, in part, this is one of the arguments to which

00:43:16 – 00:43:22:	Piper is responding. And that was referenced in one of the quotations I read from Piper earlier,

00:43:23 – 00:43:32:	implicitly, not explicitly. But there are those who argue that Christ came to give us an example.

00:43:33 – 00:43:38:	And that it is following his example that will bring us back into communion with God and ultimately

00:43:38 – 00:43:44:	save us. That's works righteousness. That is a heresy. That is not Christian believing that

00:43:44 – 00:43:51:	puts you outside the church. And that is exactly what deeds, not creeds is. Because saying deeds,

00:43:51 – 00:43:58:	not creeds, ultimately is saying, I am saved by the things I do, not by the things I believe.

00:43:58 – 00:44:06:	And that's false. You are saved by faith. Faith is belief. Again, to give the three levels of

00:44:06 – 00:44:11:	this, because this is an important thing to understand. So it bears repeating. There is

00:44:11 – 00:44:18:	notitia, which is to take notice of the fact that is to recognize that it is said that Christ

00:44:18 – 00:44:24:	died, and that he died for these reasons. There is a sensus, which is to assent to the fact that

00:44:24 – 00:44:31:	Christ died, and he died for these reasons. And then there is fiducia, which is belief that is

00:44:31 – 00:44:38:	trust. That is what saves you. That is salvific faith. Again, that is the belief that Christ

00:44:38 – 00:44:45:	died for sinners, and that you were a sinner, and that he in that death vicariously atoned

00:44:45 – 00:44:52:	for your sins. Yes, the fullness, of course, of his sacrifice is the incarnation life and death.

00:44:53 – 00:44:58:	But to speak in the shorthand, it is Christ crucified for sinners. That is the gospel.

00:44:59 – 00:45:05:	That is a belief. That is not a deed, except on the part of Christ. It's not one of your deeds.

00:45:05 – 00:45:13:	Your deeds will not save you. And so, in fact, it is creeds and deeds. Because again, a living faith

00:45:13 – 00:45:19:	will produce good works. And I do want to turn to the creeds briefly to

00:45:20 – 00:45:25:	make another argument with regard to the uppercase C Church for those who are

00:45:26 – 00:45:32:	concerned about really the second level of these things. What is it that we confess

00:45:33 – 00:45:41:	with regard to the church in the creeds? Well, in the Apostles Creed, it's I believe

00:45:41 – 00:45:47:	in the Holy Catholic or Christian Church, depending on which term you use in your version.

00:45:47 – 00:45:55:	And then there is I believe in the Nicene Creed. I believe in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

00:45:58 – 00:46:05:	If I were to hand you a coin, and you look at that coin, you're holding it in your hands,

00:46:05 – 00:46:11:	do you believe in that coin? The answer is no, because you don't believe in something you're

00:46:11 – 00:46:18:	holding and can see. You know the coin exists because you're holding it. If I tell you that

00:46:18 – 00:46:28:	tomorrow I will give you a coin, you can believe me or not believe me. And so, belief is not in

00:46:28 – 00:46:35:	something that you have and hold necessarily. There's a distinction there between having

00:46:35 – 00:46:41:	and holding that coin and having the promise of the coin, the belief that I will give it to you.

00:46:42 – 00:46:49:	Now, in the case of Christ, it is the difference between those in paradise no longer have belief

00:46:49 – 00:46:54:	that they will one day see paradise because they're there. We'll ignore for now the issue of

00:46:54 – 00:47:00:	how time works for an eternal God in paradise and those things. Set that aside for the moment.

00:47:01 – 00:47:07:	But the distinction is between those who are still living here on earth in time and those who are

00:47:07 – 00:47:11:	already in paradise, or if you want to think of it that way, will be in paradise.

00:47:13 – 00:47:19:	For those of us living here, it is a matter of belief. We have belief in the promises of God.

00:47:19 – 00:47:25:	We have belief in the things of Christ. And that is the same thing we see here in the creeds.

00:47:25 – 00:47:33:	When it says, I believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, you are saying you believe in

00:47:33 – 00:47:40:	something that you cannot grasp with your hands. You cannot go and find a building and say this is

00:47:40 – 00:47:46:	the building that contains the church, just as there is no throne currently on earth where you

00:47:46 – 00:47:53:	can go and say this is the throne of Christ. This is where he sits. This is the exact physical

00:47:53 – 00:47:59:	location from which he reigns. And so when you say in the creeds, when we confess as Christians

00:47:59 – 00:48:07:	in the creeds that we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, what we are saying is we

00:48:07 – 00:48:17:	believe in this first order, uppercase C church. We are not confessing belief in any second order,

00:48:18 – 00:48:26:	synod or church body, tradition or denomination. Because those are things we can say, there it is,

00:48:26 – 00:48:30:	that's a physical thing, I can see that. And there those are going to say, well, a corporation is an

00:48:30 – 00:48:36:	abstraction. No, because a corporation, you can go and physically grasp the documents that constitute

00:48:36 – 00:48:40:	the thing. You can go and look at the corporate headquarters. You can go and shake hands with

00:48:40 – 00:48:46:	the corporate officers. These are things that physically exist. You don't believe in a synod.

00:48:47 – 00:48:54:	You believe in the holy Christian and apostolic church. You believe in the uppercase C church.

00:48:54 – 00:48:59:	That is what we confess in the creeds. When we confess this in the creeds, we are not confessing

00:48:59 – 00:49:06:	that we believe in any one earthly institution. Rather, we are confessing that we believe in

00:49:06 – 00:49:12:	the Church of Christ. We believe in the Christian church. We believe in the congregation of all

00:49:12 – 00:49:19:	saints throughout all time. And we, by faith, are members of that very church. And that is

00:49:19 – 00:49:23:	why we confess belief in it, because that is our church, because that is Christ's church.

