145. Freedom In Finding A Church - Part 5 - Church Gathered

I do not mean to be mean. I do mean to be mad. Those that criticize this kind of preaching, they don't like authority! If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got... Hey, if you don't have a King James, you don't have a Bible. You need to be surprised. Son, don't go to sleep while I'm talking. Hey, hey, hey, don't you lay your head back. I'm important. I'm somebody. I love you. You know I love you. Have I convinced you I love you? You better nod your head yes, all right? Come on, put it right there. Stay awake and you listen to me. I still believe if you have a cold day and healthy, probably get my balance a little woman. I'm a preacher. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom podcast. A podcast that is part of the RFP network that seeks to bring freedom in Christ from the spiritual abuse of legalism. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from Scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in Scripture. It is a part of the Scripture. But the defining principle in Scripture is love. I found my freedom in you. I found my freedom in you. I found a joy I can't lose. I found my freedom in you. I found my freedom in you. I found my freedom in you. I found my freedom in you. I found a joy I can't lose. And thank God it's true. You wrapped your arms around me. And heaven broke through from the moment you found me. I found my freedom in you. Welcome to the For Freedom Podcast. This podcast exists to bring the freedom of the gospel for everyday Christians with everyday issues. Now here are your hosts, James Safer and Brett Martin. Welcome back to the For Freedom Podcast. What a blessing it is to be back with you. Brett, it is good to be back in the hot seat, back talking, and back talking through our series of Freedom in the Church, what to look for when you're looking for a church. This will be our last installment, number five of this series. And it's been a great time just talking through it. It's been a great time learning a little bit and had some good feedback, had some great things that we've been a part of and we've been able to talk through. And I know last week was a different episode talking about some things that have happened here in the western North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina area with the storm. Got another storm brewing off of the south there by Florida, Milton, and it's getting everybody worried down there. But, man, up here we are still in the thick of it. And I appreciate everyone that gave, everyone that's helped, everyone that's donated. A lot of good efforts that are going on right now. Still in some hard situations, man. Still in some situations where things are just supply lines, roads, things that we operate our life by are not there in this area. Everything for me and where I'm at, everything's going great. But it's just, I mean, literally 30, 40 minutes away, it's just like a bomb went off. And so talk to officers daily, talking to people that are on the ground. We're going to be there tomorrow serving some meals at a fire department, just helping out, being a part of the place where we're going to be at. And so if you can continue to help and pray, give, go if you can here in the future, great ways to be able to help. But, Brett, we've got a couple of things coming up here in the future. We've got, how are you doing, man? What's going on in your life? Man, we're going good. Things are going well at the church and a busy season of life. I'll tell you that I was recently made the evangelism director for our county. And so we've got a crusade that we have to plan. And so I've been talking to pastors throughout the county. Oh, yeah. I've locked him down. He's guaranteed my apostleship. And so we are going to get a crusade together for next year. And working on that, we're going down to the Mississippi State Fair this coming Sunday. They have the Mississippi Baptist Convention where they have a tent, a gospel tent. And they give away a side-by-side every year. And if you stop and listen to a gospel presentation, you know, whether you get saved or not, you will get into a drawing for a side-by-side. And I had one church that went down there. They've already been down there in the county. And they talked to like 800 people. I think the whole tent has talked to like 800 people so far. And they've had 200 confessions of faith. And so really good ministry. I'm interested in going down there and helping that. But I will tell you, you were talking about Milton. This Milton coming in, it's so powerful. That scientists are saying that it's pushing the limit of what our atmosphere will allow. Like there's talk of an extra category, of a category six. You know, the mayor of Tampa said, if you stay, you will die. Now, there are some people up in high-rise apartment buildings that are saying they're not going anywhere. Other people say they can't afford to leave. They should at least get to a shelter. But, you know, it's going to be a pretty serious. I mean, you don't survive a 16-foot storm surge. It's unsurvivable. And not to mention that, the debris is still in the streets from Helene. So we're talking about, you know, projectiles being tossed about, you know. And so it's a pretty serious situation. And like I said, we've barely had time to lick our wounds from Helene. There's still people, like you said, North Carolina that are suffering. So, man, there's some people going through it right now with the weather. And they just definitely need our prayer. Absolutely. I agree with you 100%. And things that we can look for and just open up what we've got available. Even the, you know, when a storm does come through, there's that residual rainfall and winds that we experience. Because we are close to the coast and you guys as well that we'll experience some of those things. And so those are areas where we can be praying for and be thinking about how we can help. But, yeah, these are awesome, awesome opportunities for the gospel. I love what you've got going on down there with Mississippi. And you mentioned how you are now the evangelism coordinator. Somehow they wrote me into being the vice chairman of the vice moderator of our association. So I told them that I didn't want to serve my first year on the association director, board of anything. And so literally like right at my one year, they're like, all right, hey, you ready to serve? And I said, sure. Because you know what being vice moderator means. Yeah, it means next time I'll be moderator, right? Yeah. I mean, next