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I want to establish the importance
of the subject. God shows His wrath against those
who would harm His Church. And Paul said to the Corinthians,
in 1 Corinthians 3.17, if anyone defiles the Church of God, God
will destroy him. That's a stern enough warning.
So, men should be careful how they lead the church of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Thankfully, Christ is the great
physician who heals the diseases of the churches. And he was dealing
with various diseases in the Jewish church in his ministry. It's right for us to deal with
infections in our own churches because we are his disciples. So here are some of the infections
that I've encountered. First of all, neglecting the
Gospel. There's nothing more destructive
to a church than to neglect the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And there are several things that can cause the neglect of
the Gospel. First of all, Neglecting the
gospel can happen when emphasizing various legitimate lifestyle
changes, callings, areas of obedience,
but they become replacements to the message of the cross.
Also, you might find a misunderstanding in churches of equipping and
evangelism. When people say that the meaning
of the church is for equipping only, they only speak a half
truth. I've heard this said many times in family integrated churches,
that the purpose of the meetings of the church is exclusively
for equipping and never for evangelism. And saying that really misrepresents
the nature of biblically ordered church meetings. Because the
meetings of the church really, by their very nature, require
both. For example, biblical churches
always have unbelievers in them. There never was a biblical church,
I don't believe, that was absent of unbelievers. Hey, whenever
a child is born into your church, you have a new unbeliever in
your church. Often you have people in churches
who are legitimately deceived about their salvation. They often
come to the realization after being deacons and officers in
churches, that though they were baptized in their childhood,
though they prayed a prayer in their childhood, they are not
genuinely converted. I don't know how many times this
happened to you in your church life, but I've seen it many,
many times. There are always unbelievers
in your church. Some of them are deceived about
their salvation and they may sit there for years until God
reaches in with a white hot heat in their heart and He convicts
them of their sin and they're converted. I was preaching in
a church in Seattle, Washington last year. I was preaching and
there was a woman who'd been in that church for many years
and she was converted that morning because the Spirit of God just
decided to pierce her heart. And it was the cause of rejoicing
in that church. But she'd been there forever.
Everybody thought she was saved. But she wasn't at all. We need
to assume that there are unconverted people who might be deceived
about their salvation. Let's acknowledge that the Apostle
Paul assumed that unbelievers would be present in the church
at Corinth. He told them that if they unlawfully
exercised the gift of languages in that church, then what would
the unbelievers think? He assumed there were unbelievers.
in that church. Hopefully, church members are
proclaiming the gospel to their unsaved friends and bringing
them to have relationships with people in the church so that
they can also be evangelistically related to them and giving them
a sense of what church life looks like so that they know what the
people of God do. You also may have Judas in your
church and you may have a wolf or wolves in your church. The
Apostle Paul in Acts chapter 20 said that their wolves will
arise up from among you, meaning that you have unconverted elders
in your church. So you might even have elders,
founding elders, whatever, that might not even be converted.
Neglecting the gospel often happens when we misunderstand what biblically
ordered churches are all about, and they include all kinds of
people. You know, the communion service
assumes that there are some that might be tempted to take the
Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. There are two categories
of people who can take it in an unworthy manner. There are
those unrepentant believers. And there are the unsaved. Maybe
you're aware of that great story in John Calvin's Geneva, when
the reprobates were standing at the back of the church with
their swords, living a licentious lifestyle, and he put them on
notice that they wouldn't be able to take communion. They
drew their swords in the back of the church and started walking
toward Calvin and the communion elements. And Calvin threw his
arms around the elements and he said, these hands you may
crush, these arms you may lop off, but you will not defile
the table of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, there were some unbelievers
in that church, and there are unbelievers in most churches,
and there actually should be, so that they can hear the gospel
and perhaps God would save them. You know, it often happens that
there is no love for the lost in the church. And that's and
that's another reason the gospel is neglected. Or it may be that
a church is suffering from an inward focus that neglects ministry
to the lost. And it makes churches fat and
happy and satisfied to be islands instead of outposts that transform
the culture. The solution is this. Follow
the Lord Jesus. Live like the Lord Jesus did.
He was constantly with the sick, and the sinful, and the religious
establishment, and the fishermen, and the tax collectors, and even
with the prostitutes. Jesus wasn't defiled by being
with those people, and neither will you. And churches that neglect
the Gospel are shameful examples of the body of Christ. The Apostle
Paul spoke very uncompromising language to the Galatian Church
for misrepresenting the Gospel. He said, O foolish Galatians,
who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth? He
said, I'm afraid for you, because they had neglected the Gospel
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Here's what Spurgeon said, make
a beeline to the Gospel. And I don't know how you can
preach expositionally and not preach the Gospel every Sunday.