00:49:25 – 00:49:31:	The reason that things like denominational organizations are so important for the Christian

00:49:31 – 00:49:40:	life is not that by themselves, they are a particular body of faith, but that the collective

00:49:41 – 00:49:46:	wisdom and strength of believers gathered together in greater numbers than you can

00:49:46 – 00:49:53:	amass in a congregation is what is necessary for the perpetuation of the faith. We see this going

00:49:53 – 00:49:59:	back to the very beginning. The church rapidly expanded. It is local congregations got bigger

00:49:59 – 00:50:04:	and bigger. More and more of them spread and they banded together. And from the earliest days in the

00:50:04 – 00:50:12:	New Testament, we see councils forming where the men and the bishops of the various churches

00:50:12 – 00:50:20:	in various places came together to hammer out issues. That is a clear acknowledgement that some

00:50:20 – 00:50:28:	form of organization beyond the local congregation is fundamentally Christian. Now, it is fundamentally

00:50:28 – 00:50:34:	Christian in the sense that it serves a Christian and not that it is by itself a mark of the

00:50:34 – 00:50:40:	Christian church, as Cory was just saying. So, the reason that it's so important to have some

00:50:40 – 00:50:47:	form of church body is that if you are a solo congregation, you're on your own, you have a

00:50:47 – 00:50:56:	great pastor, you have great elders, when the leadership ages out, dies, moves away, whatever

00:50:56 – 00:51:02:	happens, you want to assume, you want to guarantee, you don't want to assume, you want to be able to

00:51:02 – 00:51:08:	guarantee as best as possible that those beliefs and that faithfulness will be perpetuated.

00:51:08 – 00:51:14:	And it is very often the case that the local congregation simply can't do that by itself.

00:51:14 – 00:51:21:	You know, if you have, say, you have a congregation of 100 men, maybe once every 20 generations,

00:51:21 – 00:51:26:	there would be a true theologian that would emerge in such a small place. Even that, frankly,

00:51:26 – 00:51:33:	is preposterous. There may be 30 theologians alive today. Just in terms of being able to actually

00:51:33 – 00:51:39:	do solid, faithful work and not make a hash of things, it's an incredibly rare gift.

00:51:41 – 00:51:45:	The benefit of having someone who understands the stakes is that pastors shouldn't be doing

00:51:45 – 00:51:50:	anything new. Pastors don't need to be doing new theology. They need to know enough theology

00:51:50 – 00:51:54:	that they don't reinvent old heresies because they didn't know any better because it's really

00:51:54 – 00:51:58:	easy. Like the old heresies make sense. They didn't catch on because they were

00:51:59 – 00:52:07:	tricky, wacky, crazy lies. They seemed plausible. The heretics were generally smart guys who made

00:52:07 – 00:52:12:	seemingly good arguments. They were false. They were falsifiable from scripture,

00:52:12 – 00:52:18:	but a naive listener is usually going to gobble it up. Some of them will. And so in the local

00:52:19 – 00:52:25:	context, your congregation by itself cannot assume that it's going to be able to continue

00:52:26 – 00:52:31:	generation after generation to keep raising up faithful men who have the gift and the ability

00:52:32 – 00:52:40:	to receive a call from God to preach and teach and shepherd that flock. You can assure that sort

00:52:40 – 00:52:46:	of thing by gathering together with other similar believers. And that's the reason for, in the very

00:52:46 – 00:52:51:	first century, why we had the church councils. And onto this day, there are denominations.

00:52:51 – 00:52:57:	Christians have always gathered together more broadly than the local congregational context

00:52:57 – 00:53:02:	because you need the best men from each congregation to come together and hammer things out.

00:53:03 – 00:53:07:	Maybe the best guy in your congregation is going to get something wrong when it comes up.

00:53:08 – 00:53:13:	But when that guy is put in a room with 20 other guys from the other congregations who are the

00:53:13 – 00:53:19:	best in theirs, when the right arguments are made, your best guy, even if he didn't get it by himself,

00:53:19 – 00:53:24:	when someone else articulates it, well, he's going to say, yeah, that's it. That is what I believe.

00:53:24 – 00:53:29:	And then he will be able to bring that back to your congregation if you lack the benefit

00:53:29 – 00:53:35:	of the more broad wisdom of the gifts that God has given. Again, back to the 1st Corinthians 12

00:53:35 – 00:53:41:	passage, when you go read that, it talks about the disparate gifts that God gives men. You may be

00:53:41 – 00:53:47:	in a situation where there's no one who happens to have the specific gift that your congregation

00:53:47 – 00:53:53:	needs to perpetuate itself indefinitely, and that's okay because those gifts are elsewhere.

00:53:53 – 00:53:57:	God will send men from somewhere else to come to you if that's what's needed.

00:53:58 – 00:54:03:	When we eschew the notion of any sort of joining together, for one thing, we're not,

00:54:03 – 00:54:08:	we're departing from all of Christian history. That's simply not what Christians have done,

00:54:08 – 00:54:15:	again, until fairly recently. It's not exclusively in Americanism, but it's pretty close to it.

00:54:15 – 00:54:20:	The idea that you just have these crazy little solo groups that don't listen to anybody else,

00:54:20 – 00:54:28:	it's bad, it's abnormal, and it's novel. When we gather together, it's for the sake of

00:54:28 – 00:54:34:	helping each other. And I think this is one of the, it's both a strength and a weakness of these

00:54:34 – 00:54:43:	earthly gatherings, these earthly denominations or synods or whatever they are. When you concentrate

00:54:43 – 00:54:47:	any form of authority, even if it's only perceived authority, that yeah, I'm going to

00:54:47 – 00:54:51:	listen to that guy because he's good at it, it's going to tend to naturally attract the sort of

00:54:51 – 00:54:56:	men who pursue that kind of authority. And that's exactly the wrong kind of man to be in those

00:54:56 – 00:55:03:	positions. You don't want men who want glory. You don't want men who want to be in charge.