time you get to be the moderator. Yeah. Yeah. But our moderator is a three-year term. So at least it's three years out. But the moderator, he's an older guy who's been in the area for a long time. So I'm excited about serving under them and being able to be a part of our association that way. And, Brett, I got an email yesterday, I think it was, Monday, Tuesday, I can't remember when it was, that I've been selected to be on the board of directors for the North Carolina Baptist. And so I will be helping out. And as long as I get voted in in November, then I'll be part of the board of directors for Region 7. And so I'm excited about that. It'll be a great time. And a great time to be able to help and help out in our association, our convention as a whole. I think it entails like three or four meetings a year at a convention center. And so it's just a bunch of pastors and lay people getting together and talking about the gospel and what we can do and what we're doing. So I'm looking forward to that. I've been wanting to serve on the board of directors or in the state convention just in any capacity just to help know more of what's going on. I'm doing it more so just to understand what convention work is. What are we giving to? Why are we giving to it? How does this work together? And just to increase my knowledge of it. And if it means sacrificing eight days out of my year to go to a meeting and stay in a hotel room and hang out with some guys and build relationships and network, then I'm okay with that. So looking forward to that and looking forward to what we've got going on coming up here real soon. We've got our – Brett, you've got the Baptist Convention for your Mississippi the week before the meetup. Mine is the week after the meetup. And then right in the middle of that is our For the Sake of the Gospel Conference, our RFP meetup. And we're excited about having that and doing that and being together. I've been telling several people. I was talking to a lady yesterday, a message chart. She messaged me on Facebook about the podcast. And I said, hey, come join us. Come, come. She has a podcast as well. I said, come. You'll be able to meet some great people, some good people with great stories that you can share. And so looking forward to that coming up. Brett, what are you looking forward to most for the sake of the Gospel Conference? I'm looking forward to getting into J.C.'s new church and telling him how he decorated it wrong and how he needs to change some things and, you know, complaining about the parking situation. So I don't know if you know this, but J.C. had his first service this past Sunday in his church. And, man, I was excited for him. And then I get on there and get to reading the comments. And there was people complaining about the parking. I saw that. I didn't stay there because the parking was an issue. And, you know, it was just like, you know. Go ahead. I'm really confused. And J.C. may be listening. Maybe he can answer this for us. All of his logo is H.C. Hope Church. I don't know why he doesn't change it to J.C., J.C.'s church. And just drop it to the church and just be J.C. church, you know. J.C. church. A little bit. J.C. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that would be a better thing. But it's like all that. And then people complain about the parking. You know, I think that's a good problem to have. You know, my philosophy is there's not a problem with the parking until there's a problem with the parking. And so I'm really, really pleased with him, you know, getting his new church. So I'm looking forward to being in his new sanctuary and seeing how his church is going. And just getting together with the RFP family, the people that we message on the RFP fam Facebook page. I'm a moderator on that page. And so I see a lot of the comments and know a lot of the people. And just to put faces with a Facebook profile picture is really cool. And just getting to see people and being a part of it. And, you know, I think it's one of the best conferences around. You know, I would put it up there against any of these conferences, you know. And so I, you know, better than Mark Driscoll's conference. But I do love it. And I look forward to it every year. Love it. Well, I'm looking forward to it as well. Still up in the air with everything with Israel. Still on the books right now. But with everything that's going on, we just don't know. And so we'll, I should be meeting with our, with Pari here in a couple weeks. He was at the convention last year in North Carolina. So if she's there, I'll meet with her. And we'll have a face-to-face and talk through some stuff. And give some more update as we get closer to that. But Brett, today we are going to be talking about the Church Gathered and what this looks like. Our last installment of the Church Gathered. And I want to play a clip, an IFB clip from Jim Jorgensen. I tried to find the classic Lee Robertson, Three to Thrive. But I couldn't. And so what I was able to find was a clip here by Jim Jorgensen, who plays his rendition of Lee Robertson and what he said. And so we're going to dissect this a little bit, talk through it, and then jump through our notes that we have. Because he says, and me and you said this before the show, about 90% of what he said I disagree with. But there are about 10% that's okay. I understand where he's coming from. I understand the philosophy behind it. And so the 10% is good. We'll throw out the other 9%. We'll dissect that a little bit. And so here is the great Jim Jorgensen speaking on how he was raised. God, my heart is fixed on my King James Bible. My heart is fixed on door-to-door soul winning. My heart is fixed on old-fashioned preaching. My heart is fixed on the bus ministry and reaching poor people. My heart is fixed on the local church. Jesus said in Matthew 16, 18, on this rock, I will build my church. I believe in the local church. I think you ought to, I mean, you all are here on a Sunday night. But I think you ought to build your life around the schedule of the local church. I mean, I decided back when I was a student at Tennessee Temple under Dr. Lee Robertson, he used to teach three to thrive. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. This is it. That's right. Straight down the line. Never very. I thought, you know, that'd be a good reason, good rule for my life. He used to say, I've never known anybody to seriously backslide that was in church Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Now, since then, I think I've found a few examples of people that have. But not many. Most everybody that seriously backslides, you know, and you say, well, I can think of, and the reason you can think of two or three is because they're unusual. Most people that backslide, they quit coming to church Sunday night. They quit coming Wednesday night. They start missing every other Sunday morning. I mean, I just decided I'm going to build my life around the local church. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I think you ought to come to church faithfully. Again, you're obviously here tonight. You're probably three to thrive type people. That's one of the best decisions you'll ever make. I think, you know, you say, Brother Johnson, what about when I'm on vacation? You ought to go to church. Yes, sir. And I found some weird churches sometimes and traveling, pulling off back in the day, pulling off the highway a half hour early, looking in a phone book and finding one. No phone books anymore. But Brother Howell said to me, you know, Brother Jorgensen, I was telling him about one of those. He said, you know, Brother Jorgensen, some of our better members plan their vacations so they can be in good churches on Sunday. I thought, ouch. I thought, you know, that's right. And so now when we go on vacation or something, I mean, I plan, we're going to church. We're going to a group. Brett, tell me your thoughts. King James Bible, door to door, bus ministry, bless God. Let me tell you something. The three to thrive, it's such a golden calf in the IFB. Like, you know, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. And really, it's four to thrive. We've said this before. You've got to throw Sunday school in there. And listen, the Bible doesn't prescribe a recipe. They were in church in the book of Acts. They were meeting together on the first day of the week throughout the New Testament. That's when they met together. And then they met in people's homes throughout the week. But there was no prescribed three to thrive. Now, like you said, 90% disagree with, 10% agree with. The 10% that I, as a pastor, I did agree with was this build your life around the schedule of the local church. Now, I don't see anything wrong with that. We're commanded to go to church. Now, that doesn't mean every church has to have the same schedule. That they have to have the three to thrive format. But we do need to make church a priority in our lives because it's important. I mean, we've got parents out here that travel ball takes them out of the church three or four months out of the year. You know, they've got Christian ball organizations that call themselves Christian organizations. And they're taking kids out of church on Sunday. So, oh, well, you know, we give them a devotion. And, oh, come on now. You know, you're piecemealing them out a little bit of scripture when they need to be in their local church learning the doctrine of the Bible. So, listen, I'm, you know, I'm not for this, you know, the travel ball taking the kids out of church for months at a time. They, you know, especially these Christian organizations. So, I believe, you know, I kind of can see that. But the whole three to thrive mentality that you have to do this because it's the way we've always done it. That's man-made tradition. That's not prescribed in the Bible. So, you know, so and then, of course, then there was the part about and I'll say this and give it to you and then you can tell me what you think about it. But the seriously backslidden part, I know many people who did go to church three to thrive Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night who were tremendously backslidden. And so that definitely is an issue. So I'm going to send it back to you. Yeah, Brett, I agree. I think, Brett, let me ask you this, though. So are you saying that you should be in church 52 weeks out of the year every single Sunday? Ooh, interesting. Good question. I, as a pastor, am always here. And I think it's edifying for me just to sit in church as well. I think conferences are part of that and sitting in a preaching. And so is there a number that we have to be in church? No, there's not a 52 weeks out of the year. 48, 30, 70, 60, whatever. But there needs to be a regularly attended service that you're a part of that people know you're a part of. If I ran into you and I've got your pastor beside me and I say, hey, what church do you go to? And you tell me, oh, Beulah Baptist Church down the road. And I said, well, what's your pastor's name? And you don't even recognize your pastor that's standing beside me. Then you probably got a problem because you're not regularly attending church and you don't even know who your pastor is. Right. Those are the problems that I have a couple of times. With this clip specifically, you know, I'm not endorsing the Preacher Boys podcast. But I mean, how many church members, lay people, deacons, pastors, wives, pastors that he has mentioned on that podcast that was faithful Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. So when in Thursday night, Bible study set of Saturday morning devotional Friday night prayer meeting, I mean, they were there all the time. They taught in the Christian school when they were there all five days out of the week. And then they were there on Saturday and they were there on Sunday. And then they did these horrible acts to people. Yeah. These are people that were there three to thrive. And you're going to say that these people aren't backslidden. You're deceiving yourself. One guy who commented underneath this video, he and I don't know if this is an actual quote from Lee Robertson, but he said three to thrive, two to survive and one to backslide. Pastor Lee Robertson. And so that may have been something he said later on. But I mean, hey, it's his way of saying you're only going one time. You're going to backslide. And I think the prescription of the church is to meet when the church meets. And we'll talk through that. I do want to read one thing. I saw this on the Internet the other day and I hadn't even shared with you, Brett. And you may have seen it. It went around Facebook a little bit. But it said a grandpa attends church faithfully every single Sunday. The dad attends church as an option. The son attends church and it's attends church and says it's unnecessary. And the grandson. So you're looking at the fourth generation down says, who is Jesus? And I think that's a prescription to say, you know, if there's not a priority of church, if there's not a priority of regularly meeting with the body of Christ, then you're not going to know who the head of the church is. You're