I wanna remind everybody we're
gonna have a meeting here on September the 14th and 15th. That's a Saturday and a Sunday.
That Friday night, the 13th, for anybody who's coming into
town that's gonna be coming to meet with us or whatever, or
anybody that's already in town. We're gonna have dinner here
at the church at 6 o'clock that Friday night, Friday the 13th.
And that doesn't scare us off. Friday the 13th, we'll have,
September the 13th, we'll have dinner here at the church, six
o'clock, and then we'll start Saturday morning at nine o'clock. We'll have three messages before
lunch, then we'll have lunch, then we'll have three messages
after lunch, and then we'll have dinner, so get your sleep in,
don't stay out late on Friday night, get your sleep in. We'll
have three messages after lunch, And then dinner, and then everyone
can stay in fellowship as long as you want to fellowship. And
then on Sunday, we'll have regular time. We'll meet at 10 o'clock,
and we'll have two messages before lunch, and then lunch, and then
fellowship however long you want to have. We've got Brother Ray
Hoggard coming from Jonesboro, Arkansas. He's going to be coming. Brother Tom Tankberry is coming.
And Brother Tom Armstrong will be the three that will be here.
And so if any other preachers show up, I may see if they want
to share anything. If they do, then we'll have one
of the three guys that we know are going to be here. We'll relieve
them of one of their messages. But as it is right now, all three
of those men will preach, or two of those men will preach
three messages, and the other two will preach two messages
on Sunday. Look forward to that time. Be
praying for that. Be praying. We're asking the
Lord not only to teach and minister to us here at our church, but
also to others that might come. But be praying for a refreshing
and revival in our hearts before the Lord. Pray for that. Also, I want to ask everyone
to be praying. There's a preacher friend of
mine. His name is Leon King. Do you know Leon King? He's a
pastor up in Willow, Arkansas, Arkansas, Willow, Alaska. Anyway,
he sent out a message last night. There's like a huge forest fire,
huge fire that's running them out of their town. And they were
on their way, they were 50 miles south down in La Silla. And he
says it looks like that everybody in the whole town is going to
lose everything. So be in prayer for them. I don't know if the
church building will be affected or not. But I've never been up
there, so I don't know. But anyway, be praying for Leon
and the church. I think it's Hidden Hills Sovereign
Grace Baptist Church. So anyway, be praying for Brother
King. All right. Back to our lesson
here, and like I said, just a few more notes. Okay, we just see
before the break, we see that the ye and only the ye was the
one who was authorized to go make disciples, and whenever
you go to the them, this them that are made disciples, by the
ye are to be baptized and to be taught all things whatsoever
Christ has commanded. And he says, teaching them to
observe. What does the word observe mean?
Well, one thing that the word observe means is to watch, to
look at, right? You could go out and observe
nature and we're observing, watching, looking at what nature is. But
the word observe also means to follow after or to carry or to
keep, to observe the things that Jesus has taught. Whenever the
priest in the Old Testament was given all of the service of the
priesthood, the sprinkling of the blood, the washing, the washings
that they did, the clothes that they had to put on, all this
stuff, whenever they did that, they were observing the things
that God had given them to do, right? Okay, well, whenever Jesus
here is saying, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you, he's saying, teaching them to follow or to
do all the things that I've told you to do. And so the ye then
has been given some specific things to carry out by Christ
and in a specific way. And so we're beholden to Christ
as our head to follow what He has taught us to do. And we are
to carry that out. And whenever we do that faithfully,
then we are being what the Bible would consider being a chaste
bride. Okay, we're being a chaste bride.
We're not being affected by outward things. We're not looking to
outward things. We're doing what our husband has told us to do,
and we're loyal to him and to him only. And so that's why we
say around here, whenever we study God's word, you know, this
is our final word of authority here, okay? Are we Baptists? Yeah, that isn't a denomination.