00:55:03 – 00:55:11:	You want men who understand the burden of leading others in Christ. It's a tremendous burden to

00:55:11 – 00:55:16:	have someone listen to you because it's one thing if you get something wrong and it's just your own,

00:55:16 – 00:55:22:	it's inside your head and it's your soul on the line. When you speak to others and get them to

00:55:22 – 00:55:28:	listen to what you say, you are now accountable to God for all those souls too. That is why teachers

00:55:28 – 00:55:33:	face the stricter judgment because they are endangering with false teaching, everyone who will

00:55:33 – 00:55:38:	listen to him, everyone within near shot, anyone who would be influenced by a teacher who teaches

00:55:38 – 00:55:43:	something false. He's going to have to give an account for why he lied to those people in God's

00:55:43 – 00:55:51:	name, which is incidentally prohibited by the Ten Commandments. Cursing in God's name, lying in

00:55:51 – 00:55:59:	God's name is telling lies about what God says. It's far worse than using foul language. That's

00:55:59 – 00:56:06:	bad, but to lie about what God said is far more damaging because it's not as offensive to the

00:56:06 – 00:56:12:	ears if the ears are not practiced to hear false teaching. When you can pick up on false teaching,

00:56:12 – 00:56:16:	it becomes much more offensive than someone who's just using very foul and blasphemous language

00:56:16 – 00:56:23:	against God. The true blasphemy, the greatest blasphemy, is that which masquerades as being

00:56:23 – 00:56:28:	Christian and leads people away from Christ because it just happens and no one notices.

00:56:28 – 00:56:34:	That's the most terrifying form of this thing, which is why every congregation needs to focus on

00:56:34 – 00:56:40:	having men who are good to the best of their ability at judging these things, but also banding

00:56:40 – 00:56:46:	together with others and monitoring up and down the chain, making sure that whatever sort of alliance

00:56:46 – 00:56:51:	or grouping that you have, that other men in other places are being faithful and committed to

00:56:51 – 00:56:57:	Scripture as you are because heirs will always creep in. It's constant in numerous places in

00:56:57 – 00:57:03:	Scripture, and throughout all of history, we witness this. Men will creep in and try to mislead

00:57:03 – 00:57:10:	people because that's how Satan works. He doesn't care about the pagans. He's already destroying

00:57:10 – 00:57:15:	them. What he despises is when there are Christians gathered together who are speaking

00:57:15 – 00:57:21:	and teaching and living faithfully, that is the greater threat to him because if you have

00:57:21 – 00:57:25:	true Christians who are going to be the salt and light of the earth around them,

00:57:25 – 00:57:30:	they're going to pollute his pagans. They're going to turn his pagans into Christians

00:57:30 – 00:57:35:	by spreading the gospel. If you destroy the place where the gospel is being preserved,

00:57:36 – 00:57:41:	he can ensure that he can keep everybody. He can get more souls for his kingdom in hell.

00:57:42 – 00:57:50:	We must work together in these synthetic groups, in these groups that do not have

00:57:51 – 00:57:58:	a particular, they're groups that don't necessarily have God's sanction in that they were ordained

00:57:58 – 00:58:04:	by God, but we were ordained to be participants in them for the sake of the Christian church,

00:58:04 – 00:58:12:	if that makes sense. We necessarily reject, for example, Rome's claims that it is a top-down

00:58:12 – 00:58:16:	thing. Nevertheless, that is not the same thing as rejecting hierarchy or authority. Frankly,

00:58:16 – 00:58:22:	I think the Protestantism in general has far too little hierarchy and far too little authority,

00:58:22 – 00:58:27:	which today is actually a blessing because there are basically no good men who would be in those

00:58:27 – 00:58:33:	positions. The men who are in the positions that should have greater authority are already wicked,

00:58:33 – 00:58:38:	so if they had more authority, they would be doing even more damage. In this moment,

00:58:38 – 00:58:42:	I'm thankful that they can't do more harm than they're doing. Nevertheless,

00:58:44 – 00:58:50:	that creeping decay, sometimes it's from the top-down and sometimes it's from the middle-up

00:58:50 – 00:58:55:	where the institution gets captured and then you replace the guy at the top. Eventually,

00:58:55 – 00:59:03:	there are no more good men who can rise to that level. The capture of the institution is, in some

00:59:03 – 00:59:09:	ways, it shows how important they are. We've talked about this in the past as well. If these

00:59:09 – 00:59:14:	organizations, if the second-tier church in the third tier, like the local congregation,

00:59:14 – 00:59:21:	if these things had no value to us as Christians, Satan wouldn't care about destroying them. Even

00:59:21 – 00:59:26:	if you know nothing else, if you see that Satan is going after those things, it's a very good indication

00:59:26 – 00:59:31:	that there's actually something that God was trying to do with that. That's not the same thing as

00:59:31 – 00:59:35:	saying, this is exactly what God wants, and it's perfect, and you must submit it under all

00:59:35 – 00:59:41:	circumstances, but it's saying that in general, the gathering together of those who have greater

00:59:41 – 00:59:47:	gifts of spiritual wisdom and teaching, that is something that should be preserved and defended,

00:59:47 – 00:59:52:	but it must also be kept in check, because those are the very places where Satan is going to try

00:59:52 – 00:59:58:	the very hardest to sneak in the false doctrines that are going to cause everyone else to collapse,

59:58 – 01:00:05
and we see it happen over and over again. Watchfulness is a part of being in a body.

01:00:06 – 01:00:11:	There's no way around it. Again, some men have these gifts, and some men don't. If you don't,

01:00:12 – 01:00:17:	you need as best you can to orient your life and your belief around things that you know you can

01:00:17 – 01:00:24:	trust, which is why scripture by itself is vital. Creed is just another example of something that's

01:00:24 – 01:00:30:	vital. We believe as Lutherans that the Book of Concord is also something that is essential for

01:00:30 – 01:00:34:	helping to understand a lot of these conversations. We'll put a link in the show notes to a couple

01:00:34 – 01:00:41:	of different parts of the Augsburg Confession and the Apology to it that deal specifically with

01:00:41 – 01:00:46:	what is the church, and I think it's a really interesting example of the three parts that

01:00:46 – 01:00:51:	we're talking about here, because the fight that they were having in the 16th century was that

01:00:51 – 01:00:56:	Rome was claiming to be the first and the second church and the third. They're claiming to be the

01:00:56 – 01:01:01:	whole shooting match, and the Lutherans and the other reformers were necessarily saying,

01:01:01 – 01:01:06:	no, we believe that we're still Christian. We're still part of the first, but we do reject

01:01:07 – 01:01:13:	the second that you're holding up in Rome. We're saying, we don't believe that your authority

01:01:13 – 01:01:20:	is coming from God. Nevertheless, it is important that we maintain continuity with the first,

