Matthew 28, continuing on in
our subsection of our overall study on Christ's Church,
Christ's Ecclesia. And right now we are in a subsection
called the Church's Commission. Entitled, Call This First Church
Together. in their gathered capacity is
giving them a commission once he ascends back to heaven, and
that they will from now until he comes again be the witness
or the vocal point of Christ. They will be the body of Christ.
They will be him on earth speaking. Now, whenever we look at other
religions and things like that, we see that they all have their
messengers. Muslims have a Muhammad, the
Mormons they have their Joseph Smith. The church is Jesus Christ's
mouthpiece. Now, I don't want to give credence
to those other religions, that was just an example. Every religion
has its mouthpiece. Jesus has commissioned the local
church to be his mouthpiece, his body here on earth. And now
we are gonna eventually study the terminology, the body in
our study of the ecclesia or the church on down the line. But now we see that every place
where a group of gathered believers who have been baptized and have
believed the gospel gather together, they form the body of Christ
in that location. And they carry out or given to
carry out the commission of Jesus. And Jesus did this with his first
group of people gathered together and instructed. And we saw in
verse 19 that there are three elements or three parts to the
commission, that the commission of Jesus Christ is not completed
or is not fulfilled until all three parts are done. We've seen
that there was go with the gospel and make disciples, There is
baptized those who are made disciples, and then there are teaching all
things whatsoever Christ has commanded to those who have been
baptized, who were made disciples. Okay, they were made disciples
and baptized, I should say. And so these three elements are
the commission. And again, like I said, the misconception
in a lot of places and in a lot of churches and preaching and
teaching and evangelism is just let's go with the gospel and
let's make disciples, and then once they're made disciples,
then that's the end of everything, and there isn't no further work
done. However, Jesus gives three things
here that should be accomplished by a specific group of people. So that three element was go,
baptize, teach, or go with the gospel, baptize those who become
believers, and those who become believers then are assembled
into the gathered assembly for instruction on all things whatsoever
Christ has commanded. We've also seen in verse 19 that
there are two groups of people. There is the ye and there is
the them. Christ commissioned the ye to
go to the them. And once the them are made the
thems by the gospel, then the ye is instructed to baptize the
them. Ye is instructed to teach them,
okay? So as we begin to see what's
forming here is that there is a strict commission to the local
assembly. There is a great importance of
the local assembly because that is where Jesus has instructed,
I should say, let's start with design, where he has designed
set up and instructed the work or service of the gospel to be
done. Now, outside the local church,
there are lots of parachurch organizations that come around
just to kind of, and something that comes to mind would be like
the Gideons, there is the Promise Keepers, there are, you know,
any kind of evangelistic committee that you can think of. You know,
there's all these parachurch organizations that are not local
churches, but people who are coming outside, and as I've heard
many times before by these organizations, what they are doing is they're
trying to come alongside the local church and to provide a
service where the church doesn't quite do it, okay? They're picking
up the slack that the churches are leaving. And that is a failed concept.
Biblically. Matter of fact, a New Testament
church that is functioning under the parameters of Christ, that
has been gathered together, if they are truly believers in the
gospel, they've been born again, they believe the gospel, they've
been baptized, they've been gathered together, and they are confirming
and following all things whatsoever Christ command, that church will
be a church where there's the promise of the Holy Spirit. Look
with me if you would at the passage in verse 20. And lo, I'm with
you always, even unto the end of the world. Jesus also promised
even before this time, he promised and he said, listen, whenever
I go away, I'm gonna send my spirit and he is gonna lead you
into all truth. He's gonna teach you the things
about me. He's gonna send you another comforter,
one who will bring comfort to you. So the local church has
been not only empowered, as we've seen in Acts, empowered with
the power of God to be a witness, to be that servant of the gospel,
but it has also given the Holy Spirit to teach us. It's also been given to us to
comfort us. That's why it's important to
be a part of the local church, is because there we find love
from the brethren. Jesus said, that you will know
them because they have love for the brethren. There's all sorts
of teaching throughout the epistles that the brethren are to watch
out after each other, hold each other accountable, to bear each
other's burdens, to love each other, to provide for each other.
