Latest / The Immutable Word / EP057 Why Baptist? Autonomy of the Local Church - Part 3

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EP057 Why Baptist? Autonomy of the Local Church - Part 3 · The Immutable Word

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The autonomy of the church is they have no single authority here on earth except Jesus Christ.
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Their accountability is preserved in scripture. And the same thing for the priest of the believer.
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They have no single head or authority here on earth other than ordained elders and ordained leaders.
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But when it comes to their direct accountability to God, it's that individual in Jesus Christ.
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So when we get into the priest of the believer, we'll delve into that.
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But I just want people to see the parallel, is what autonomy means to the local
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church, priesthood means to the believer.
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Welcome back to The Immutable Word. We're continuing our series of Baptist Distinctives.
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We've already covered two episodes. If you go back, we have the intro,
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and then also we've covered the first acrostic, which was the Bible as the sole authority.
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So, before we dive into the next topic, I do want to take a moment just to briefly
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recap the lesson to the Bible as sole authority.
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We did establish that the principle of sola scriptura means the Bible is the
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supreme and final authority for defining all doctrine and all practice.
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It is the inspired Word of God, serving as the absolute, unshakable foundation
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for all objective truth—
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standing above human reason, philosophy, and institutionalist tradition.
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We also discussed how the Bible's authority is self-attesting,
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meaning it's determined by God, not by some church or church councils.
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Furthermore, we noted that the importance of the preservation of Scripture,
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specifically in the Antiochian manuscript stream, which culminates in the King
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James Bible, we argue that this is preserved.
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It's incorruptible, fully sufficient to equip the believer for all good works.
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So, our conclusion was that this divinely preserved word, the King James Bible,
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is the sole and final standard by which every theological claim and church legitimacy must be judged.
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With that foundational truth settled, let's move to the next pillar of our biblical
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framework, the letter A, which stands for the autonomy of the local church.
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There's one thing I do want to re-emphasize, again, that this study is not about
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arguing for a denomination or label, but understanding the core non-negotiable
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biblical framework on which our beliefs are founded.
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It's baptistic, not strictly Baptist, when articulating why we're Baptist.
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If the Bible is our only authority, it naturally defines how the church,
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the Bible believers, must function.
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The autonomy of the local church means that every local church is an independent,
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self-governing body, submitting to no other earthly authority than Jesus Christ, who is its direct head.
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This means a Baptist church has no earthly headquarters or a papacy.
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It's the final authority rests solely in Christ in heaven and is his preserved word in hand.
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The Bible sets the tone for the rest of these particular distinctives.
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So, if the Bible is not the final authority, it really doesn't matter what these
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other distinctives are that we're looking at. Right.
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You know, so, you know, the Roman Catholic Church believes that it gave us the
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Bible instead of the other way around.
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They're the sole interpreter of the Bible. So their interpretation of whatever
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scripture says is the only one that's correct.
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So ultimately what they're basically
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saying is the Bible isn't your final authority when you're Catholic.
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The Catholic churches and tradition and so forth and so on.
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Or they say it has equal place, but that's a logical contradiction because you
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can't have two final authorities. One has to be the final authority.
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So, this Baptistic distinctive is that, you know, whatever the church is,
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the New Testament model of the church,
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it must be based off of the Bible being the final absolute authority and the
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foundation for which, you know, the rest of the church and its doctrines rely on.
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So as we go into this next one, which is autonomy of the local church,
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so B-A-P-T-I-S-T, again,
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and I add the S on the end, but so Baptist Bible is the final authority,
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A, autonomy of local church, P, priesthood of the believer, T, two ordinances,
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I, individual soul liberty, S, saved, regenerated church membership,
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T, two offices, and S, separation of church and state. Some of these are going
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to overlap as we go through them.
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So there'll be a little bit of redundancy, but there is a specific focus with
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each distinctive. So we'll highlight it.
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The autonomy of the church really isn't hard to understand, but it's pretty
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evident in scripture as we go through it. Yeah.
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Let's go ahead and kind of dive into what the doctrine is. When we say the autonomy
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of the local church, well, what does that mean?
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And it relies on what we would call the principle of self-government.
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So the church is independent. It's an independent sovereign body under the direct
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headship of Jesus Christ. He's the overarching authority for the church.
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And it's free from all external ecclesiastical or political control.
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So this is where, like when we're talking about the autonomy of the local church, the
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separation of church and state kind of falls under that distinctive.
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Okay. I only add those additional distinctives sometimes,
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one, because you can spell Baptist, but two, because sometimes it's worth kind
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of doing a little bit of a deep dive into that particular distinctive and what the focus might be.