01:01:20 – 01:01:26:	with the capital C church. There's a lot of good scriptural arguments laying out the case for

01:01:28 – 01:01:33:	the relationship of the first to the second. What's conspicuous is that in those days,

01:01:34 – 01:01:39:	the notion of the local congregation being something radically different from the

01:01:40 – 01:01:46:	larger church body was pretty much unthinkable. Now, there are obviously different denominations

01:01:46 – 01:01:49:	that were emerging, particularly things like some of the Anabaptists that went

01:01:50 – 01:01:56:	completely off the rails, doing things that were utterly alien to the Christian faith

01:01:56 – 01:02:02:	and to all of Christian history. However, when the reformers were thinking about

01:02:02 – 01:02:09:	church denominations, they understood that within a body, the individual congregations that made up

01:02:09 – 01:02:14:	the larger whole were going to be doing the same thing. Today, we don't even see that level of

01:02:14 – 01:02:20:	continuity within even the Missouri Synod. You will have congregations that are doing things that

01:02:20 – 01:02:26:	look for all the world like a concert, and you'll have others that look like a 16th century church

01:02:26 – 01:02:32:	service. They're claiming to be in communion together, but they're clearly not. One of the

01:02:32 – 01:02:38:	things that Lutherans talk about is altar and pulpit fellowship, because as the Augsburg

01:02:38 – 01:02:43:	Confession discusses when talking about the church, two of the marks of the church are the proper

01:02:44 – 01:02:50:	preaching of the word and the proper administration of the sacrament, that those are where the church

01:02:50 – 01:02:58:	is found, the true church. Word and sacrament is the same as pulpit and altar, because the altar is

01:02:58 – 01:03:04:	where the communion meal is found. Today, we have churches in our own church body that tear out the

01:03:04 – 01:03:11:	pulpits and they do away with the altars and then pretend that they're in communion and unity with

01:03:11 – 01:03:16:	churches that are still doing what Christians have done for a thousand years. It's preposterous.

01:03:16 – 01:03:21:	Roman Catholics are in the same boat. You have the Novo Sordo masses that are just completely

01:03:21 – 01:03:27:	abominable in contrast to the Latin mass congregations, which as Lutherans, we would reject

01:03:27 – 01:03:31:	them not doing in the vernacular, but at least they're trying to be faithful to what they did in

01:03:31 – 01:03:36:	the past. Given the choice between Novo Sordo and TLM, I would take the Latin, like you can learn

01:03:36 – 01:03:41:	Latin, you should not learn the evil that's being done in some of those other parishes.

01:03:43 – 01:03:50:	We're all facing similar problems of a disruption of unity that should exist at the middle level,

01:03:50 – 01:03:56:	at the second level. In the article in the Apology and the Augsburg Confession, when it discusses

01:03:56 – 01:04:02:	the church, it doesn't even talk about the individual church's congregations going in

01:04:02 – 01:04:07:	wild different directions because it was inconceivable to them in that day.

01:04:09 – 01:04:17:	As another exhortation not to forsake local congregations when and where that is possible,

01:04:19 – 01:04:24:	I want to point out that Scripture presupposes the existence of such local congregations,

01:04:24 – 01:04:33:	the existence of that third level of the church from Matthew 18. If your brother sins against you,

01:04:33 – 01:04:39:	go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained

01:04:39 – 01:04:44:	your brother, but if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you,

01:04:44 – 01:04:48:	that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

01:04:49 – 01:04:55:	If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the

01:04:55 – 01:05:01:	church, let him be to you as a heathen and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind

01:05:01 – 01:05:06:	on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

01:05:06 – 01:05:12:	Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them

01:05:12 – 01:05:17:	by my father in heaven, for where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.

01:05:19 – 01:05:23:	And so you can clearly see, Scripture here, the words of Christ,

01:05:23 – 01:05:30:	presuppose the existence of a church to which you can appeal in the instance of a conflict.

01:05:32 – 01:05:39:	If at all possible you should not forsake that local congregation, even if there are heterodoxies

01:05:39 – 01:05:47:	or problems in that congregation, you should work to correct those. But do not go off on your own

01:05:47 – 01:05:51:	and just sit with your Bible under a tree. Yes, you can do that. That's good study, but

01:05:52 – 01:05:57:	that's not church. That's not the communion of the saints. That's not what it means to be a Christian,

01:05:57 – 01:06:03:	because Christian life is lived out together with other Christians. It is not just you,

01:06:03 – 01:06:10:	the Bible, and God. It's you and other Christians. That local congregation is incredibly important.

01:06:11 – 01:06:17:	And so we do not want to have anyone listen to this and think, oh, well, there are X, Y,

01:06:17 – 01:06:23:	and Z problems in my local church, so I have to leave and start my own. If those issues are egregious

01:06:23 – 01:06:27:	enough, then you've probably already left that church quite frankly. But if this is the first

01:06:27 – 01:06:33:	episode to which you're listening, unless those issues are so egregious that you cannot stay in

01:06:33 – 01:06:40:	that body without violating your conscience, stay and try to improve things. Try to correct

01:06:40 – 01:06:47:	your erring brothers. Try to make that church a better church. That may be the local congregation

01:06:47 – 01:06:54:	where God has placed you to do some good. Again, these are matters of wisdom and matters of conscience.

01:06:54 – 01:06:58:	We cannot give you a hard and fast rule because there is no hard and fast rule

01:06:58 – 01:07:05:	that applies to every situation. Some things are left to human wisdom. And again, this is one of

01:07:05 – 01:07:11:	the reasons that having that second level is so important and why historically it has been a

01:07:11 – 01:07:19:	bulwark against many problems in the church. Because you had the ability to appeal to authority,

01:07:19 – 01:07:24:	to appeal to a hierarchy when there were problems in the local church. To some degree,

01:07:24 – 01:07:29:	we do not have that today and certainly many denominations in the US do not have it at all

01:07:30 – 01:07:33:	because you just don't have that hierarchy in many traditions.