And so there's this strong-knit love and communion and community
among the people of God as they have gathered together as a church.
And this is a way that Christ is designed to meet our spiritual
needs. In those spiritual needs, all
of us are gonna have times where we are disgusted, we're disheartened,
we are needing something, and we have a brother or sister that
can come alongside of us and bear that burden with us. But
not only just bearing the burden, but also rejoicing in the good
times. The Bible says that we are to
weep with those who weep and that we are to rejoice with those
who rejoice. And so this close knit relationship
and love and bond comes together in this church. And that is a
work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is given to the
local church to bring that unity in so that we all might be one
and that we might function as one. And so Jesus here, has given
this commission to come into this gathered assembly and to
perform these three elements, go, baptize, and teach. And we find here that the ye
is to do this to the them. So the ye is the one, the capacity
to do that. And like I said, the parachurch
organizations cannot provide that. Nor do they have the authority
from Christ to do that. And so that's why several years
ago, as great as a ministry of handing out Bibles is, that's
why we continue to quit supporting the Gideon movement, is because
that is not the place of them to carry the gospel. It's the
Lord's church. Not to mention the Gideons is
an ecumenical group that allows all kinds of doctrines to come
together and mix together thinking that they're saying the same
things, and we couldn't hold hands with those that had a different
doctrine than we did. But anyway, that's another story
for another day. Now, this morning, what I'd like
for us to look at, as we've seen, that there is a ye and there's
a them, there's a distinction there. And the them continue
to be the them until the ye has completed teaching all things
whatsoever I command. has been taught all things whatsoever
Christ's command, then they become part of the, or then they in
turn become the ye who goes out and ministers these things. But there's always this distinction
between the ye who goes, which is the church, and the them,
which are discipled and then brought back for training. And it's always that way. That's
how churches are reciprocated. And so, today though, I'd like
us to look at a couple of things here about the ye. A little more detail about who
the ye is. In verse 20, Jesus says, after
the third part of the commission, he says, teaching them to observe
all things, and here it is, whatsoever I have commanded you. Now again,
remember, as you still have your sheet in front of you, that you
is plural. It's not singular. It's plural. The you is plural, just like
the ye is plural. Okay? The you is plural. Teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever commanded you. So who is this speaking to? All
things whatsoever I have commanded you." Who is the you that he
is talking to? Is he talking to people in general? Is he talking to just anybody
that's Christians out there that just come to know the Lord? No,
he's talking back to that specific group of people called the ye.
The ye there was those group of people who have already been
through the three processes of the commission. They have been
made disciples by the gospel. Remember, all these people had
company together from the baptism of John. Remember, John the Baptist
preached the things of the gospel. He didn't preach an Old Testament
message. He didn't preach an intermediate message. He preached
the same gospel as Jesus and all the apostles preached. And
so these people that had accompanied together all the time from the
baptism of John, they had been called out by the gospel, made
disciples to follow Jesus Christ. All of them had been baptized
by one who had been ordained of God to baptize. And then they
had been accompanied all together while Jesus had instructed them
and taught them for those three and a half years before his crucifixion. So these people that Jesus is
talking to here, that says the ones who are commissioned or
authorized to teach all things whatsoever Christ has commanded,
are the ones who have been made disciples, baptized, and been
through the same instruction. They've already been through
that process. So see these people that's just out there willy-nilly
that, you know, maybe watching some TV show and then, you know,
feel like they've been saved and then, and I'm not doubting
anybody's salvation or anything like that, but the order of service,
and that's again, I wanna reiterate this, and I've said this even
from the very beginning of our study on the church, and I'll
probably make it many more times until we're done with the study
on the church, is this whole entire study of the church is
to exalt the work of Christ and what he is doing through the
church. And secondly, whenever we speak
of these things about the church, whether you're in the church
or whether you're not in the church, has nothing to do with
legal salvation. It has nothing to do whether
a man or a woman, a boy or girl is saved. What we are speaking
of is not salvation, but proper service to the Lord. What is
Christ designed for service to him? How did Christ design his
service? You remember back in the Old
Testament, there was great detail that was given to Moses for the
priesthood to follow in serving Christ. There were certain dimensions
that that tabernacle had to be. It had to be arranged in a certain
way. It had to be facing a certain
direction. Inside that thing, there were
certain items that was to be part of that tabernacle. The
priest had to follow a certain regimen as they came and went
in their service inside the tabernacle. There were certain portions of
the tabernacle that only certain ones could go in at certain times.