not going to know who the head of your life is. And you're going to say, who is Jesus? Dad said that church is unnecessary. And grandpa said that it was optional. And I know grandpa went every great grandpa. He went every single week and he was there. And I think there there is a falling away of seeing the church as important when churches began to allow. I mean, I've got a friend of mine whose pastor's wife rarely attends because she is more worried about her son and daughter in travel sports. And she's there every week with her son and daughter at a travel sports game instead of being at church. And so she's setting the model for the church and those women in the church of church isn't important. And so we we got to get back to this point where church is important. What does that look like? And why is it important? And so let's walk through some things here, unless you've had some other things to say about that. But I think there's a there's a point where in our life we have to stimulate some things that are going to cause growth and heartache. I've been doing a little bit of a study right now of just reaping and sowing and and understanding that in order to plant something, you've got to tear the ground up, which is painful to the ground, the ground had feelings. All right. And then you've got to take a seed and you've got to literally put that seed to death in order for life to come out of that seed. You've got to kill the seed for life to come out of it. And the same thing goes for us in our spiritual journey. We have to have the same type of stimulation. We have to have the same type of tearing up of our heart. One of the things that I'm going to mention this Sunday is for the Lord to sometimes turn our heart from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh and tearing that up in our life a little bit. And so we gathered ultimately because the Bible tells us to. Hebrews 10, 24 says, let us not let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting the meeting together as it is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more you do as you see the day drawing near. And so the closer we get to Christ, the more we should be wanting to be around the people of Christ. I think also this is a good thing of why is our churches mostly elder people, older people? Because they see the day of Christ coming and they are getting concerned and they're seeing the end of their life coming and they're seeing the day coming and they're wanting one another to encourage one another. See, we can get encouragement everywhere, but it's something different about being encouraged by the brothers and sisters of Christ. And so as important as a faith-filled blind obedience may be, we also understand we gather together because it can help us to do better. And so we have to ask ourselves this question. What is the purpose of our weekly gatherings at church? Why do we gather? What's the purpose of this? Brett, what's the purpose of this? Well, you know, that's the question and that's what we're going to look at. And well, one of the purposes is the church guards the what and the who of the gospel. You know, we talked about in Matthew 16 that, you know, the charter of the local church is given by Jesus is to guard the what and the who of the gospel. Well, the what seems pretty clear. Now, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2 to what you have heard from me in trust of faithful men will be able to teach others also. The who at at first is a bit unclear as Jesus entrusts the keys of the kingdom of the apostles. But then in Matthew 18, he passes those keys along to the congregation of each local church. And what the keys actually turn out to be is the ability to declare who is Christian and who is not a Christian. Now, don't get us wrong. We're not saying that the church can make someone a Christian or unmake someone a Christian. But the church does have the authority to declare who fits that description. Now, the primary what's very different in this view is the primary purpose of the church is from so many other purpose statements. We might write for it. The church's main purpose is not the great commandment. Be sure the gospel life that emerges from a church that guards what and who the gospel will look like, the great commandment to love one another's neighbor. But love is not the primary purpose. Neither is the church's main purpose, the great commission of Matthew 28. By guarding the what and the who of the gospel, the church becomes God's representatives on earth. The community of the church is a display of God's glory. And we want the whole earth to see that glory. But to quote John Piper, missions exist because worship doesn't. Worship is seeing and responding to who God is. That's primary. Because God is primary. The ultimate purpose statement of any church is to be a display of God's glory by guarding the what and the who of the gospel. That means things like we've previously seen as of, you know, marginal importance, like the baptism, like baptism in the Lord's Supper or church membership or church discipline. Those things become huge importance because that's how the church protects the who of the gospel by these things. That's why men willingly gave themselves to be burned alive during the Protestant Reformation over issues like the ordinances, because they saw how critical those things are to being a church. Did you have something you wanted to say about that? Yeah, absolutely. As Christians, Brett, we need the local church. Not mainly as a place to hear the gospel or to hear teaching. Not as a place to go on Sunday morning so we can check off. Hey, I need to be there because Grandma said I got to go. And it's not mainly a source of encouragement. It is all that. And all those things are related to its purpose. But we need the church in order to cling to the gospel. We need the church to remind us what the gospel is, to affirm that we continue as people of the gospel, that our lives match that profession. But as we follow this strand of thought throughout the New Testament, we get an interesting twist. If the purpose of the local church is mainly about guarding the what and the who of the gospel, you might think that the first, you might think at first that the gatherings of these regular meetings aren't important. After all, all what matters is that the believers and those that we believe together will look and live out what we believe. And so what we care about main is the teaching and the relationships, right? And if we start in Matthew 16 and we construct this from scratch, what