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So anyway, so you'll see autonomy of the local church is actually very similar
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to separation of church and state.
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And there's a little bit of nuance in individual soul liberty,
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that also plays a part in these distinctives.
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Yeah, Frank America aligns with that, right? Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt,
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but that aligns and influences what we've seen recently in our recent history,
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the separation of church and state.
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And you can see why there's such heavy influence behind it.
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Right. So, the principle of self-governing, and that's really what we rely on,
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the local church is independent, it's a sovereign body under the direct headship of Jesus Christ.
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It's free from any ecclesiastical, meaning there's no other church,
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a synod, presbyter, no religious convention that controls what that particular
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church, how it operates, what it teaches and preaches, and so forth and so on.
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And it's free from any political control. So that's what autonomy, that's how we define it.
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And the headquarters that, you know, so a Baptist church has no earthly headquarters.
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There's no synod, there's no papacy, there's no, again, an organization or a council.
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That controls it. Its only authority is in heaven, which is Jesus Christ,
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and the mandate or the standard of that authority is the Word of God, the Bible.
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So, the scriptural proof, Colossians 118, the Bible says, of Jesus Christ,
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he is the head of the body, comma, the church.
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That, in all things, he might have the preeminence. So, the bottom line is,
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if you're in a New Testament church, the exaltation of the Savior is the primary emphasis and goal.
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He has the preeminence. He has the preeminence in the standards.
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He should have the preeminence in the music.
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He should have the preeminence in its polity or government, right?
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Everything that is associated with a local church is under the headship of Jesus Christ.
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And then, 2 Corinthians 1.1, Paul addresses the church. He says,
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the church of God, which is at Corinth.
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When he's writing to the Thessalonians, he's writing to the church at Thessalonica,
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at Philippi, and so forth and so on, at Ephesus, at Galatia.
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Those are individual, distinct, localized congregations.
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So when he's talking about that, the Bible tells us, Colossians 118,
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Jesus Christ is the head of the church. That's the church overall.
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And he's also the head of the body, which is the body of Christ,
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which is the body of all believers spiritually in Christ.
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There's the heavenly church, and then there's the earthly church.
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So remember those two aspects. But in both cases, the church is autonomous with
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no other head other than Jesus Christ.
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The local church is given an under-shepherd. Jesus Christ is the over-shepherd,
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but the under-shepherd is going to be the pastor.
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So, when we look at the two offices, elder and deacon, we'll kind of deep dive
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into that a little bit. But here's the doctrine.
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Baptist churches are independent, self-governing bodies submitting to no other
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authority other than Jesus Christ and his preserved words. That's it.
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So, the final authority for the church is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ's expressed
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will is verbalized in the written scripture. So, and churches don't belong to anybody else.
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So here's, there's a distinction, I kind of alluded to it, but there's a local
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versus universal distinction.
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The New Testament church refers to, obviously, a very specific localized assembly
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for, you know, like we said, the church at Thessalonica, the church at Ephesus, the church at Corinth.
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So, therefore, the church is not a global hierarchy or an invisible organization,
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but it's a visible, local organization of believers.
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And so, the problem with, you know, the opposite of this is the Catholic church.
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They believe in a universal church, but they're not talking about a spiritual
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invisible church. They're talking about the visible churches of the entire world.
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And the one head of that church is the Pope.
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We reject that as Baptists, right? We believe in independent local churches.
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So therefore the church is not a global hierarchy or an invisible organization,
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but it's a visible local organization of believers.
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And which means there's individual accountability. So if you go to the letters
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in Revelation chapter 2 through 3, you have seven churches that are addressed, right? Okay.
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Church at Ephesus, the church at Philadelphia, the church at Laodicea,
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the church at Smyrna, and so forth and so on.
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Here's what's interesting, and this is what you need to, people really need
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to pick up on. Jesus Christ doesn't write one letter to the seven churches.
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He writes seven letters to seven churches.
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Why? Because each one of those churches has an individual accountability to God.
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There is no glory. he didn't write to, okay, I'm going to write to the ministerial
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synod of Asia Minor and all the churches that fall under its auspices. You see what I'm saying?
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They're each individual churches that each individually has an accountability to Jesus Christ.
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He holds them and judges them each for their good characteristics and their bad characteristics.
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He tells Philadelphia, you left your first love.
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Laodicea, you know, you're rich. You think you're rich, but you're blind, poor, naked.
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I counsel thee to buy of me. He didn't say that to Philadelphia.
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He didn't say that to Smyrna or Ephesus. You see what I'm saying?