The furniture in the tabernacle had to be placed exactly where
God said, made exactly the way God said, with the dimensions
and the material that God said to make it. And so everything
in that tabernacle had to be exact and they had to follow
the service that God had given to them specifically. And if they did not follow that,
you remember whenever the priest's sons who came and offered strange
fire on the altar to God, they thought that it was okay to do
that. It wasn't, God killed them for that. You remember when Uzzah,
They were carrying the ark back to Jerusalem, where it had been
taken captive. And as they were bringing that
back into Jerusalem, Uzzah put his hand in the ark to steady
it whenever it was about to fall off the cart that they were bringing
it back on. He put his hand in the ark, God
killed him. He was doing a good thing, but
yet he did it, as God said, no one can touch this except the
ones that I say can touch this. And only in the way that I say
can touch this. And so Uzzah, even though he
meant well and was doing something good, keeping the ark from falling
off in the mud, he did it not the way God had designed or not
the way that God had instructed. And so we see in that whole Old
Testament type, we see that there is a specificness to the way
that God wants to be served. Well, the New Testament church
is no different, brethren. Christ has designed and instructed
the way he wants to be served, and that's what he has commanded.
And that is what we are to teach. We are to teach whatsoever he
has commanded. So on top of the gospel being
preached, one of the other things that the local church and the
pastor, preacher, teacher is to do is to instruct and to lead
that church to follow the commands of Christ as it pertains to the
service of the gospel. So it's not just our responsibility
as the local church to preach the gospel. That's a very high
priority. That's a well-entrusted thing
that God has done, is to give sinful men the gospel to proclaim. And we shouldn't take that lightly.
It is the utmost important ordinance, I would say, of the church, is
to preach the gospel. Paul, whenever he was talking
and teaching to the young Pastor Timothy, one of the things that
he said to him is he said, preach the Word. Don't get caught up
in all these other things, but preach the Word. Preach the Word. And every time he wrote to anybody,
it was always about following what Christ had commanded them. And so, in the service of the
church, or whenever we come together to worship, It isn't just about
preaching the gospel, although that is very important, and that
is the main element of what we do. Matter of fact, if we don't
preach God's word, then we are not gonna know what Christ has
commanded, and we're not gonna be reminded of the things that
we're to do. And so we preach the word of God, but there is
also a way in which we preach the message. There is a way in
which we conduct the affairs of the church, just like we learned
back in the very beginning that the word ekklesia was a called-out
gathered assembly who was called together to conduct the business
of that city-state. And so that's what the local
church is. It's a group of baptized believers who God has gathered
together in an assembly to carry out the affairs or the work of
the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God and its work
or service was entrusted to the body of Christ, which is a gathered
assembly, not an individual. That doesn't mean individuals
don't have their individual work, but that means it is always under
the authority and control of the local church. Whenever I
go out to preach to other churches, I go under the authority of Sovereign
Grace Baptist Church. You guys have ordained me to
be the minister of the gospel here as you have recognized the
gifts and calling of God to me and have affirmed that through
the scriptures and by the laying on of hands. So I am your representative
as I go, wherever I go, I go in the authority of Christ through
the local church. Christ has sent me to preach,
but he has done so as the representative of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church.