I've mentioned that to you before. We don't believe in being a Baptist,
to be in some denomination. We are Baptists because that
is the ministry of the local church, is to be what John the
Baptist was sent to do, to prepare people for the Lord. Isn't that
what this is saying right here? The ye is to go to the disciples
and prepare them by baptizing and teaching them all things
whatsoever commands so that they might be incorporated into the
ye and perpetuate that faith given to the saints once back
then. That's what we're to do. And
so, we observe all things, we continue in the things that Christ
has commanded us to do. And whenever we do those, we
faithfully do those, then we're, as the Bible says, we are a chaste
bride. We are a chaste bride. And so
he says there, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever
I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even unto
the end of the world. So Jesus here promises the local
church those who have gathered in His name, those who are baptized
believers, who are holding the gospel, who are holding the ordinances
and all the things that Christ has commanded, and are perpetuating
those things, fulfilling the commission, and it's all three
aspects, not just the one, but all three. See, if we're successful
in the commission, it's by doing all three of these. Whenever
I was an Arminian and I just believed in this part of the
commission, the go part, you know, we would go and we'd tell
people, like I said earlier, you know, go find the church
of your choice. And we wouldn't instruct them
about baptism. All we wanted was just that profession
of faith. And a lot of times we would have
like community meetings and things
like that. Well, anytime anybody would come forward and what,
they would give us an invitation, you know, they would, you know,
get their hands raised and mark them down on the card. Oh, look
how many people we got saved in our tent meeting or whatever.
But yet, this part of the commission never was stressed at all. Just
let them go flounder wherever they want to lie, wherever they
want to fall. You know, you've seen the bumper
stickers, you know, go to the church of your choice. Now, that's
the mentality of the Gary Commission to a lot of people. It's as long
as we're going out and preaching the gospel, then we're doing
the Great Commission. Matter of fact, people that believe
in sovereignty and predestination and the doctrines of grace a
lot of times are the ones who are monikered with the thing
of, oh, you guys don't believe in evangelism. You don't believe
in the Great Commission. No, we believe in the Great Commission.
We just believe in all of it. We don't believe in just one
part of it. We believe in all of it. We believe that we are
to instruct them to be baptized and then to teach them in regular
meeting all things whatsoever Christ has commanded. It's to
that type of ye, it's to that type of church that Jesus has
promised his presence. And I know that's kind of harsh
to say. I know that seems to be sectarian or seclusive and
saying, oh, so it's only your church and nobody else's. Well,
it's not just our church, it's only those, That's the terminology
we use of like faith and practice. You know, we fellowship with
churches of like faith and practice. What does that mean? Of like
faith? Well, we believe the same gospel. And then of like practice,
we believe in the same, all things whatsoever Christ commanded,
the observance of those things that Christ has commanded us.
You know, we believe in baptism a certain way. We believe in
the Lord's Supper a certain way. We believe on the ordained ministry
a certain way. We believe on preaching and singing
and teaching and all the things that Christ has commanded us
to do to be followed by the word of God. And again, you know,
I know there's great confessions of faith out there. You know,
I'm pretty familiar with all of them. And they're good for
what they are. But the confessions of faith
are not our rule of faith. The word of God is our rule of
faith. And if the Bible you know, goes against something that's
in the confession of faith, then we need to not pay attention
to what the confession of faith says. If one of our theologians
that we love to read, you know, says something different, we
need to, you know, it's all things whatsoever Christ has commanded
us. And so often we find in church it's all things whatsoever grandpa
has commanded us, or all things whatsoever grandma has commanded
us, or all things whatsoever the association has commanded
us, or the denomination has commanded us, or the tradition of man has
commanded us. But see, we're to follow what
Christ has commanded. And if that causes us to not be part of a
certain group, then that's fine. Me and this brother here was
just talking about that a while ago. You know, there are gonna come times
where what we believe is not gonna fit in any particular little
group. But that's all right. We're not
here to fit into groups. We're here to be faithful to
Christ and to what he's commanded us. And so sometimes that is
going to cause divisions to happen. Now, we don't want to be mean
or we don't want to be harsh in those times. And as we've
seen here before with other folks that have come, we want to do
that in a loving way. But there will come a time where
somebody, if they don't believe what we believe here, they're
going to go and find a place that believes the way that they
want to believe. And to that, you know, as any
but it would not only just a pastor, but anybody would say, you know,
then, you know, you need to be where the Lord wants you to be.