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He said that to that individual church that had that individual problem. So, what does that do?
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What does that tell us or teach us? That each church has a individual accountability.
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They were separate and unique entities that
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answer to jesus christ that right there those
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seven churches demolish the entire theology and the doctrine of the roman catholic
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church that all of it falls under one head because if if that was true if that
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was the right model then why didn't jesus christ just talk to john the apostle
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and relay that message to those seven churches,
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Isn't that interesting how God does that? He puts that into the Bible and you
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don't even think about it that way, but there you go.
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But that's how he deals with you is individually too. So there's that aspect
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of it. And here's, I'll say this before we even get to the priesthood of the believer.
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What autonomy means to the local church, priesthood of the believer means to
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the individual Christian.
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The autonomy of the church is they have no single authority here on earth except Jesus Christ.
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Their accountability is preserved
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in Scripture. And the same thing for the priesthood of the believer.
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They have no single head or authority here on earth other than,
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you know, there's ordained elders and ordained leaders.
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But when it comes to their direct accountability to God, it's that individual in Jesus Christ.
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So, when we get into the priesthood of the believer, we'll delve into that.
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But I just want people to see the parallel is what autonomy means to the local
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church, priesthood means to the believer. There's a parallel there.
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That's where that individual accountability lies on. So, what we see in Revelation
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1.4, for example, John said, you know, John, to the seven churches which are
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in Asia. So, he says it plural.
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Notice he doesn't say to the church that's in Asia.
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Right? Because they're each individual separate entities. Okay.
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So, 2 Thessalonians 1.1, unto the church at Thessalonica, right?
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So, each one of those things, when you see it, the way that it's laid out,
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is that it is a very specific individual accountability for each of those churches.
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So, they have to answer to God separately and independently.
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You know, Thessalonica doesn't answer for Colossae. Colossae doesn't answer for Laodicea.
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Laodicea doesn't answer for Corinth and so forth and so on.
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They each individually have to answer for their own sins and failures,
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right? And they're commended for their victories, right?
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So forth and so on. So anyway, so the rights and responsibilities of the church,
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the church. So we know it's autonomous.
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They don't answer to any physical head.
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So the local congregation holds the final authority in three specific areas.
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Number one, this is how you could see it exercised in scripture.
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Number one is through selection.
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They select and choose their own officers.
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They vote for their own pastors and deacons. They ordain them,
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and they do it among their membership.
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Or if somebody candidates, they're going to come in, you know,
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with like faith and beliefs, and they're going to select their pastor based off of that.
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So that's a role and responsibility. That's an internal function that the church
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has a right to do You don't have oh you have mother pappas church in in dallas
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texas telling you know child pappas church in austin I'm gonna appoint you a bishop.
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You see what I mean? That doesn't happen The church in austin has a right to
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vote its own pastor and ordain its own pastor and its own leader from within
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its own membership Okay So, it has that power of responsibility in selection.
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Number two, it has the power and responsibility in commissioning,
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meaning sending and supporting its own missionaries.
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Nobody tells our church and our pastor who he can and can't support.
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He makes that decision independently of his own.
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Senior pastor so-and-so in Tennessee doesn't pick up the phone and tell our
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pastor, hey, you need to support so-and-so for X amount a month.
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That's not the way it works.
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Each individual church has a right, and this is what you see in Scripture, okay?
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And each individual church has its own right not only to select its members,
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but to commission its missionaries and evangelists and support them, whoever they want to.
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Okay, so it has a power in selection, power in commissioning,
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and it also has power in discipline.
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So, the final discipline, the final court of appeal for members,
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their conduct, right, whether they, if they disobey God outrightly or there's
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explicit sin in their life, it's the local body that makes that determination.
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You see that, remember 1 Corinthians 5?
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Yep. You had a man that was, you know, committing...
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Adultery, idolatry, idolatry, adultery with his own mother, either mother or mother-in-law.
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It's not very specific there, but he's committing adultery, a sexual act.
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And the church, and Paul tells the church, why didn't you drive him out?
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Why didn't you, you know, hand his flesh over to the devil for the destruction of the flesh, right?
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So, that's an example of the church being accountable for its own judgment.
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Matter of fact, 1 Corinthians 6, Paul sits there and rebukes the church.
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He goes, the least among you should be able to judge.
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Why do you go to law with brother to brother? Why do you take another brother
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to law when you should be able to handle those situations in-house in the church?
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So what you see is the church has a right to select its own leadership, right?
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It has a right to commission and send out its own evangelists and missionaries,
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and it has a right to perform its own discipline inside the house.