That's why often you'll see whenever we go to Bible conferences fifth
Saturday fellowships and things like that with some of the other
churches, you'll see whenever they introduce all the people
as they're going around, our preacher gets up to preach and
stuff, he says, you know, I come and bring greetings from whatever
church he's from. Okay, he's coming on their behalf. You remember in Acts, Paul and
Barnabas, they were members of the church in Antioch. And even
though Paul was an apostle called by Christ, commissioned by Christ
to take the gospel to the Gentiles, yet Paul recognized the authority
that Christ had set in the service of the local church, submitted
himself to the local church. And so Paul and Barnabas only
went wherever the local church sent him, where Antioch sent
them, and they didn't go any further than that. They didn't
go anywhere else except where they were sent by that local
church. And whenever they did that, they
also came back and reported what had been going on to the local
church. They were held accountable by
the local church. And so although being an apostle
was a calling outside that Christ did, they were called apostles
before they were laid in the church. Remember? Because they
had to be apostles. Because the Bible said that he
laid in the church first apostles. So that means an apostle has
to be an apostle before he was laid into church, okay? So the office of apostle actually
took place outside the local church, before the local church. But whenever Christ instituted
the local church, he made the apostles the foundation there
because he had entrusted them as the office of those who would
make sure that everything is conveyed to the churches during
this time period. And once that was established
in Jew and Gentile churches, then there was no need for the
apostles. There was no need for that supernatural authority to
be there. And especially as the word of
God became more and more available for people to have. And so we
see that the local church was the place. And so here in verse
20, whenever Jesus says, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded You, the you there, is the ones who have already
been gospelized, baptized, and congregationalized, I guess,
or assembled for teaching. They already know all three aspects
of the Great Commission by firsthand experience. They've gone through
that process. They are in submission to that
process. And I find that's, you know,
to be honest, I find that a lot of people that don't like to
be confined to a local assembly. I encounter them all the time
on the internet. Guys that are just so picky about
where they go that they can't fellowship with anybody. I mean,
if they don't agree on every iota of every little thing, then
they can't have fellowship with them. And so they just say, well,
I'm just gonna sit at the house and read my Bible and study myself because
We're all taught of God, and we can just do that by ourselves.
Now, I'll admit, we all are all taught of God. I don't teach
anybody anything. Although I'm up here teaching,
all I'm doing is declaring the truth. It's the Holy Spirit that
teaches you those truths, that makes those truths understandable
and knowable and relatable to you. Until the Holy Spirit does
that, my declaring of the truth is just gonna be declaring of
the truth, and may fall on deaf ears until the Holy Spirit brings
that to your teaching. But anyway, so there's a lot
of people that think, you know, hey, we can just be, you know,
Lone Ranger Christians out there doing our own thing. But yet
Christ has designed this to be an assembly or a congregational
thing. And he says, whatsoever I've
commanded you. So we've been in this before,
we have been through this process. If we haven't been through this
process, we need to get under the church and go through this
process of being taught. And so, we see here two things. Number one, we see the importance
of people being obedient to Christ in assembling, but we also see
on the other side of the coin an importance of knowing that
it is the local church where Christ has commanded that teaching
to be done. Teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you. So the you goes back to
the teaching. They're the ones who are to be
the teachers. A lot of the preachers that we
fellowship with, they have been instructed through the local
church and not any institution. They are instructed through the
local church. I know Brother Howard went to
Grace Manor, right? Is that the name of it? Is it
Grace Manor? No, it's Manor. It's Manor? Oh, I forget now. Anyway, which
was ordained ministers from the church teaching other men who
the Lord had called to the ministry. As they were feeling their call,
they came and were being taught in the local church by ordained
ministers. And I believe this is the biblical
model, that it isn't placed upon anybody outside the local church
to do that. No man can teach us anything,
but yet the Bible does say that we, as ordained ministers, because
just like Paul with Timothy, he was instructed Timothy. He
instructed Timothy to be that to the other younger men. The
older men are to be a teacher to the younger men, just like
the older women are to be teachers to the younger women. And so
we have this reciprocity that goes on within the local church.