And so, um, and what I've always told, you
know, those that have left, you need to find a place that's doing
this right here. You find a place that's doing
this. They're holding to the gospel and they're doing what the gospel
commission tells them to do. And, uh, if you find that place,
sir, certainly be faithful in that. But we see that it is primarily
the commission is to the local church, that's the yee. And there's
a strong distinction between the yee and the them, until the
them comes to the place that they become the yee. And then
once they become the yee, then they're part of that yee that
goes out and finds some more of thems, right? So we perpetuate
that, and that's where the Bible says that the gates of hell will
never prevail. against us. As we go out, and
any New Testament church that's out there, the gates of hell
are not going to prevail against Christ's institution of the New
Testament church. They're going to be faithful
as long as He allows them to be faithful. He is going to perpetuate
as long as He desires for it to be perpetuated. But He says,
until the end of the world, right here, right? Though I am with
you always, to the end of the world. Do you want to be in a
church where Christ is at? I do. Well, what's our criteria
to look for if we're looking for the church? You know, whenever
me and Lori was looking for a church for our family, whenever we realized
that we weren't fitting in where we was at anymore, they weren't
preaching the same gospel, the same Jesus. They weren't preaching
the same kind of church that Jesus built. What were we to
do? Well, we began to look. Trying
to find, you know, what was the criteria? Well, the gospel was
first and foremost the criteria. And then all those other secondary
things, and really, I kind of have to say that somewhat with
pause, because everything in the Bible is important. And the
secondary things are not necessarily secondary, because the Bible
says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.
So I can't say one thing is more important than another, I will
say I would rather go to a place that disagrees on some outside things, but yet is preaching
the gospel the way it should be preached. However, we want to find both. We want to find those that not
only are preaching the gospel, but are also holding to the ordinances
and the service of God in the local church as it pertains to
the commands of Christ. And so we do that. And are we
going to fail in that? Yeah, we're going to fail in
that. And that's why we pray every week. Lord, keep us faithful. Teach us. Show us. All of us
are growing and learning and everything, me included. Just
because I'm a preacher and a pastor doesn't mean that I'm infallible. I'm fallible. I still have to
learn just like you guys do. I have to study God's word and
learn things. And so as you've seen in years
past, there's things that I've come and as the Lord's taught
me more on things, I've had to recant a few things, change views. And I think anybody that is a
studier of God's word is gonna understand that because we all
come to different understandings, different levels of understanding
as the Lord teaches us. And we also want to be careful
how we treat each other, who don't grasp or understand what
we might be saying or teaching, and not to be coarse with them,
because number one, the Lord is the one who teaches. And second
of all, we have to be careful, as I've said here before, if
I would cut off fellowship to everybody that doesn't believe
exactly like I do, I wouldn't be able to fellowship with myself
a few years ago. because myself a few years ago
was wrong on some things. So we buy prayer and with meekness,
long-suffering, we pray that God would, perventure, bring
everyone to repentance and the acknowledging of the truth. And
that's all we can hope for. Is there some fundamental things
that we stand on? Absolutely, we do. And that's
how, as the church, we teach all things whatsoever Christ
command. I mean, if there isn't a, body of doctrine that Christ
has given. He said that he gave to the church
once, that he has given the faith once for all to the church. If that's not a body of doctrine
that is a distinguishable body of doctrine, then everything
is subjective. Everything is just subjective.
There is some objective things to the church that Christ has
given. And so on those things, we must
be solid on those things. We must stand firm on that, be
loving while we do it, but we have to stand firm, and then
we'll be faithful. If you remember back in Revelation,
you'll see there were seven churches that the Lord Jesus had John
write to, and those seven churches were very wonderful churches. All those churches had something
that the Lord said, hey, I commend you on this. You're doing a great
job doing this, but there's this one thing here that I have issue
with. And he said, if you don't repent of this, I want to remove
your candlestick, or I want to remove the witness of your church.
I want to remove you being the light of that place because you're
not giving out correct light. And so we have to take that admonishment
that even though we may, at this point in time, be a New Testament
church holding to the things of Christ, unless we're kept
faithful and we hold to those things that Christ has commanded,
we always have the warning that our candlestick can be removed.
We've seen that in other places. We've seen that in other churches.