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So, in Acts 6.3, for example, the Bible says, wherefore, brethren,
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look ye out among these seven men.
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And the congregation at that time selected their own, these would be deacons
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or servants, those people that were waiting on tables so that the apostles could preach the word.
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And they had very specific criteria for those men. They had to be full of the Holy Ghost, okay?
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And so, these men were selected by that congregation.
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Matthew 18, 17, Jesus, in talking about discipline in the future church,
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was, and if he shall neglect to hear them, here, you know, if you go to an individual,
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and you have a problem with that individual, you go see him face to face.
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If he doesn't hear you, you bring another brother. If he doesn't hear them.
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Then you go before the church. That's what Jesus Christ says.
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So, the church is the final, it's the final court of appeal,
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basically, for any conduct. So, that's what you see in Scripture.
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So, the church has the right and responsibilities to function internally how
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to operate its politics, its polity or government, basically. And then.
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Then we have, you know, so that's the part that, you know, this is why this
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doctrine is true as far as the autonomy.
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There's a local versus the universal distinction, but the ability of the local
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church to function on its own, do whatever it wants.
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And then, of course, there's the wall against hierarchy. And so,
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what you see in this last section here is that God has guarded the church from
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secondary-level Christians or elite membership of Christians telling other Christians
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what to do and define their spirituality.
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So, for example, no church is the rejecting of lording.
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We call it lording the membership. But no church or ministry holds power over
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another assembly. A church may associate for fellowship, but it cannot submit
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to a mother church. There's no such thing.
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That church. So, not only can it be, it cannot be lorded by another church,
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but it also can't be lorded by other Christians in that church.
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So, the logical implication is if a church submits to an external hierarchy.
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So, let's just say that church in Austin submits to a church in Dallas.
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Then it usurps Christ's headship because then Christ is no longer the head of that church.
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The Dallas church is the head of the Austin church. So if the central hierarchy,
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it falls, you know, it just falls into apostasy.
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The subordinate churches are forced into error. That's what happens.
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So what if the Dallas church all of a sudden starts, you know,
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changing the way that you articulate the gospel?
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Or what if they deny the deity of Christ? What if they reject the King James Bible?
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Does that mean that the subsequent churches all have to deny the King James
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Bible now? See the problem?
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And that's the slippery slope you kind of go into. So, autonomy is really the
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biblical safeguard for doctrinal purity.
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Because if you think about it, there's a chain of custody that's passed down
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from church to church to church of authority.
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Paul, whenever he commissioned Timothy, he says, I want you to teach faithful
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men, Timothy, so that they could teach others also. See the chain of custody?
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So, you know what's interesting is that Paul, when he's writing,
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especially like in Ephesians 4, you know, God gave gifts to the church,
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some apostles, evangelists, preachers, teachers, and so forth and so on.
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That means the smallest unit of biblical unity and preservation of the doctrine
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is a local independent church, not the individual believer. You know why?
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That protects the church from individual men rising up and coming up with their
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own special doctrines apart from the church.
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That's why the Bible, Paul says
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to Timothy, that the church is the ground and the pillar of the truth.
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It is the caretaker of the original faith that was passed on from the apostles
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all the way down. That's the chain of custody.
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God never preserved it at the individual level, he preserved it at the church level.
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This is why people may neglect that, you know, I wanted to do,
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I wrote an article, you know, just recently on the importance of being a member,
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an active member of a local independent church.
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But that was one of the points that I was making is that this chain of custody
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protects the original faith and the doctrine and the unity of faith is supposed
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to be at the church level, not the individual level.
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Individuals as a group can test that doctrine through scripture, right?
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But here's, let's just say this, let's just say you're the church at your own
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house. I'm the church at my house.
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And let's just say that you and I have a disagreement on the timing of the rapture.
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Then I'm going to walk away with my own believers, and I'm going to spread my,
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you know, my eschatology to hundreds of other people.
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You're going to spread your eschatology to hundreds of other people.
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What's going to end up happening is that the overall unity and doctrine of the
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faith is going to fracture into millions of pieces, where God said, read Ephesians 4.
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Ephesians 4 says, I mean, let's look
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at it real quick because I think it's important to see how God words it.
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But in Ephesians chapter 4,
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you see this custodial responsibility of the church to preserve doctrine.
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Verse 11, he says, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists
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and some pastors and teachers.
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Why? Verse 12, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry,
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for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to what?
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In the unity of the faith.
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So, what is the purpose of apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and
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teachers? What is the purpose of that?
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That the purpose of that is the unity of the faith. That's the object. That's the goal.