That's why I think that a man that is called and raised up
through the local church, that is the biblical model. My mama
can't make me a preacher. My daddy can't make me a preacher.
My grandpa, who was a preacher, can't confer upon me to be a
preacher. No institution or school that I go to can make me a preacher.
No online course is going to make me a preacher. And listen,
man, there's all kinds of stuff you can get online. Matter of
fact, I've seen that you can become an ordained minister just
by filling out a little form and sending it in. And they send
you this certificate of ordination. And the state actually will consider
that a legal document and allow you to do marriages and things
like that. Now, I'm not gonna get into my
opinion on licensing preachers and performing weddings and stuff
like that. But anyhow, I mean, anybody can
get this. Matter of fact, I know a woman
who used to be a part of the company that I worked for at
one time. She said often, become an ordained minister so that
she could perform these kind of hippie-type weddings, you
know? But anyway, long story short,
that's not the biblical model. I believe that the Lord in his
churches, he raises up those. Matter of fact, doesn't Paul
say to the Corinthian church that it is the spirit who bestows
those gifts upon those whom he wills, that he gives those gifts? And so I believe, going back
to what I started out to say, is that in the local church,
we don't need para-church organizations to come alongside of us because
we have everything that we need. Lo, I am with you always. Who?
The you, the ones that the Lord has commanded, who has been made
disciples, who have been baptized and have been gathered into an
assembly. The Holy Spirit is with them to empower them and
to instruct them and to give them everything that they need.
And you say, well, you're not, you know, You're not got 1,000
people. You don't have big complexes. You don't have... Listen, that's
not the importance of anything. That doesn't mean anything. There
are several churches here in Joplin that have huge constructed
buildings, and they have very well-defined speakers, and they
have all kinds of PowerPoints and all that kind of stuff. And
I'm not down on all that kind of stuff. But what I'm saying
is just because they have the people And all that stuff doesn't
mean that they have the gospel in the service of Christ. And so, don't let that be a deterrent
to us whenever we see those things. The Lord, whether it be small
or whether it be large, the prerequisites to be a New Testament church
is to follow the model that Jesus Christ built. If you want to
be His church, then you have to follow His model. You have
to be doing His model. And His model is that one believes
the gospel, and I'm not just talking about a generic gospel.
I'm not talking about a gospel that, quote unquote, is a universal
gospel, okay? I'm talking about the true gospel,
the gospel of sovereign grace, the gospel of imputed righteousness,
the gospel that is, that God sovereignly chooses those whom
He will save, that He will apply the salvation of Christ to all
those that He has given to Christ, that not one will be lost, that
every one of them will come to Him, and that nobody, no matter
how hard their heart is, can withstand or to deny or reject Christ, whom God
has given the new birth. That gospel that teaches that
salvation, that Christ's death and his salvation is effectual,
that it will accomplish everything that it does. Jesus will save
his people from their sins. That gospel is the true gospel.