01:07:36 – 01:07:39:	But given the realities of the situation in which we find ourselves,

01:07:40 – 01:07:46:	there are going to be certain demands placed on Christians, particularly Christian men,

01:07:46 – 01:07:53:	heads of households. And it is incumbent on you to do the best you can with what God has given you,

01:07:53 – 01:07:57:	with the wisdom he has given you, with the resources he has given you. Because do bear in

01:07:57 – 01:08:04:	mind, you're not alone in this. Even if you are in a situation where your local congregation is

01:08:04 – 01:08:10:	becoming a posthate, issues are creeping in, false teachings are creeping in, you're still not alone.

01:08:11 – 01:08:19:	We have the advantage of living 2,000 years after the birth, death and resurrection of Christ.

01:08:19 – 01:08:25:	We have a wealth of resources from faithful Christians of the past. We have other Christians.

01:08:25 – 01:08:30:	We do have the advantage, it's an advantage and disadvantage, but we do have the advantage

01:08:30 – 01:08:37:	of the internet. We can communicate with other Christian men. Know your telegram chat room

01:08:37 – 01:08:42:	or please don't use it, but your discord chat room, whatever it happens to be.

01:08:42 – 01:08:48:	That's not church. That's not a local congregation. That is not the gathering together of the saints.

01:08:48 – 01:08:52:	It can be edifying. It can be important. It can be Christian fellowship,

01:08:52 – 01:08:58:	but it does not replace your local congregation. It does not replace that third order of the church.

01:08:59 – 01:09:05:	Do not think that that is an alternative to attending church or an alternative to having

01:09:05 – 01:09:11:	a local congregation, an alternative to having a local Bible study. Yes, there are many good

01:09:11 – 01:09:18:	resources, many good Bible studies that you can access online or via logos, whatever it happens to be,

01:09:19 – 01:09:25:	whatever platform you're using, but that is not the same as having that flesh and blood fellowship

01:09:25 – 01:09:31:	with other Christians. That is vitally important to the Christian life. You need that. You need that

01:09:31 – 01:09:35:	for accountability and in the case of the congregation, you need it for the word and

01:09:35 – 01:09:41:	sacrament. Yes, again, you can study the word by yourself or at a home Bible study, whatever it

01:09:41 – 01:09:48:	happens to be. But part of how the word has always been proclaimed part of the system God has

01:09:48 – 01:09:56:	instituted is that faithful pastors are to preach the word publicly in the assembled congregation

01:09:56 – 01:10:03:	of the saints. That is a vitally important part of the Christian life. But to give you some

01:10:03 – 01:10:09:	encouragement, I'm not going to read the entire chapter. In fact, multiple chapters, I recommend

01:10:09 – 01:10:16:	you go and read John 9, 10 and 11. But I will read just a little bit from John 10 as an encouragement.

01:10:18 – 01:10:24:	Truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another

01:10:24 – 01:10:30:	way, that man is a thief and a robber. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.

01:10:31 – 01:10:37:	To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and

01:10:37 – 01:10:43:	leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow

01:10:43 – 01:10:48:	him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him,

01:10:48 – 01:10:54:	for they do not know the voice of strangers. And then again later in the same chapter,

01:10:55 – 01:11:01:	my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life,

01:11:01 – 01:11:05:	and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

01:11:05 – 01:11:11:	My father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of

01:11:11 – 01:11:21:	the father's hand. I and the father are one. This passage, these passages, give us the definition

01:11:21 – 01:11:29:	of a Christian. A Christian is a sheep, a sheep who hears the voice of the true shepherd, of the

01:11:29 – 01:11:35:	good shepherd, the voice of Christ. That is the voice we hear in Scripture, because Scripture is

01:11:35 – 01:11:42:	the true testimony about Christ, the true testimony about God and his plan, the true testimony about

01:11:42 – 01:11:48:	God's intentions for us his children. And we hear the voice of the good shepherd, that is what makes

01:11:48 – 01:11:54:	us Christians, that is what distinguishes the sheep from the goats, the believer from the unbeliever.

01:11:55 – 01:12:01:	And you will note, it says that the good shepherd calls the sheep by name.

01:12:02 – 01:12:10:	Christ knows the name of every single Christian. This is the God who named the stars. He can most

01:12:10 – 01:12:15:	certainly name and number the elect, those who are Christians, those who believe.

01:12:17 – 01:12:23:	He calls you by name, and you hear his voice because you are a sheep, because you are a believer.

01:12:25 – 01:12:32:	That is what makes you a Christian. It's not participation in any particular corporation,

01:12:32 – 01:12:40:	any particular overarching human entity. You are a member of the church, you are a sheep,

01:12:40 – 01:12:46:	because you hear the voice of the good shepherd. And that is great news, because as it says in

01:12:46 – 01:12:52:	the second passage I read, Christ will lose none out of his hand. And so you are a sheep,

01:12:52 – 01:13:00:	you hear his voice, he will not lose you. No matter what happens to the church bodies today,

01:13:00 – 01:13:05:	no matter what happens to these various man-made entities, and a lot of them are indeed in dire

01:13:05 – 01:13:12:	straits. Regardless of all that, the good shepherd remains and he still knows your name,

01:13:12 – 01:13:18:	he still calls you by name, and he will not lose you from his hands. And so that

01:13:19 – 01:13:22:	is excellent good news. That is something always to bear in mind,

01:13:23 – 01:13:29:	no matter the conditions of life and the church lowercase C as we find it today.

01:13:30 – 01:13:35:	I want to reiterate what Corey just said a minute ago about doing the best that you can.

01:13:36 – 01:13:43:	I hope that in this brief time we've made the case that the best is all three. The first form

01:13:43 – 01:13:48:	of the church, the capital C, you basically get for free if you're a Christian. If you have the

01:13:48 – 01:13:54:	indwelling of the Holy Spirit, if you are among the elect, which if you're a Christian then you are.

01:13:56 – 01:14:04:	That is, that's the free square. The second and third, the broader forms of the church and

01:14:04 – 01:14:14:	then the immediate congregation are vital. They're necessary to a properly functioning

01:14:14 – 01:14:21:	Christian society, but they are not necessarily givens in the Christian lives that some of us

01:14:21 – 01:14:30:	are facing. And so the best that you can do may be only, hopefully the best you can do is a faithful

01:14:30 – 01:14:36:	congregation. Ideally, the best that you can do is a faithful congregation and a faithful denomination.