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And the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man until the measure of
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the stature of fullness of Christ, that we henceforth, we, Paul's including
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himself with the Ephesians,
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that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, carried about by
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every wind of doctrine. See that?
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It says, verse 16, from whom the whole body, the whole body,
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the whole body, the whole body, not the individual pieces.
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This toe wants to be its own independent church. No, the whole body fitly joined
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together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working.
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That means the other joints can't work without the other joint giving its supply, meeting a need.
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According to the effectual working, the measure of every part maketh increase
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of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. See that?
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So, he's saying that the unity of the faith is the responsibility of who?
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The pastor, the leaders of the church.
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So, you see that the smallest unit of preservation of doctrine is the church,
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not the individual Christian. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
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I'll show you this again. So, he says here in chapter 12, verse 4,
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1 Corinthians 12, 4, he says, now there are diversities of gifts,
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a bunch of different gifts, but the same spirit, different administration,
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but the same Lord, different diversities of operations, but it's the same God.
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But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man watched to profit with all.
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So, he's saying that this manifestation of these operations,
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these gifts, these administrations to the body of the church is to profit everybody, not the individual.
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Watch. For to one, it is given by the Spirit, the word of wisdom.
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To another, the word of knowledge by the same Spirit. To another,
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faith by the same Spirit. To another, gifts.
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See these gifts? You see all of them being listed out, right?
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To another, working of miracles. To another, prophecy. To another, discerning of spirits.
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To another, diverse kinds of tongues. To another, interpretation. tongues.
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But all these worketh, watch, that one and self-same spirit dividing to every
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man severally as he will. Why?
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So that they can be puppet masters of their own? They can control and run their
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own independent autonomous church?
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No, look, verse 12, for as the body is one and hath members,
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all the members of that one body being many, are one body.
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For by one spirit are we all baptized?
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So, this is the spiritual church. For the body is not one member, but many.
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If the foot shall say, because I'm not the hand, I'm not of the body,
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is it therefore not of the body?
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No, it's part of the body, just because it says, you know, I'm not the hand,
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so I must not be part of the body.
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And if the ear shall say, because I'm not the eye, am I not of the body?
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Is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye,
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where were they hearing?
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If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set members,
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every one of them in the body singular, as it has pleased him.
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And if they were all one member, where's the body?
25:18
But now are they members, but yet, but one body.
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I mean, this is what the whole, he's basically saying, he's like, you can't operate.
25:26
Like, look at what he says in verse 25, that there be no schism,
25:31
no divisions, but the members should have the same care one for another.
25:34
And he talks about, like in Ephesians, we should all speak the same thing.
25:38
So anyway, the point is this, this chain of custody down of autonomy stops at
25:45
the church when it comes to the preservation of the faith.
25:49
That is the job. It's not the job of the individual Christian.
25:51
It's the job of the church.
25:53
That's why you have to be a part of a local body. You have to be one of those
25:57
members that can manifest wrong doctrine from right doctrine.
26:02
You have to be one of those members that has to contribute to the body of teaching,
26:06
that there's a unification of the faith and that you don't have,
26:10
I mean, if you have a pastor up there that starts rejecting,
26:12
you know, the deity of Christ,
26:14
the deity of the, you know, the Holy Spirit denies the Trinity and so forth and so on,
26:19
their members of that church need to be able to identify that.
26:22
Why? Because it's the church as a body that God preserved to be the pillar and
26:28
ground of the truth, not the individual Christian.
26:31
So, anyway, I say that because there's a lot of people think that,
26:34
well, you know, if I just read my Bible and stay at home and watch internet
26:38
videos and listen to preaching, I should be a good Christian.
26:41
No, you can't be a good Christian unless you're an active part of the church.
26:45
Period. So, I mean, that's kind of a segue.
26:48
We'll do a podcast on it because I think that's becoming a bigger and bigger
26:53
problem nowadays because everybody, you know, gets their doctrine off the internet.
26:57
Well, it's the social media culture and they think they can get everything they need at home.
27:01
But that's part of the, just going back to the individual accountability that ties into that.
27:06
It's the accountability of the individual believer being part of a local church, a body. Right.
27:12
Whereas the accountability is with the pastor and leaders to make sure that.
27:16
Yeah, who's going to hold you accountable if you're your own church at home?
27:20
Nobody, you. You think you are, I suppose.
27:22
Exactly. See, so that's why the statement was autonomy is the biblical safeguard for doctrinal purity.
27:30
That's what autonomy of the church is. It safeguards doctrinal purity from other
27:35
churches going awry. You see what I'm saying?