And as we learned in our last section, the church's gospel,
we learned that there is no other gospel, right? We learned that
any other gospel is a false gospel, is a cursed gospel and that we
are not to receive any that preach another gospel and listen to
another that hasn't. So we're not talking about just
going to church just because you have a building and a sign
and a choir or a preacher or anything like that. That doesn't
make you the church. What makes you the church, that is the ye,
that is the you in the context of the Great Commission, is those
who have been taught all things what Christ has commanded starting
with the Gospel, the true Gospel, and they are affirming and believing
that Gospel. See, that's why we're not quick
to just baptize anybody here, until they come to believe the
true Gospel. We've got to understand, are
you truly believing the Gospel? If not, what do we do? We keep
preaching the Gospel to them. We keep teaching the Gospel to
them. We keep sharing the Gospel to them. And whenever the Holy
Spirit brings that to life to them, where they come to believe
and grants them repentance to the truth, then once they do
that, then they're candidates for baptism and only candidates. And I know some people say, well,
that's being, you know, I think you're going a little beyond
scripture to deny baptism for somebody who professes to believe
on Jesus Christ. The Bible didn't say, believe
on Jesus Christ and be baptized. The Bible said, repent and be
baptized. What was he telling them to repent
from? Well, a lot of people, primarily say repent of their
sins, which is true, but listen, nobody can repent of their sins
unless they're born again, right? And the Holy Spirit will bring
repentance to the heart as he does, but yet primarily whenever
the gospel is being preached, when John was preaching, repent
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, repent and be baptized,
when John was preaching that, When Jesus was preaching, repent
for the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and be baptized. Whenever the apostles were preaching,
repent and be baptized. The repentance that they were
preaching to those people was repent from your wrong thinking
about salvation. About how salvation is brought
and attained and got. Salvation isn't by the Judaic
law system. Salvation was by grace. Salvation
was by the work of Christ alone. And so the repenting was primarily
a repenting from dead works unto faith in Jesus Christ. And that was what was required. You remember whenever John was
baptizing and the religious leaders came and they wanted to be baptized
too just to tack on another religious thing. so that they might be,
you know, well popular among all the people because they knew
that John was a man sent of God. The people knew that John was
a man sent of God. But what did John say whenever
those religious leaders came because they did not remove their
law keeping? He said, you know, who warned
you about the wrath to come? You know, he told them that they
must show forth fruits of repentance before he would baptize them.
So John was seclusive to those who he would baptize. He wouldn't
baptize just anybody who came. He only baptized those who met
the prerequisite for baptism that God designed. God instructed
John the Baptist to only baptize those who met this requirement. Jesus has re-alliterated that
to us, reiterated, not alliterated, reiterated that to us, And I
say reiterated, but it's actually Jesus's plan because he's God. But he conveyed that to the church
whenever he said, go make disciples with the gospel. If they're made a disciple by
anything else besides the true gospel, then they don't meet
this criteria. So baptism cannot come until
one believes the true gospel. Now, just a side note, and we'll
get into this whenever we get into talking about the ordinances
of the church later on down in our studies, but if that's the
case, if that's the prerequisite to the being baptized is that
they believe the true gospel, there are many just like I was
who were baptized before I came to believe the true gospel. Matter
of fact, I was baptized a couple of times before I came to know
the true gospel. Well, the order of things is
believe, repent, be baptized, right? So any baptism that I
had prior to believing the true gospel is an invalid baptism. And I know people are going to
get, especially people that are listening, watching, whatever,
they're going to say, you know, you're making more out of baptism
than you really ought to make. You know, you're really creating
a work or a lawy thing to do. Brethren, if Christ commanded
it, we should follow that. Does that mean that we're not
saved if that doesn't happen? No, that doesn't mean that. You
know, the thief on the cross wasn't baptized. Okay? But that's
not the norm. The norm is following what Christ
has commanded. Christ has commanded that we
believe the gospel, we repent, that we are baptized. And that
baptism comes as a sign, as a symbol, showing forth what we believe
to be our salvation. And so the symbol doesn't have
any meaning if that symbol is pointing back to some Arminian
gospel. Some gospel that is of free will, free choice, decisionism,
works, salvation. That's not the gospel that Jesus
preached. That's not the gospel that the
apostles preached. That's not the gospel of the
scriptures. And so if we come with that gospel and someone
says, oh yeah, I believe that. Yeah, I believe that we must