Man, just to my mind, I mean, I think of a church over in Oklahoma
that held to the truth of God's word in the church for years
and years and years. But all of a sudden, ecumenicalism
All kinds of stuff started to creep in, and some of the members
that was wanting some of that stuff. And they pushed their
pastor out, who was trying to keep them and teach them the
truth. And they didn't want to hear it, and they wanted to be
more popular in town. And so they pushed him out and
brought in some guy to teach what the Richineers wanted to
hear. And that church that had been a witness in that town for
years and years and years, over a course of just a couple of
years, maybe not even that long, has already ceased to exist.
It ain't even there. There's nobody meeting there.
And that church was one of the first churches that me and my
wife and kids went to whenever we were looking for churches
where the Lord began to show us and teach us. There are people
out here that believe the Bible and worship the way the Bible
teaches. And we were just amazed at that. And here it is, you
know, after a little bit of unfaithfulness to the word of God, the gospel,
and the way he's commanded for worship to be done, you know,
it didn't take long and that church candlestick was taken
away. That's a sad thing to hear. And
I sure would hate to see that ever happen in here, so that's
why we pray. The Lord, the church is not as strong as the pastor.
The church is as strong as the one who meets with the church.
Jesus, lo, I'm with you always. As long as the Lord is with us,
then we'll be what we ought to be, right? He's promised to keep
us. He's promised to to keep us in
the faith, right? And so we just pray that he would
continue to do that. And so that's why we occasionally
have to preach on these admonishments. You know, we don't preach heavy
on do this and do that and do this because that's the spirit's
job telling us that. But yet occasionally we have
to preach these admonishments like Paul did, you know, and
so we want to be careful and teach all things. So there has
to be in a church, a local church, there has to be doctrine. There
has to be teaching. There has to be a fundamental
faith that is held in unity by those who attend that church.
Otherwise, we're going to be walking in different directions
and scattered and not on the same page in our ministerial
efforts. That's why the Bible says, how
can two walk together unless they agree? You know, we cannot
be unequally yoked. We cannot be yoked with those
who do not believe the true gospel, who cannot be unequally yoked,
who believes that the church does things different than how
Christ commanded us to do it. Otherwise, we're working against
ourselves. And so that's why it's important that we continue
to teach these things. I know, and especially for you
young kids, you'll hear this a lot, especially on TV and radio
and all that kind of stuff, that church nowadays is to be this
popular, you know, everybody's just welcome to come and do whatever
you want, think whatever you want. Matter of fact, they all
say, you know, doctrine is what divides us and everything. But actually, the scriptures
over and over and over again tell us to watch our life and
our doctrine closely. Not just how we walk, but also
how we believe, what we believe. And so doctrine is important. Just any old church won't do.
And I'm not saying that ours is the only church to do it.
There may be other churches around that preach this truth and everything. And if they do, praise the Lord
for that. We need more churches that preach this truth and everything. We pray the Lord keep us faithful
in this. But, you know, not just every church is the same. And
so you young kids, I know that sometimes it's, you know, people
are pressured to, follow after the crowd and go where the entertainment
is and everything. But church isn't about entertainment. It's about studying the Word
of God, learning the Word of God, fellowshipping and serving
one another, and perpetuating that faith that's given to us.
And there's a way that Christ has commanded us to do that,
and we want to be obedient to that, right? and everything. There's a lot of fun and entertainment
that can be had, and that doesn't mean that we can't have fun together.
You know, we have a lot of fun together and we do things together,
so it's not about that. But whenever it comes time for
the worship of Christ and the church together in its capacity
here and everything, it's not about entertainment, okay? Keep
your Xboxes at home and do your Xboxes when you get home. We
don't have to do them during our worship service. but to be
faithful. So kids, think of that and remember
that as you grow older and begin to look for husbands and wives
and your families begin to look for churches if it's not here
or somewhere else or wherever your spouse takes you. Be thinking
of those things, that the church is called to maintain and to
hold all things whatsoever Christ has commanded you. And it's that
type of church that Jesus is with and that will continue to
bless. And there is blessing that comes
through the Lord's churches, special blessing. I know all
of us can say that we've all been involved in other churches
and I can see, you know, there's a lot of friendships that can
be made in churches that don't believe the gospel or hold the
things that Christ commanded. There's a lot of friendship and
a lot of good times can be had, but true spiritual fellowship,
true spiritual edifying, feeding on God's Word, comes in places
where Christ is at. And I know some of these brothers
and sisters, and Brother Ed has been to other places, can attest
to that fact, that you can go to church and hear preaching
all day long and still starve to death. Man, we were beginning
to starve whenever we weren't hearing the gospel being preached.