27:38
So the scriptural proof is, you know, Peter says this, feed the flock of God,
27:42
which is among you, neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being in samples.
27:49
So the job of the pastor is not to lord over the church, but to be an example.
27:55
Well, an example is what? If you go into 1 Timothy, in 2 Timothy,
27:59
you see a bunch of qualifications for the preacher. He's supposed to be hospitable.
28:03
He's supposed to be given to, you know, labor in the word and doctrine.
28:05
You know, he's supposed to, you know, be above reproach and so forth and so on.
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All these qualifications for the minister is that he's supposed to be an example
28:12
to his church members. So it's important to understand that.
28:16
But the Catholic, here's the thing. Here's what the Catholic catechism states.
28:20
It states that the Pope has the full supreme and universal power over the entire church.
28:27
So, every Catholic church on the face of the planet has one single head on earth,
28:32
and that's the Pope, not Jesus Christ.
28:35
So, Baptists reject this, obviously, as an unbiblical usurpation of Christ's
28:42
office, because if Christ is head over all, and he's supposed to have the preeminence,
28:46
well, if you put somebody else as the head over all the churches,
28:49
then that person is undermining the authority of Christ.
28:54
Yeah, directly. Yep. So here's the argument, the what, okay?
29:01
The first what is we believe that every local church is an autonomous,
29:05
self-governing body accountable only to Jesus Christ through the scriptures, okay?
29:13
Why is it true? Well, the major premise, the New Testament pattern shows local
29:18
assemblies selecting their own officers and receiving individual judgment from
29:23
Christ. Those churches are autonomous.
29:26
Therefore, God intended the local church to operate independently of any earthly
29:31
hierarchy. So why does this matter? What's the implication?
29:35
Well, it's a load-bearing pillar because the surrender of autonomy leads to
29:39
ecclesiastical tyranny.
29:40
That means another church can tell that church what to do. It could tell it
29:44
what to believe. It could tell it what to preach.
29:47
It could change its doctrines, right? It can create doctrinal impurity to set
29:54
in, corruption, apostasy.
29:56
So, it replaces the headship of Christ with the dictates of a man,
29:59
and it facilitates the spread of apostasy through a centralized control.
30:03
So, if the head mother church is apostate, all its children churches are going
30:09
to become apostate, right? So, yeah.
30:12
But what I wanted to do was there was a statement of faith from Faith Baptist Church in Sydney, Ohio.
30:17
The pastor is Jim Alter. He wrote the book. He wrote him and he partnered in
30:22
writing another book with Dalton Robertson called Why Baptist?
30:26
So, this is largely where I kind of derived a lot of my outlines that I've been
30:30
teaching at school, the Why Baptist.
30:33
And I'm using, and they do use the acrostic as well.
30:36
But this is their, I love his statement of faith regarding the church.
30:40
Church so when you go to it you know they have heaven hell salvation
30:43
all that stuff and there's section on the church i wanted
30:46
to read this because it's such a great it's it's a little wordy
30:49
but i think it's it's very comprehensive and
30:52
man i would encourage anybody to go to their website faith baptist church of
30:57
sydney ohio and the pastor's jim alter a l t e r and this is what it says this
31:03
is their statement concerning the church they said the local church is the only
31:07
visible expression of the body of Christ on earth.
31:10
And as such is a congregation of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who have
31:16
been scripturally baptized in water by immersion, are associated for worship, teaching,
31:21
evangelism, edification,
31:27
observance of the ordinances, and fellowship.
31:30
The mission of the local church is to glorify God through discipleship,
31:34
which is accomplished by evangelizing, baptizing, and teaching.
31:38
The local church has the absolute right of self-government and is autonomous
31:43
from the interference of extra-biblical, para-church, or other earthly hierarchy
31:48
of individuals or organizations.
31:50
The officers of the local church are pastors, identified in scripture by the
31:54
terms elder, bishop, pastor, and teacher, and deacons.
31:57
The local church is the center of god's program
32:00
for this age and then it gives a whole slew of
32:03
verses to back all that up but what he basically did in that single statement
32:08
regarding the church is cover our entire program that's the b-a-p-t-i-s-t right
32:13
there yes very baptistic yeah so but it's a great it's it's a great articulation
32:20
of what we're trying to argue for Well,
32:23
we're basically saying that we didn't just come up with this doctrine about
32:27
the New Testament church because we're Baptists.
32:29
No, no, no. It's the other way around.
32:31
The Bible is the one that mandates and describes what a New Testament church
32:36
is, how it operates, its responsibility, its obligation, its doctrine,
32:42
its faith, and so forth and so on, its role, its purpose, its goal.