01:14:37 – 01:14:45:	If you are without one or both of those things, the best that you can do should still be working

01:14:45 – 01:14:52:	towards figuring out how to achieve the other two. And for most men, this is maybe it's a

01:14:52 – 01:14:57:	long-term thing. It's a thing that is above your pay grade. It's not something you're able to do.

01:14:57 – 01:15:04:	You should still be working with other men to try to figure out how to get there, because if

01:15:04 – 01:15:13:	everything were working, all these would be givens. I think that if I lived in 1580, I would be able

01:15:13 – 01:15:21:	to attend, if I were a German in 1580 at least, I would be able to attend a church where these

01:15:21 – 01:15:28:	doctrines of these men were being faithfully taught and practiced. And there was support

01:15:28 – 01:15:34:	from the Prince, from the community, from a broad swath of society. That's a luxury that's

01:15:34 – 01:15:41:	been lost today. And so in some cases, the best that we can do isn't the best that could be.

01:15:41 – 01:15:48:	But if that is where we are, we should still be doing what we can to work towards it. If you

01:15:48 – 01:15:54:	have a good congregation, if you have a good congregation that's a part of a bad denomination,

01:15:55 – 01:16:00:	you should be thinking about some sort of Axis strategy. Again, as Corey is talking about,

01:16:00 – 01:16:07:	schism, it's not that you have introduced error or you have introduced disagreement.

01:16:08 – 01:16:14:	When a man introduces false doctrine, the contradicts scripture, he is the schismatic.

01:16:14 – 01:16:21:	He's the one who is separated from God. And if the only Christian thing that you as a believer,

01:16:21 – 01:16:27:	as a pastor, as a congregation can do in the third position to maintain your status as a

01:16:27 – 01:16:34:	capital C church member is to separate from the second party, to separate from your denomination,

01:16:35 – 01:16:42:	you should be willing to do that at some point. Again, these things are always matters of wisdom.

01:16:42 – 01:16:46:	There's timing, there are consciences, there are weakly informed consciences.

01:16:47 – 01:16:51:	You're not always going to be able to do exactly what you want exactly when you want to do it.

01:16:51 – 01:16:57:	There's never something for impetuous men. But if you can see the writing on the wall,

01:16:58 – 01:17:02:	you should still be thinking about the next steps. Where do we go from here?

01:17:03 – 01:17:09:	In your congregation, in your context. If you see errors coming down the pike, if you think that you

01:17:09 – 01:17:14:	can tell that something is going to go wrong, if you just have a bad feeling, start talking to

01:17:14 – 01:17:20:	guys. Ideally, you'd be able to fix your denomination. That is the best case is to say,

01:17:20 – 01:17:24:	hey, we're not being faithful here, let's get back on track. That should always be step one,

01:17:24 – 01:17:31:	two, and three. Separation is never done lightly. As much crap as I'll give the Declaration of

01:17:31 – 01:17:38:	Independence, where it talks about long trains of usurpations and abuses, it's not wrong. Men

01:17:38 – 01:17:45:	should put up with crap if it's better than the alternative. For a time, you want to fix the

01:17:45 – 01:17:51:	problem, but it's better to put up with the thing you know than to go off into the wilderness and

01:17:51 – 01:17:58:	face other things that you know will go horribly wrong without the protections of organization.

01:17:58 – 01:18:09:	So it's never desirable to split. It's sometimes necessary. And so when those moments come,

01:18:09 – 01:18:13:	make sure that you have been talking to others and that you're in a position that

01:18:14 – 01:18:20:	you can do it without losing track of what it was that that body was originally formed for in the

01:18:20 – 01:18:26:	first place. Every church body, however it was formed, they had some good intent in their own

01:18:26 – 01:18:31:	minds. You know, obviously, we would have doctrinal disagreements, but they thought they were doing

01:18:31 – 01:18:36:	something good when they did it. And then later on, when it ceases to be faithful to the original

01:18:36 – 01:18:42:	intention, even if perhaps the original intention necessarily painted the trajectory that they

01:18:42 – 01:18:49:	ended up on, if something turns out to have betrayed its roots, if getting back to its roots

01:18:49 – 01:18:55:	is the best way to approach things, you should be willing to talk to others about doing that.

01:18:56 – 01:19:02:	It should never be done lightly, but it must always be in view of I'm at the local congregational

01:19:02 – 01:19:08:	level. How can I be faithful to all the saints in time and all the saints in eternity? How can I

01:19:08 – 01:19:14:	be faithful to God? How can I be one with them as part of the body of Christ in preaching and

01:19:14 – 01:19:21:	teaching and confessing faithfully? If it involves splitting from the second, if it involves condemning

01:19:21 – 01:19:27:	the second, maybe condemnation is enough. You know, we're in such a conflict-averse world today

01:19:27 – 01:19:31:	where men are terrified to tell other men that they're wrong. It's the worst thing anyone could

01:19:31 – 01:19:38:	imagine. It's pathetic. It may be that if you point out an error, people will be so terrified of

01:19:38 – 01:19:43:	conflict, maybe they'll capitulate, which isn't ideal. I mean, it's probably not going to happen,

01:19:43 – 01:19:50:	but you as a matter of conscience are obligated to first condemn the error that you see before you

01:19:50 – 01:19:56:	say I'm out of here. You can't just get mad and leave. That's petulant. It violates Matthew 18,

01:19:56 – 01:20:02:	where you see error. It must be publicly rebuked for the benefit of all. Because again, most people

01:20:03 – 01:20:07:	don't have the aptitude for this stuff. And maybe most of you don't have the aptitude. You probably

01:20:07 – 01:20:11:	don't just statistically. That's fine. We're not saying you must all be individual little popes,

01:20:11 – 01:20:17:	judging all this stuff. You can gather together and you can among yourselves recognize who are the

01:20:17 – 01:20:21:	faithful Christian men who have their heads on straight, who have faithfulness to God in their

01:20:21 – 01:20:28:	hearts and minds, who can, if not be leaders, at least be voices that will engage elsewhere to figure

01:20:28 – 01:20:35:	out where does your local congregation go from wherever you are to wherever you think you need to be.