I don't know how. Every word is tied to the goodness
of salvation. And so, we need to be doing that
as Spurgeon exhorted. Spurgeon said this, there are
many ministries in the world and you can evaluate them all
to the degree that they exalt Jesus Christ. And I think he's
right about that. And so family integrated churches
that do not regularly preach the gospel are sinning and neglecting
the gospel. Also, it's practiced in mainstream
evangelicalism as well as other places. But let's be very clear. Neglecting the gospel is an infection
in a church. Here's another. Misunderstanding
family integration. There are churches who misunderstand
the place that age-integrated discipleship should take in church
life. And the reality is, age-integration
should take almost a transparent place in life, because it doesn't
have anything to do with the message of the church. It just
has to do with a methodology that is almost message-free. to be a family-integrated church
is because it's just the indisputable pattern, and you can begin to
follow that pattern in a second. It doesn't take administration.
It doesn't take hardly anything. It doesn't take much conversation.
It's transparent in that sense. But, building a church around
family integration, where this is the main topic of discussion,
is like building a church around any other biblical practice. We know that, you know, singing
together is a biblical practice. But you wouldn't have, you know,
First Presbyterian Church of singing, and that's all they
do. You wouldn't have, you know, First Baptist Church of church
discipline, and that was the overwhelming focus of the church.
It makes no sense at all. And it's sinful and dangerous
to build a church around one doctrine or one practice like
family integration. And so when you find churches
that focus their conversation and their meditation of the church
around one single reform, they've made a big mistake. The most
important thing is to build a biblical church. It's something I want
to be very clear regarding the NCFIC. This is something that
you can find on our website. We've had it on for many years.
I'm just going to quote. I'm just going to quote it for
you. We do not believe that family integration is the only or even
the primary issue for selecting or establishing a church. But
it is unquestionably a defining issue of our day in the modern
church, which is lost the essential familistic culture that we see
modeled in the New Testament. Making too much out of family
in the church, or a particular structure in the church, it just
displaces the center of the church. The center of the church should
be the glory of God. And there are many things that
flow out of that. But if you try to put something
else, it won't go in the center and it will wobble that church.
But, you know, for so long, the church has ignored the family.
And so, if you make any changes in church life regarding the
family, you've got a fight on your hands. It's unfortunate
if it's that way. And people, if you just make
a little change, people say, it's an overemphasis. When actually,
it's just probably a small step back to where we really ought
to be. But we need to understand that
misunderstanding family integration can be an infection in a family
integrated church. Another infection, lack of biblically
qualified leadership. Now, if you ask church elders
around the nation, what their biggest problem is in their churches.
Almost always, the first thing that comes out of their mouth
is a lack of biblically qualified elders. And this is a sad, sad
state that we exist in today. How did it happen? I'm going
to blame it on the immaturity and the worldliness of the American
male. He was so driven, he was so sports-saturated
that he did not train up a new generation of young men who knew
the Word of God. And so, you do not have future
elders being trained in their households. And the consequences
of this lack of family discipleship are really terrifying. Men have
not dedicated themselves to the Lord. Men care more about their
ball fields and their games and their entertainments than they
do about the church of Jesus Christ. And they should be ashamed
of themselves to spend their time doing things like that while
the whole generation goes lacking and there are no elders to fill
the churches. Men ought to be ashamed of themselves
for living that way. It's sinful to treat the church
of Jesus Christ like that, and do everything else that has very
little value and impact on the church, when the church goes
languishing. I want to make it my point, whenever
I'm with men, to challenge them to not repeat that mistake again. We have just suffered an enormous
amount of time from that mistake, and we need to be very careful.
Hey, you know, broken families make for broken churches. And
men who do not bring their sons up in the training and the admonition
of the Lord make for weak, wimpy, feministic churches that really
have a hard time standing for righteousness in the world. And
we ought not let that happen in the coming generation. But
one infection in family-integrated churches is lack of biblically
qualified leadership. You know, you can't just wave
a wand on this problem and make it go away. You can't have a
few seminars on it and have it disappear. It's something that
will only change one generation to the next as men train a new
generation of elders, and I so promote it. Here's another infection
in family-integrated churches. I'm going to call this home-churching. What I mean by home-churching
is treating the church like a retreat from society, or it might include
conducting church life that only includes meeting with your family
or a collection of families where there's prayer and there's singing
and there's teaching. You know, participating in what
I'm just going to call a leaderless house church with very few participants,
because of the collection of people, there's no way to fulfill
the commands for fellowship and instruction and church discipline. You can't identify leaders. There's
no real biblical accountability. There's no way to even exercise
church discipline. There's no way to fulfill Hebrews
13, 17. which says that church leaders must give account for
the souls that are those there in that church. But leaderless
house churches make that impossible. It may happen when families react
to abuses in churches, and they hide away, and they exempt themselves. It's a wrong reaction, but it
often happens. It happens when people live as
if there are only two God has established three spheres of
sovereignty. The family and the state. And they neglect the church. God has established three different
governments to take care of His people. The family and the church
and the state. And all of them we must participate
in, in a way that God has commanded us to. And often people do not
participate in the government of the church, that sphere of
sovereignty and jurisdiction, for various personal reasons.