local church is, then we would maybe come with something like the Baja-like weekly gatherings that don't matter much. But people are very interested in relationships and serving and teaching. And that's not what we see in the New Testament. What we see is the regularly assembling of the believers in local church is super important. A regular assembly quickly became a weekly on the first day of the week as celebrating of Jesus' resurrection. It's important because in those meetings, we hear God's word so we can continue to remember and recognize the true gospel. And in those meetings, we formally reaffirm our citizenship in heaven through the ordinances. Now, understanding the primary purpose of the church is crucial to understand why we gather. So for the rest of our time, we're going to talk through three implications that we're going to look at for the local church and the purpose statements for our weekly gatherings. The first one is this. Our gatherings are designed by God. Man did not design this. Brett did not design this. Some forefather in the ministry did not design this. God designed this. We understand that the Christian needs the local church. And each of us is absolutely vitally in need of the local church. And that's what's going to guard the what and the who of the gospel. But not just a thing called the church do we do. Some may call it a weekly hike in the woods, a church, because they assemble to commune with God and nature. That's not the church that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 16. Why not? Because God told us very specifically what the church should do. And walking in the woods doesn't make that list. And so it's like this, Brett. I'll say this one statement. I'll turn it over to you. But it's like if your doctor told you that you need a gene replacement therapy. What's your next question? Who do you recommend for the gene replacement therapy? Because you don't want to settle for anything with that name. You just want what the intents for you to have. What do you think you what he thinks you need? This is what happened when we were on vacation in Tennessee just a couple of months ago. Brody had an incident. And he was waking up at four in the morning and had pain in his side. And we took him to the hospital. We took him to the Nashville Children's Hospital. Or I'm sorry, Knoxville Children's Hospital. And the guy came in and he said, this is what's wrong. And this is who you need to contact. These are the best people in the world. And one of them was in North Carolina. And I could have been like, nah, I don't want to call him. Get a hold of him because he's so busy. People literally fly in from all over the world for him to do surgery because he's the best. He is the guy that was trained by the guy that invented the surgery. And so he was the best. And so I called him on a hunch and he accepted my son. And we had the surgery and he's completely fine now. And it's the same regulative principle that we want to ask ourselves is, if the God of the universe has declared what we need, how can we answer this with scripture? This regulative principle that we can be more biblical by saying, what has God told the church to be in the local church? And we want to follow that prescription per to say. And so this is the prescription in the New Testament. We see the commands in the New Testament church to do this, to pray, to read scripture publicly, to listen to the preaching and teaching, to baptize believers, to share the Lord's Supper, to encourage one another and to praise God in song, to give their finances. And it's clear that every one of these things that we do together must be done for the strength of the church, ultimately to edify one another. I want to quote Lick Duncan by saying, the warrant for a church to do something in its main weekly service can come in the form of explicit, distinct directives, implicit requirements, the general principles of scripture, positive commands, examples, and things derived from the good and necessary consequence. In summary, we pray the Bible, we read the Bible, we preach the Bible, we sing the Bible, and we see the Bible in the form of the ordinances. Brett, what do you think on that? You know, I've always said that church was not man's idea. Church is God's idea. You know, we didn't come up with the idea of church. God was the one who came up with it. That was a great list that you just gave. But if something doesn't make that list, it's not a part of God's plan for our time together. You know, a hike in the woods may be a wonderfully God-vorifying way to spend time. It may lead you to worship, but it's not what you should do when the local church gathers. I said the other day that, you know, you can't have church out in a deer stand, you know, and somebody said, well, you know, I've gotten real close to God out in a deer stand before. And I said, well, well, hold on a sec. I didn't say you couldn't have a spiritual experience in the woods. I'm not saying you can't go out in the woods and sit on a deer stand or get your Bible and pray and get close to God. I'm saying you can't have church out on a deer stand. Yeah. Okay. Now to explore this idea more, let's give you three reasons why we should follow this regulative principle in our church gatherings. And Brett, number one, say that right before you say that I drive a lot. I was part of my job is, is on the road and I'm driving from people's house to people's house to hospital. Uh, I put a lot of miles on my vehicle. Part of those miles are listening to podcasts, listening to preaching and growing closer to the Lord. Now I'm not in church in my car. God is there with me and I'm worshiping God. Sometimes it's through song. Sometimes it's just through the scripture reading to me through my speakers. Uh, but the, the gathering together is what makes it the church. And so go ahead. I just wanted to say that because it came to my mind in your, in your process of talking. So number one, we do not, we do not have warrant to bind a Christian's conscience in ways scripture doesn't because Christians are commanded to be at church regularly. Such as Hebrews 10 25. We need to be careful what we do in that setting in ways we don't in other areas. We might have an optional church picnic where we play volleyball, but shifting volleyball into our Sunday morning gathering suddenly shifts it from something someone may participate in to something they must participate in. And we have no right to do that. Just like as much as you may think that it is wise to abstain from alcohol, Paul, you