32:46
The Bible defines that. And what we say is that historically.
32:52
Baptists are, you know, basically meet most of that criteria.
32:57
You know, I'm not saying that every Baptist church is 100% perfect,
33:01
but what we're saying is that the fundamental beliefs and core principles of
33:06
Baptists have always aligned with these Baptistic principles.
33:10
So, again, we're not arguing for denomination, we're arguing for the New Testament
33:15
structure of the local church. And that's it. That's all we're doing.
33:19
So, anyway, so this autonomy of the church basically boiled up is nobody gets
33:23
to tell that church what to do.
33:25
The God-given authority or the under-shepherd of that church is the pastor.
33:29
He can run that ministry any way he wants. He's got an obligation to God, okay?
33:35
The church members have individual obligations to God themselves,
33:38
but they're all supposed to be active members supporting and provoking one another
33:43
to love and good works, edifying one another in the ministry,
33:47
and actively evangelizing the lost.
33:50
And so that's what a church is supposed to basically consist of.
33:53
So autonomy means nobody can tell that church what to do.
33:57
So that's it. That's autonomy of the church. and the takeaway here is again
34:02
there's there's no central organized body that that we're a part of that,
34:09
as you just mentioned, that nobody can tell us what to do.
34:12
And then what we talked about previously, our final authority is the Bible,
34:17
that we're not looking to anything else, not looking at tradition,
34:20
we're not looking at philosophers or doctors or anything like that.
34:26
It's just the Bible. So just to go back, and I would like to ask anybody who's
34:30
listening here because they've been able to, this is a really good way to articulate.
34:35
Why you're a Baptist and your beliefs and be able to have that framework in
34:41
place so that way you can think clearly and explain to somebody where they have no idea.
34:47
And I recently used this too, because I thought about the, oh yeah,
34:50
I had the Baptist acrostic. I was talking to somebody that I work with who's
34:55
lost and they were asking me questions.
34:58
I'm trying to open the door about salvation and being able to witness to them,
35:03
but they're pretty curious about what I believe.
35:06
And I'm like, well, why are you different than everybody else?
35:08
It's like, oh, that is the perfect question that they can ask as we just covered this.
35:12
It's like, well, first of all, we have the Word of God and this is our final authority.
35:17
We're not dependent on somebody or something or tradition or policies or anything like that.
35:21
It's just the Word of God, Scripture alone.
35:24
And just start to go through that. And using the acrostic was super helpful
35:28
to have that framework and that will, because there's so many things in your
35:32
mind, so many doctrines, you're going to ramble on.
35:36
And it's going to be very confusing, but if you had, think of a funnel and you
35:39
use the Baptist acrostic as the funnel, the top of the funnel,
35:42
you start with the Bible.
35:44
As you go lower into the funnel, then you start with the autonomy of the church
35:47
and then the priesthood of the believer and all the way down.
35:51
And you're going to be very, very clear and articulate when you're explaining
35:55
to somebody who has those questions about why are my beliefs different and why
36:01
are we different? Why Baptist?
36:03
And the beauty of that is you can back it up with Scripture.
36:07
Exactly. Every one of those distinctives can be backed up by scripture.
36:11
One thing that I was talking to a friend of mine, a missionary in Ecuador,
36:15
and I told him that, you know, because there's some argument.
36:19
And the reason why we kind of reemphasize that we're not trying to argue for
36:22
a denomination is because there's some Baptists out there that are Calvinist.
36:26
There's some Baptists out there that are Arminian, meaning that they believe
36:29
you can lose your salvation.
36:30
Those are free will Baptists. You have hard shell Baptists, which are Calvinistic.
36:35
You have some Baptists that deny the pre-tribulation rapture.
36:39
I mean, there's Baptists out there that obviously reject the authority of the
36:43
King James Bible as the perfect preserved word of God in the English language.
36:47
So, by all means, Baptists are not perfect, right?
36:52
And so, you know, that's why I kind of expressed to him kind of what we said
36:55
tonight is we're not trying to argue for denomination. However,
36:58
here's the thing that's helpful to know is like, for example,
37:01
Baptists are not Calvinistic because you can't be a Baptist and a Calvinist.
37:06
They're diametrically opposed because, for example, the distinctives that we're
37:10
talking about, that we're going through, one of them is, well,
37:14
autonomy of the church, for example. There's many Presbyterians that are Calvinists
37:18
that don't believe in autonomy of the church.
37:20
They believe in a Presbytery. They believe in a regional government that will
37:26
dictate to other Presbyterian churches what they can or can't believe.