But they act like there are only two spheres of sovereignty. I'm not talking about a church
that meets in a house. It is legitimate for churches
to meet in homes if they are biblically ordered. In the New
Testament, many churches met in homes. In fact, there were
no church buildings until the 3rd century. It's legitimate
to meet in a home. So when I use the term home-churching,
I'm not talking about having church in a house. I'm talking
about having a church that isn't a true church because it doesn't
have Biblical practices in operation. There is no Biblical preaching,
there are no Biblical leaders, there is no Biblical discipline,
there are no Biblical practices and accountabilities that you
see in Scripture that are required for Biblical church life. Often,
this home-churching practice happens because it's a symptom
of a deeper problem. And the Bible speaks very plainly
about those who isolate themselves. Solomon actually reveals the
true motives of those who would isolate themselves. He says this
in Proverbs 18.1, A man who isolates himself seeks his own desire
and rages against all judgment. then you have people who just
can't find anything good about their local church. Their laundry
list is so long that it's impossible for any church to comply with
this list. Solomon exposes those who cannot
find any good when he said, he who has a deceitful heart finds
no good. And often people end up in these
house churches because of that. So here's what I would say. If
you're home-churching, then I just want you to consider that you're
depriving your family of the kinds of relationships that God
has designed for their own benefit, for their sanctification, for
their preparation for marriage, for everything. And if you're
home churching, there are two things I would recommend. First
of all, do one of these two. Shut it down and go find a real
church where there's biblical leadership, there are biblical
practices, biblical discipline, and the things that really reflect
New Testament church life. And to recognize that you're
doing, you've invented something that doesn't exist in Scripture.
So shut it down and go find some biblical relationships. Become
a biblical church. Become a real church. Here's
one of the pleasing things about this road trip for me. I know
that a couple of the churches that we visited, that actually
sponsored our visits, were churches who I would call, several years
ago, were unbiblical, leaderless house churches. And these people
were home churching. But somewhere along the line,
they embraced the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture.
And they began to believe that, yes, God has said something about
church structure and church life. And they embraced it. And they
became real churches. And they had become wonderful
churches, strong churches. And I've seen that happen. So,
there is hope for anyone who's home-churching. There's either
hope for finding a biblical church or for becoming one. And that would be my counsel
to anyone who is involved in that. Another infection, doctrinal
confusion. Doctrinal confusion exists in
a number of different environments. One environment is this. When
leaders themselves are doctrinally unclear and as a result they
gather together a diverse group doctrinally, and often the result
is the diversity is so great that they end up in a messy church
split. Sometimes it results in men being
unschooled themselves. They may have been in churches
for many years, but they did not use those years to train
themselves in sound doctrine. And therefore, they breed an
environment of doctrinal imprecision, lack of clarity. And therefore,
they can't achieve doctrinal unity in their churches. And
so what happens, what's happened many, many times in family integrated
churches is that you have people who they're in established churches. They see the worldliness of that
church. They realize that they're being forced to send their children
to that youth group and they're just not willing to do it. And
so, they find other people who are disturbed about these things.
And they should be disturbed about these things. And then,
they leave and establish a new church. And so, you have five
or ten families that have gotten together. And they've gotten
together around one principle, family integration. That's their
rallying point. That was the center of their
church. And so, the first couple of months,
it's like heaven on earth. They're just amazed. So many
of the problems, they've escaped through their family integrated
church. Their families are growing. Wonderful things are happening
to their children and in their families. And some of the defilements
have been taken away from their family life. But then the euphoria
turns to concern, and the concern turns to realizing, I'm in an
untenable situation, because now you've got a gathering of
people with a hyper-Calvinist on one side, and a crazed Arminian
on the other side, and they know they cannot live together. a Pato Baptist and a Credo Baptist,
and they realize, you know, this ain't going to work. We really
don't want our children baptized, or we really do want our children
baptized, and so the twain cannot meet, and so they have to separate. But what happened was excitement
overwhelmed, wisdom, desperation drove an enormous amount of diversity
and the result was doctrinal confusion that was really the
baby of pragmatism. They wanted to do something so
badly and their hearts were ripe. And so it often happens as well.