01:20:37 – 01:20:41:	When things go wrong in the world, it's not an excuse for us to just give up and say,

01:20:41 – 01:20:48:	I'm done. I'm fed up. I'm not doing this anymore. That's not Christian. Again, that's what Job's

01:20:48 – 01:20:52:	wife said to him. Why don't you just curse God and die? No. That's not what believers do. That's

01:20:52 – 01:21:00:	not what Christians do. You belong to God. Your congregation, insofar as everyone who is there

01:21:00 – 01:21:06:	as a Christian, belongs to God. Those are his sheep. And his sheep deserve to have a shepherd

01:21:06 – 01:21:12:	whom he will send to guard them. And you must actively be a participant in that.

01:21:13 – 01:21:18:	To whatever extent those things are miraculous, we don't see the miracle part. We see the functional

01:21:18 – 01:21:25:	part. We see men in places doing things good or ill. And we have to judge that based on Scripture.

01:21:27 – 01:21:32:	As we work through these things, it's just vital not to give up, not to say, well, I don't think

01:21:33 – 01:21:37:	the second level is working. I'm done. I'm just going to be by myself. You can't do that.

01:21:38 – 01:21:42:	If you can straighten out the second level through the third level, that's great.

01:21:43 – 01:21:46:	You should always be focused on the first. You should always be focused on

01:21:46 – 01:21:52:	Capitol C Church, because that is your eternal soul, but it's not your daily life.

01:21:53 – 01:22:01:	The participation that we have with that is spiritual in a way that is very different in form

01:22:01 – 01:22:06:	than what we have at the local congregational level. So as you're interacting with other Christians

01:22:06 – 01:22:11:	in your neighborhood, in your community, with your own family, that is where your actual Christian

01:22:11 – 01:22:16:	life is being led. And that's what you have to keep straight. So to the best of your ability,

01:22:16 – 01:22:22:	be faithful to God, be faithful to Scripture, be faithful to the creeds. Hopefully you can be

01:22:22 – 01:22:30:	faithful to a confession that itself is faithful. And you can use those things to order all of your

01:22:30 – 01:22:35:	activities at the individual level, at the family level, at the congregational level. And if that

01:22:35 – 01:22:43:	means reforming or rebuilding or forming a new, the second level churches, the denominations,

01:22:43 – 01:22:47:	such that they will continue to preserve that which we know is faithful to God,

01:22:48 – 01:22:52:	then that is where we should be spending our time. We do the best that we can,

01:22:52 – 01:22:58:	and we're always working towards what God wants, because none of this is about our egos or about

01:22:58 – 01:23:03:	winning arguments. It's about making sure that we can pass on the faith to future generations.

01:23:04 – 01:23:08:	This stuff is not just about us. And, you know, the inheritance that we've gotten from past

01:23:08 – 01:23:14:	generations isn't shambles, because many of them just didn't care. They paid lip service to the

01:23:14 – 01:23:20:	stuff. Even as they were burning down the very institutions that had been erected by prior generations

01:23:20 – 01:23:24:	to them to preserve them. When they got ahold of them, they've turned them inside out and turned

01:23:24 – 01:23:32:	them into things that are destroying what would have been our future. So either we put out the

01:23:32 – 01:23:37:	fire or we moved down the road, we got to do something. Because what we're inheriting is a

01:23:37 – 01:23:44:	disaster and it's not okay to just walk away. It's not okay to accept it. We have to fight it,

01:23:44 – 01:23:49:	we have to fix it, and we have to preserve and keep something, even if it means building a new.

01:23:50 – 01:23:55:	Because faith must of God means making sure that the future generations after us can have

01:23:55 – 01:24:02:	something better than what we have been given. Today, that is a universal statement. In past

01:24:02 – 01:24:06:	generations, perhaps it wouldn't have been. Typically, you would hope that you wouldn't be

01:24:07 – 01:24:11:	messing with anything. You could just pass on what you had inherited. When you've inherited

01:24:11 – 01:24:17:	something that's in shambles, you got to fix it up before you pass it on. And so as we're working

01:24:17 – 01:24:24:	through that, as Christians and our own local congregations, it's a lot of hard work.

01:24:25 – 01:24:32:	But just remember that when things are going wrong, in an ironic way, that's a good sign. If

01:24:32 – 01:24:36:	Satan is messing with your church body or with your congregation, it means that there's something

01:24:36 – 01:24:42:	that Satan fears. Focus on the thing that was good there and try to get that back. Try to do more

01:24:42 – 01:24:47:	of what Satan fears. Don't do the things that he loves. He tells us that, too. If it's in accord

01:24:47 – 01:24:53:	with the world, which is if you go back and read John 15 before John 16, the passage I read,

01:24:53 – 01:24:58:	it talks about that. The world will love you if you do what Satan wants from you. When the world

01:24:58 – 01:25:04:	is coming after you, it means you're doing the things that are actually beneficial to the kingdom

01:25:04 – 01:25:12:	of God, to obeying God, and to ruining Satan's day. These edifices that we have inherited that

01:25:12 – 01:25:17:	are in bad shape. We got to shore them up. We got to give the future something that will preserve

01:25:17 – 01:25:24:	their faith, even if they're dumb or lazy. If you build a big enough and strong enough structure,

01:25:24 – 01:25:29:	it can coast for a little while. That's no excuse. Ideally, the best thing is for it to

01:25:29 – 01:25:34:	be shoring up future generations of men to preserve it so that we would have more men who are

01:25:34 – 01:25:41:	competent than we have today. That should be the goal. But when you build up a strong foundation

01:25:41 – 01:25:47:	of organization and faithful confession, even in the very worst case, it would still preserve

01:25:47 – 01:25:54:	itself for a few generations if men just said the words. We know that that will work. Therefore,

01:25:54 – 01:25:59:	how much more important is it for us to do better, to say, look, let's do more than just

01:25:59 – 01:26:05:	mouth the words. Let's create families and communities and congregations that are going

01:26:05 – 01:26:11:	to build the stuff up and preserve it so that if the world is still around in 100, 200 years,

01:26:11 – 01:26:15:	churches will be in better shape. On the current trajectory, there won't be any.