make a decision for Jesus Christ. It's our free will. God doesn't
force us to be saved. And anybody that can be saved
that wants to be, if that's our gospel, which in turn is saying
that Jesus didn't do what God had sent him to do. Jesus failed
in his salvation if everyone, if it's for everyone and everyone's
not saved, Jesus failed in his work. That is a failure of God. That's a false gospel. And so
if anybody comes and says, yes, I'm being baptized to identify
with what I heard in that gospel presentation, and I'm aligning
myself and uniting myself with the truth of that gospel, then
that baptism is being baptized into a false gospel. or to a
false gospel, for a false gospel. And so that's why we say that
if they're not scripturally baptized, those who have believed the gospel
and have been baptized by those who were commissioned to baptize. I know of some guys back from
where I came from that, you know, they had this kind of a youth type establishment
in town where kids came from all different churches and all
different places. And it was kind of a recreational facility,
you know. But whenever those kids would profess faith in Jesus Christ,
but the gospel they preached there was a false gospel, but
whenever they professed quote-unquote faith in Jesus Christ, these
guys would take them to the swimming pool had one there, you know,
they would dunk them in a cattle thing and they would baptize
them. But yet they weren't a church. If you look here, the go, the
baptize, and the teach is confined to the ye. It's confined to the
you. It's not confined to everyone
out there. And so if we've not been baptized
correctly, then we need to submit ourselves to the Lord Jesus and
following His way of service. And again, this comes back to
proper service, proper service to Christ. And so, like I said,
I've been baptized a couple of times before I come to believe
the true gospel. And after that, then I was baptized. But you know, even after that,
I realized, because I was in an Armenian church, and I began
to see the true gospel in an Armenian church under an Armenian
gospel. And it was after that, a few
years, that the Lord began to convict me that because that
Armenian church held an Armenian gospel, they were not a church
of Jesus Christ. They were not a New Testament
church. And so any baptism that I got from that church wasn't
a valid baptism because they didn't have any authority to
baptize anybody. because they didn't have the
gospel. And so, Brother Howard was coming
here, and as the pastor of this church, I was already the pastor
of this church when the Lord convicted me of this, and submitted myself to what Christ
had commanded, that baptism must be after you believe the gospel
and perform by someone who had been commissioned, or by, not
someone, by a church that the Lord had commissioned to give
baptism. And that was those who held the gospel and taught all
things whatsoever Christ commanded. So these elements aren't just
frivolous things, they're not just lawy type things that you're
putting more constraints on the Christian and stuff. And I know,
I listen to these arguments, I hear these arguments, I got
a lot of friends that have this arguments that think we are just,
we're free Christians, that we're not under the law, which I firmly
believe, but yet that doesn't remove us from conducting the
service of Christ the way He commanded. Christ commanded these
things, and so we ought to be bound to them, that we ought
to desire to be faithful to them, pray that God would make us faithful.
That's why we pray around here a lot. You know, keep us faithful
to these things. Why? Well, number one, because
outside, A lot of the things that we believe, not only by
the gospel, but what we believe about how the church is the one
commissioned, about how baptism should be kept, how the Lord's
Supper should be observed, these things are not the popular viewpoint
in most of quote-unquote Christianity. And so we get a lot of pressure
from outside, a lot of people that come through this place,
And whenever they hear what we believe and how we observe church,
they go right out because it's not what they're used to. So
there is an element there to want to compromise for the sake
of people. But yet we pray just as, you
know, Paul telling the Corinthians, telling the Galatians, listen,
man, don't fall into that trap. Don't fall into that trap. You
know, I received what Christ gave me, and now I'm giving it
to you. You need to follow that. If it
wasn't important to follow what Christ had commanded in the ordinances
and in the service, the way that it was being conducted, you know,
Paul spent a whole book in 1 Corinthians instructing and admonishing and
correcting and rebuking that church for not following Christ's
prescription for service. And so I think we as Sovereign
Grace Baptist Church ought to take heed to that as well and
pay close attention to what Christ has commanded. And whenever we
reciprocate that, as is our duty as a local church to follow what
Christ has commanded, to reciprocate those that we have made disciples,
we need to be teaching them what Christ taught, not the traditions
of men. A lot of times that is too much
taught, is the traditions of men. We are to teach what Christ
has commanded. All right, let's take a break
right now, and before I move into the next section that I
wanna look at here, and we'll get a drink, use the restroom
in about five minutes, and then we'll pick back up.