wouldn't put that in our church covenant because there you're commanding someone to do something that scripture doesn't. Okay. Number two, God knows how to worship him better than we do. When you begin to understand the regulative principle, you begin to get a sense for the conceit of not operating that way. Who's to say that we know how to worship God better than he does himself? That's the whole point behind the second command in the Ten Commandments. Do not make a graven image. I might think that making an image of God would help me worship him. Oh, no, God says. That's not how I want to be worshipped. Did the Israelites mean well when they cast an image of their God in the form of a calf? Perhaps. I mean, they said this is the God that delivered us out of Egypt. Perhaps they wanted to make him more concrete so they could worship him better. Did that work out well? No, it did not. Did Nahab and Abihu have good intentions when they offered unauthorized fire or, like the King James Bible said, strange fire before the Lord in Leviticus 10? Perhaps they did. But their instant annihilation is a sobering reminder that God's commands are not to be trifled with. Number three, the Holy Spirit has good reasons for designing our gatherings as he had. Why limit ourselves to the elements that we mentioned before? Prayer, reading scripture, preaching, ordinances, singing, and giving. Well, I don't know. But he sure has a way of figuring things out better than I do. You know, I think we need to trust him on this one, that he knows the best way to worship him. He knows the best way church should run. And as you can see in a diversity of worship styles at different faithful churches, those elements are not terribly restrictive. A Christian can sometimes disagree on what is prescribed in scripture and what is not. That even when we disagree, at least we can know we're using the same framework and the same goal. To embrace only those elements in our weekly gatherings that are prescribed force in scripture. James, why don't you continue? Yeah, absolutely. I think it's good to understand that. It's good to know that you may look different, but the prescription, what's prescribed is there. And as long as the prescription is there, it's great to understand that. I may not go to a church that has multiple services, or I may never have a church with multiple services. But as long as what I'm doing is prescribed in scripture and is prescriptive, not necessarily descriptive, but prescriptive, then I'm doing what God has called us to do. And if you're planning to begin looking for a church, these are some practical things that you can look for. Some framework, if we could, of how to look for things. Look for a church that takes seriously their responsibility to follow God's prescription for the main weekly gathering. These thoughts that we just laid out, the framework of preaching and praying and scripture reading and ordinances and singing and giving, these are the things that you should be looking for. If a church has these things, then they're at least starting on that side of it. And you've got the foundation right. It should then reiterate how we evaluate our own service and what we're doing. Instead of simply thinking, how did I feel when I came out of this service? Or what did I get out of the sermon? It can be a little more God focused. Did what happened this morning please him? And you walk out of church, say, did I please God this morning by my worship? Did I please God this morning by how the preacher preached? Did I accomplish his purposes for gathering together? And then recognize that the Holy Spirit gives us these elements because we all need these elements. Did you find that you love sermons but you don't really appreciate the prayer? Or you're just all about the singing but you don't have any patience for the reading? We can grow in our application for these elements and the church services those scriptures that give to us. In time, which would be a great thing for us to do maybe right now. We don't have time right now. But begin asking yourself, what are the different aspects of the church services that in your years since your conversion have you enjoyed the most? And what maybe you didn't enjoy and why didn't you enjoy them? Did you just not enjoy when a man got up and just read passages of scripture? That's biblical. That's things we should do. Things our churches should be doing. And oftentimes our focus is so narrow in our worship corporately that a Sunday morning church activity begins to be so narrow-minded. And so we get this sense that we have to ask ourselves, what is so special about corporate worship? And that's the question we can answer with our second implication. From the church existed to guard the who and the what to that God has a special purpose for corporate worship. So as we get into implication number two, which is God has special purposes for corporate worship. You know, to really get at this, we need to begin by defining what worship is. We like David Peterson's definition. Worship is engaging with God on the terms that he proposes and in the way that he alone makes possible. It is response to who he is. It is the working out of Jesus's words in John 16, 14. The spirit will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. It's important to recognize these three characteristics in worship. It is a response to God himself. Worship is right and natural amazement at the glory of who God is. Next, it encompasses our entire lives. Our daily activity can be worship. And as much as it is our response to who he is, it can lead us into worship by teaching us the glory of who God is. So at work, I might find in being a good boss a bit of taste of how much God loves using his authority for our good. That can lead me into worship as it helps me appreciate in a way that I never did before how amazing and delightful God is. And then as a response to such a good God by trying to represent his authority well as a boss, then my job becomes worship. And then number three, it's a delight in the beauty of God in Christ. The word worship too often connotates nothing more than the emotions we experience when we sing about God. But we may be more caught up in the experience than in God. Instead of worship being a delight in an experience, no, a delight in experience, it needs to be a delight in God. Okay. But while all of life can be worship and all of life can lead us into worship, we're talking about something much narrower than that when we look at corporate worship. By which I mean the main weekly gathering