37:31
Southern Baptist Convention. And the Southern Baptist Convention is highly Calvinistic, by the way.
37:36
But the point is, is you cannot be a Calvinist and a Baptist.
37:39
I think that they're just juxtaposed. They believe the exact opposite things.
37:44
Another thing is the priesthood of the believer.
37:47
You can't believe in priesthood of the believer, the individual accountability
37:50
of every Christian outside of the will of God.
37:53
Because here's the thing, a Christian can operate outside the will of God.
37:56
A Calvinist doesn't believe that.
37:58
But priesthood of the believer and individual Soul Liberty, teach the opposite.
38:02
So, you cannot be a Baptist and be Calvinist. You just can't do it.
38:07
Another one is separation of church and state.
38:09
Calvinists do not believe in separation of church and state.
38:11
A lot of them are all millennial, so they believe it's the responsibility of
38:14
the church to marry the state and bring in the millennium. That's what they teach.
38:19
So, guess what? You cannot be a Baptist and be a Calvinist.
38:24
You're either a Calvinist who uses the label Baptist, or you're a true Baptist
38:30
and you're dispensational.
38:31
But the Baptist position is inherently dispensational.
38:37
And so that's another thing, a nuance that I don't think people get.
38:40
Anyway, I say all that to say this is just because we're not trying to fight for the label.
38:45
But you can articulate to people if they say, hey, why do you go to a Baptist church?
38:51
Well, because the Bible is our final authority. Our pastor is the only human
38:56
leader and head of our church.
38:59
The spiritual head of our church is Jesus Christ. He answers to Jesus Christ.
39:03
There's no other church or association or group or convention that dictates policy to our church.
39:10
Nobody tells us how to spend our money. Nobody tells us what to preach from
39:13
behind the pulpit. That's very different.
39:16
You know, people may not realize that churches do not have that independence.
39:21
And of course, the priest or the believer, meaning that I can go directly to God.
39:24
I don't have to go to a priest. I don't have to go to a leader,
39:28
man of God or a cult leader.
39:30
So there's reasons. So the reasons why these Baptistic distinctives are so critical
39:36
is because it helps you clear the confusion and the mud.
39:40
I mean, there's thousands of denominations and people are going to say,
39:43
well, why do you go to a Baptist church?
39:45
Why don't you go to another church? where there are biblically-based evidential
39:49
reasons for being a Baptist.
39:53
Yeah, I mean, I think that's critical. You said that it can be very confusing
39:58
when it comes to everything that's out there.
40:02
What this framework does is it helps you organize your thoughts and be able
40:06
to, again, articulate and convey your beliefs in a clear, concise,
40:10
and organized way. Because you know it'll root you.
40:14
It will ground you in what you believe.
40:18
And I suppose a challenge for folks that might be listening is just take one, start with B.
40:25
And if there's an opportunity or an open door where you can witness or maybe
40:31
as part of that trying to open the door where somebody is curious and trying
40:35
to understand with so many religions and beliefs and denominations out there,
40:40
what separates you?
40:43
What makes you different or distinct? And like, okay, just start with B.
40:47
Just start with that. You don't have to go through the entire thing.
40:50
But that's one way to get the reps and to ground yourself and knowing where
40:55
the foundation is, starting with Sola Script or the Bible.
40:58
And start with that. And then just start moving on to, A, the autonomy of the
41:03
church and having a clear understanding of that. And this is even helpful for
41:07
believers that think they don't, you alluded, you mentioned this earlier,
41:10
that who think they don't need a local church.
41:13
Like, why don't we even go to church? I've got everything I need.
41:15
You can study the Bible. You can go on YouTube and search so many people that
41:20
are out there that think they know a bunch of stuff about doctrine and that you're good to go.
41:24
But then you'd be undermining what a Christian should be doing,
41:26
their obligation to individual accountability, and it's backed up with scripture.
41:31
I mean, you got to know all these things. These are things that we should know,
41:33
but this framework is such a great framework to help organize and articulate
41:38
what we believe and why, so use it. Yep, that's it.
41:44
All right, so that's my spiel. We just went through BA, priesthood.
41:49
The P is going to be next in our series, and we've got a few more,
41:52
so I look forward to going through those.
41:55
Anybody has any questions, you want to reach us, again, theimmutableword at gmail.com.
41:59
And we challenge you to use this, as I mentioned earlier, if there's an opportunity,
42:04
just think in that framework. It'll really help organize your mind and being
42:09
able to articulate this correctly.
42:12
Yeah, absolutely. Cool. So with that, we'll see everybody next week,
42:17
hopefully, Lord willing.