And, you know, I love my grandpa. He was a great man. He was a
faithful preacher at his church. And as I've said before, you
know, before he passed away, we had a lot of good discussions. And he even mentioned that some
of the things that I was preaching, he thought were true and that
he possibly could have been wrong on a lot of things that he had
taught. And that kind of thrilled my heart to hear that and stuff. But, you know, you guys don't
believe stuff because I say, because I'm your dad. You've
got to listen to the word of God, follow the word of God,
do what the word of God tells you to do. But all of this has
come from these places where we're not getting fed. And then
you come to a place and that's where you get fed. Why? Because
that's where the Lord desired set up. If you remember, I mentioned
this back at the beginning of our series on the Ecclesia. is that nowadays our mentality
is that there's just all these different denominations and churches
everywhere. And then there are these people
who, you know, I'm not going to worship with those people
because I don't agree with them. And so I ain't going to go to
church anywhere. I'm just going to sit in my house and everything. Well, we have that today because
we're so scattered. We do have the Internet. We do
have TV. We do have radio, and a lot of
people think that if they just follow and listen that way, that
they're doing what Christ has commanded. But if you remember
back whenever this all studied out, started out, as we've seen
here in Acts, the model of the church was to make disciples,
to baptize those people that are made disciples, and then
to teach those disciples to continue to disciple, to be followers. They start following and you
continue to teach them to continue to follow all things what Christ
has commanded. And so this gathering together
into the yee is a very important aspect of the Christian life.
Matter of fact, Samuel's dad, he's pastor at Coedah Baptist
Church in Coedah, Oklahoma. He said this one time, and I
agree 100% with it. He said, the only life for the
Christian is church life. He said that everything is entailed
in the church. You know, we are all about what
is involved in the church. And so, if you look through the
scriptures, every time somebody came to know the Lord, came to
believe on Him and was baptized, their whole life revolved around
the church. In fact, we don't even do as much as they did.
In the Acts, it says that they continued daily. I mean, we've
kind of relegated everything to one day now. But we still can meet throughout
the week and talk with each other and visit with each other, encourage
one another, pray for one another, have dinner with one another.
We don't have to just make it here on Sunday, right? We can
fellowship and worship with each other, speak with each other
throughout the week. But specifically when we come
together for that one day out of the week that we put aside
to meet, we come together as the ye, And that ye is built
as a body, and the Bible says that that body functions as each
member puts forth its part. And it works together in that
the little toe can't be without the big toe. And the eye can't
be without the ear. We need each other. And so that's
why it's all about the assembling, the congregating, the coming
together. It's an important thing. That's
something that Christ designed for a reason. Y'all's heard the
illustrations, y'all know all these illustrations, they're
nothing new. Last night we were roasting weenies around the campfire. I don't know why we were doing
that in the middle of August heat, but we were roasting weenies
around the campfire. You have a bed of coals that
are just glowing and doing good, but you get one of those coals
out of the way from the rest, and what happens? It dies off. You know, you take a, if I cut
my little finger off, the rest of my body would probably live
and go on and work, but that finger is going to die. It's
cut off from the life of the rest of the body. And then that
body is not going to work properly. It's not going to work like it
could if it still had that finger on it. And so God has designed
the church to be a functioning gathering assembly for a specific
reason, not only externally as we've seen here, but internally,
this is part of this too, but internally for our own edification.
So you show me a side of Jesus that I don't know. I might show
you a side of Jesus that you don't know. You might impart
some understanding of scriptures that I don't know, and I might
impart some that you don't know. And just the service, the burdening
of each other, one to another, the love one to another. And
so the local church is an important aspect of that. And so that's
why we do this as a ye and not as a thee. Okay. Anybody got any questions or
comments or anything you'd like to add? All right. We'll have a word
of prayer and then we'll have lunch together. You guys are
welcome to join us for lunch. It's plenty to eat. And then
we'll roll and we'll meet back here next week.