of the local church that all believers are commanded to be a part of. All right. So what's so special about corporate worship? What happens there that doesn't happen when you pray, sing, read, and listen to a sermon at home? We're going to give you this answer in three pieces. Absolutely. All right. Number one, number one, we hear a trustworthy message. In a sense, at least over the long haul, the message that the church proclaims in its preaching, its songs, its prayers, its readings, is only as good as the lives in that church. Gospel transformed lives will cherish gospel transformed preaching. So when you get to know the people in a church, you can have much greater confidence in the fidelity of their message. This is the who and what of the gospel working together. Yeah, I want to say something on that point right there, Brett, because I think that as a pastor, this is the point that I begin to see. I've just celebrated a year as a pastor here, and man, the Lord's been so faithful and blessed in what we've been able to do while we've been here. But the longer I'm here over this last year, the more people get to know who I am. And I'm sure you've experienced this over the two years you've been at Rocky Point. And the longer you have that relationship with people, the more likely they are to trust what you have to say because they know who you are. At first, it was, who's this young guy coming in telling us how to change things or what to do? But once they begin to know your heart, once they begin to know who you are and what you're there for, they begin to appreciate your vision and your value and what you're trying to accomplish. They begin to see that there is a love and a care here. The same thing goes for the people of the church. When you are gathering together, you begin to see their heart as a whole. You begin to know that, hey, they do care about me. They do write me a letter when I'm sick. They send me a text on when I'm not there. They begin to have that building up of one another. And you begin to see that in a corporate setting that you don't just see if you're just listening to a sermon online and you're just participating in worship online. You're at a church for a long period of time. Like you said, when you first get there, you don't have a lot of change in your pocket. You know, I heard a preacher say that one time and I kind of stuck with me, you know, but after you're there for a while and get a little change in your pocket, then you can you can make changes and you can start to tweak things because people do begin to trust you. It takes time to build that kind of a relationship. It takes time to build that kind of trust. It's not something that happens overnight. And it's impossible to do that. You know, watching a service online and having church at your house by yourself. We were not created to be on an island alone by ourselves, which brings us into number two. We worship together. That means that corporate worship is a show of unity. Think of all the hundreds of sacrifices that need to be made for this to happen. Sacrificing preferences and musical style and service time and service length and caring for children and the unity that those sacrifices produce. How pleasing that must be to God. And that's a big one, too, because, you know, when you come to church, everybody's got their own opinion on how things should be run. Yeah, we should have the nursery during this time. We shouldn't have the nursery during this time. I want to sing this type of music. No, I want to sing this song. No, so and so wrote that song. I don't think we should sing that song because so and so wrote it. And then we're over here. Oh, it's the words of the song that matters, not who wrote the song. But when you can when we as a people can lay all of that down and sacrifice ourselves on the author of God and say, you know what? I'm just here to worship the Lord with my brother. And if he disagrees with me on some minor thing, then that's OK, because we are here to worship together. We're going to leave all that preference stuff and all that unbiblical stuff. We're just going to leave it at the door and we're going to worship God together. We're not going to lure our liberty in front of a brother because we want to worship together. Absolutely. I agree 100 percent. And that is such a great way to put that of self-sacrificing for the good of another brother. And oftentimes we have to do that on both sides. Maybe you're a hymns only person and you go into a church and one Sunday they're singing hymns, but the next Sunday they're singing maybe some contemporary songs. Well, the brother that wanted contemporary songs was sacrificing the week before for you to have hymns. And so we also need to sacrifice for them to have the style of worship that they want. And so sometimes it's a give and take and there's got to be a balance. And I understand that. But when when you're demanding things, you are being unbiblical because you're not worshiping together. Third thing we'll say is the ordinances. Remember how we told you just a couple of weeks ago, the ordinances are more important than we often get credit for. Well, they're the structure around which the gospel community forms. We don't have a relational work of a community in a service per se. After all, we don't gather on a 1030 or 11 o'clock just to chat for two hours. But the community is showcased in the ordinances. The ordinances form the boundary conditions that true gospel community needs to form. So God is exalted as his true gospel is proclaimed. God is exalted as unity in diverse congregations is seen as they assemble together. God is exalted as his gospel people in his word was created and revealed through the baptism and the Lord's Supper. Compare that to singing songs to God on your commute to work or so and so on one side of a dimension. And corporate worship is special because of how both the what and the who of the gospel have come together to create this beautiful tapestry of worship that is so much more profound than the complexity of anything that we could ever do by ourselves. I mean, it's hard enough to get a board meeting together of people who agree in a like mind. Imagine people from all different walks of life, from different categories of life, from different categories of wealth. They're coming together to worship the one true God in unity. And that is what the gospel is doing. And so this is what the corporate worship does. It guards the who and the what of the gospel in order to showcase the glory of the almighty God in their life. And