01:26:16 – 01:26:19:	Christianity is going to go extinct in 100 years. On the current trajectory,

01:26:19 – 01:26:25:	I don't think it's going to happen. God won't permit it. But we today are part of making sure

01:26:25 – 01:26:31:	that that doesn't happen. Not because we can do it by ourselves. In obedience to God, we are members

01:26:31 – 01:26:37:	of the body of Christ with him as the head. When we obey what the head says and we act as the hands

01:26:37 – 01:26:46:	and the lips and the instruments of God's will in these places, we're going to be preserving the

01:26:46 – 01:26:52:	sort of teaching that he wants to see. That benefits you, your family, your community,

01:26:52 – 01:26:57:	and everyone around you. When we build something good, people are going to see and say,

01:26:57 – 01:27:01:	I want to be a part of that. That is one of the best ways to spread the gospel,

01:27:01 – 01:27:05:	certainly by being a place that is in opposition to the terrible world around you.

01:27:07 – 01:27:13:	As we've been going over this topic, and particularly with regard to that second level,

01:27:13 – 01:27:18:	it brought to mind a quote, variously attributed,

01:27:18 – 01:27:32:	Translated into English, tradition is not the worship of ashes. Rather, it is the passing on

01:27:32 – 01:27:41:	of fire. And I want to make certain that we were entirely clear in this episode, that while it is

01:27:41 – 01:27:46:	true that it is that first level of the church, the upper case C church, that is most important,

01:27:47 – 01:27:52:	the others are also vitally important. We've gone over repeatedly, very clearly,

01:27:52 – 01:27:58:	why the third level is important. And woe just mentioned why the second level is important.

01:27:58 – 01:28:05:	But I want to emphasize that it is vitally important to pass forward to future generations,

01:28:06 – 01:28:14:	Christian traditions, Christian institutions. Because if you do not do that, the odds that

01:28:14 – 01:28:20:	future generations will be Christian, or at the very least remain Christian, fall off precipitously.

01:28:22 – 01:28:27:	You will wind up with apostate grandchildren, if you do not pass these things forward.

01:28:28 – 01:28:33:	Tradition is by and large good. Tradition is something that is passed forward to future

01:28:33 – 01:28:39:	generations to maintain your culture, to maintain your way of life, to maintain the faith.

01:28:39 – 01:28:44:	These are things that we pass to our children, and then to our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren,

01:28:45 – 01:28:52:	so that they can build on the foundation that we inherited and pass forward to them. Because,

01:28:52 – 01:28:57:	ideally, that is what each generation is supposed to do, pass forward the good that was passed to

01:28:57 – 01:29:04:	it by the previous generations, and also whatever editions, good editions, have been built by that

01:29:05 – 01:29:11:	generation. You are supposed to leave a world that is better for your children, the one that

01:29:11 – 01:29:18:	was left to you by your parents. We live in a time where we are going to have to rebuild

01:29:18 – 01:29:22:	many of these institutions, because they have been left to decay or deliberately torn down

01:29:23 – 01:29:30:	by previous generations. We've gone over that in previous episodes. That is the unfortunate reality.

01:29:30 – 01:29:37:	But we are not making the point that these are unnecessary or harmful things. We are not saying

01:29:37 – 01:29:42:	that the organization, the higher-level organization, the hierarchical organization,

01:29:43 – 01:29:49:	of congregations into larger bodies, ultimately all part of the Capitol C Church,

01:29:49 – 01:29:55:	we're not saying that's bad. That is a good thing. We need that. As human beings, we were designed to

01:29:55 – 01:30:01:	we were designed to live in hierarchy. Everything in the universe is hierarchical. That is how God

01:30:01 – 01:30:07:	designed it. God, of course, sitting at the apex of it. But in all things there is hierarchy,

01:30:07 – 01:30:11:	in all things there is order, and we should wish to maintain that, to carry it forward,

01:30:11 – 01:30:17:	to pass it on to future generations. Yes, we can do only the best that we can with what we

01:30:17 – 01:30:22:	have been given, and that is what God demands of us. He is not demanding of us the impossible.

01:30:23 – 01:30:28:	We can do only what is possible with what we have been given in the time in which we are living.

01:30:29 – 01:30:35:	So don't despair, because it looks like the odds are insurmountable. They've been insurmountable

01:30:35 – 01:30:42:	before, and God has carried through His Church. Just take every day as it comes. We've read many

01:30:42 – 01:30:48:	times that the trouble is sufficient for the day. You don't need to look for more trouble. You don't

01:30:49 – 01:30:57:	need to worry about tomorrow. That's not what Christians do. You trust in God, and you do the

01:30:57 – 01:31:04:	work in front of you. As a father that is instructing your children and your wife, your servants,

01:31:04 – 01:31:10:	if you have them, to use the wording of the catechisms, it is to be the head of the household,

01:31:10 – 01:31:15:	to lead as you are supposed to. If you're the wife that is to submit to your husband, and also

01:31:16 – 01:31:21:	to help him work out his faith in fear and trembling, that is one of the duties

01:31:21 – 01:31:27:	of a faithful wife. Not usurping the headship of your husband, but helping him be the head of

01:31:27 – 01:31:32:	the household as he should be. And if your children, your duty, of course, is to submit to and honor

01:31:32 – 01:31:37:	your parents. This is all hierarchy. This is all order. We know how all of these things work.

01:31:38 – 01:31:44:	Our duty as Christians is to do the work that has been set before us by God as best we can

01:31:44 – 01:31:50:	with the gifts that he has given us. And we are to do this in joy. Again, not necessarily

01:31:50 – 01:31:55:	happiness at all times, because happiness is a different thing. Yes, find happiness in the

01:31:55 – 01:32:01:	things that God has given you. But ultimately, as a matter of joy, it is that expectation,

01:32:01 – 01:32:07:	the looking forward to the fulfillment of things, the promises of God. It is belief in Christ,

01:32:08 – 01:32:13:	because his word has never failed and never will. And so I'll close out this episode with a brief

01:32:13 – 01:32:20:	reading from the Epistle of James. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various

01:32:20 – 01:32:26:	kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness

01:32:26 – 01:32:32:	have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.