in doing so, we are able to sound a note of worship far more profound than any of us can accomplish on our own. And that's what the second implication is saying here. That is what the gospel is about. Brett, I made this statement just the other day when I was doing chapel and we'll walk into the implication number three. But I said oftentimes we are not worshiping the way the Lord wants us to worship. And so the seas and the animals and the rocks are having to worship the almighty God who created them because we are not worshiping God the way we should. And that is in a corporate gathering. We must be worshiping God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength so that the God of the universe doesn't have to call on the rocks to worship him. The inanimate objects have to worship him. Exactly. So implication number three, the church gathers for edification. First Corinthians 14, 26 is an interesting and unexpected verse about our corporate gatherings. Let's listen to what Paul writes. What then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. You know, it's easy to think that church should just be about God. The church services should be just about praising God. But if the purpose of the church is to guard the what and the who of the gospel, then that view is too limiting, which is what Paul is getting to here in First Corinthians as he sees it. Edification is a key reason why we gather together each week. And that means we gather not merely on a vertical dimension, speaking to God, but also on a horizontal dimension, speaking to each other. Paul writes in Ephesians, speak to one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Singing, make music in your heart to the Lord. Now, that's why we have hymns that are addressed to ourselves and not just to God. That's why we read scripture aloud. That's why we have some churches have responsive readings and readings where we read to each other. That's why we keep the lights on instead of dimming them down as if the only thing important is what you say in your heart to each other. Brett, that's why I think that so often that in some of these newer buildings that you're seeing built, newer worship spaces, they're designed in a semicircle so that it's not just straight rows. We're able to worship with one another, sort of get a glance of a brother and sister just worshiping the Lord with their hands raised in a corporate gathering because that can encourage you, that can edify you. You know, their traditional churches are rows back to back to back, and you don't really see what's going on with your neighbor unless you're behind them. But these new modern spaces are seeing each other, and they're growing together because they're able to look at each other in a semicircle format. There's acoustical things that are there for it, but it's designed in a way that when we gather together, we're encouraging one another. And ultimately, as we gather in terms of our attitude, what we do when we gather. Let's put it like this in the question, and this will be our question for you to think on. What are some of the implications of this idea that we gather in part and speak of to each other? Think about how the truths that we sing, we hear, we read, and apply to both yourselves and to others. Not to necessarily be a distraction to sing loud so we can hear each other, but to strive to blend in and maybe listen to each other. Oftentimes, when we come together on a Sunday morning, this is the beautiful thing, Brett. We get a glimpse of the glory of God's final congregation in heaven. We get a glimpse of what God's going to show us in heaven one day. We get to, for many of us, this is what heaven feels most real. When we gather together and we hear brothers and sisters sing, we hear the word lifted up, and God esteems this so high because we need to have a weekly, daily, as often as we meet. That's why there was not a prescription of how often we meet. As often as we meet, coming together and seeing the picture of heaven. We need to see this because of the broken world around us. We are not built for this world. We are built for heaven. We are built for a weekly, daily reminder of an eternal destiny that God has created our souls to be in. And when we add these together, when we begin to add what all this looks like, we get to come together with brothers and sisters who believe in like mind, who can agree on the gospel and can see God's word lifted high through song, through hymns, through reading, through preaching, through fellowshipping together. And I believe it begins to give us a greater picture of what heaven's going to look like. I've always said, and I'll close with this. I've always said that heaven, like church, is the closest on earth we'll ever get to heaven. It's like the closest we'll ever know on this planet what heaven is going to be like is in the local church with our brothers and our sisters in Christ. It's our family. We're coming here to gather, to worship the God of heaven. We're not here to try to manipulate people, make false confessions, trick people down the aisle. We are here to preach Christ crucified, to preach the gospel, to worship God. We are protecting the who and the what of the gospel. That's what we're here to do. And I love church. And I think that, you know, we were built for church because we were built for heaven. Amen. I agree 100%. Thank you guys for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed this series. Looking forward to what we have coming up with our crossover episodes and with our meetup in just a couple of weeks. And then we'll be jumping through our final topic of study for the remainder of this year. Thank you guys for listening. And as always, if there's ever something that we say that you agree with or disagree with, feel free to reach out to us. Leave a rating or review. It would be a personal thank you from me if you did that to help our exposure of our podcast. Until next time, to God. Not the pastor. Be the glory. Found my new name. Found that good grace. Found that healing. And the tears fell down my face. When I found my beginning. That has no ending. Found that second chance. Found my best friend. Found my forgiveness. Found my happiness. I've been singing ever since. I found my freedom in you. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom Podcast. If you enjoyed our content, do us a favor by liking, subscribing, or sharing our podcast on whichever podcast platform you use. Be sure to join us next time for the For Freedom Podcast.

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