when churches or leaders are unaware of historic confessions
of faith, and how important it is to establish a church on sound
doctrine. I really believe that a church
without historic confession of faith is in danger. I believe
you should not go to a church that does not have sound doctrine
at its base, so that doctrine is preserved. How do you defend
sound doctrine if you don't know what it is? If it's just the
five of you who got together and came up with your own pre-cooked
meal for the church. You know, there are men who are
smarter than we were, and worked harder, and labored, and established
confessions that have stood the test of time. I'm constantly
urging churches to embrace historical confessions of faith that have
stood the test of time, that are expressions of biblical Christianity
and historic Christianity. But doctrinal confusion is an
infection in some family-integrated churches. Here's another. Fuzziness
on biblical womanhood and the influences of feminism. Now, when you start a church,
People will come who have not shed various wrong ideas regarding
manhood and womanhood. Feminism is everywhere. You know,
most of us went to feminist think tanks called colleges, where
our brains were pickled in feminist formaldehyde because of that.
In our blood, our whole circulatory system has been infected by,
you know, the feminist music we listen to, and the feminist
movies we've watched, and the books, you know, have just made,
instead of bibline, our blood is now feminine, and it's poison. We've been breathing feminist
air for so long. And people come into our churches,
with inclinations that they have brought with them out of this
environment that we live in. And leaders must have clarity
regarding the roles of men and women in the church, or they're
going to have trouble. And often an infection in churches
is fuzziness on this whole matter. Now, if you're a leader in a
church, and you don't understand what Scripture has said about
what women are permitted to do and forbidden to do, you're going
to wreak a whirlwind. Because the Bible actually does
say that women are permitted and forbidden to do certain things. And if you say that to somebody
whose brain has been pickled in feminist juice, you've got
yourself a riot. on your hands. Now, it's good
to have riots over these things. We should be willing to have
riots over sound doctrine. Our friend Paul Washer says,
all you have to do to cause a riot in a church in modern evangelicalism
is just preach sound doctrine. I think he's right about that.
But, you know, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14.34, let your women keep silent
in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak. but they are to be submissive,
as the law also says. And if they will learn anything,
let them ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for a
woman to speak in the church." Now, them's fighting words. Them's, you know, riot material. I mean, if you quote it in your
local church, people are going to get upset. Because you're
saying that there are certain things women can do, and there
are certain things women can't do. Feminism says you can do
anything with your body, anything with your baby you want to. You
can do anything with your energy and your career. You can do anything
you want, girl. That's what the devil has wrought
in feminism. But the Bible says something
totally different. The Bible doesn't allow anyone to be governed
by themselves, but God alone and His Word. And so feminism
is really striking at the heart, at the very authority of God.
And you have people coming into your church who do not understand
the rock from which they've been hewn. And Paul said to Timothy,
let a woman learn in silence with all submission. You know,
these are again, you know, these are so disturbing upon a woman's
ears who has embraced and not rejected as devilish the propositions
of feminism. And there's nothing more divisive
in a church than upset feminists. And often these mad feminists,
they lead from the rear. They henpecked their husbands
to death. and drive them to do shameful things, even though
they know in their hearts they shouldn't do them. But their
wives are driving them, and that's really often the heart of the
problem. If you don't establish husbands who love their wives,
you've got big problems in your church. Husbands that don't cherish
them, nourish them, wash them with the water of the Word. You've
got a feminist uprising in the making. You know, fortunately,
we should have practices in the church that actually forbid and
allow certain things. And our practices drive the discussion,
so that the practices drive us to the Scriptures. They say,
why do you do that? We open up the Bible and say,
here's why. You'll find women who do not even know these passages
exist in Scripture. They need to know. It's interesting. Many years ago, there was a...
a woman in our church, and she had never heard those things
before. And this was a genuinely Christian
woman. And we read these scriptures
in one of our services, and she was mad as fire, almost cussing
mad. And then we sat down, and she
was shocked at what the Bible said. And this is what we need
to do. Our practices will drive the
discussion, and the discussion needs to be had. But fuzziness
on biblical womanhood and the influence of feminism is often
an infection in family-agreed churches. Another is disregarding
God's ordained authority. This often happens among independent
people. Often homeschooling people are
very independent. They've already stepped out of
the stream of society and have done something pretty radical.
They've already learned how to defy society. But they've never
really understood that there are three governments, there
are three jurisdictions that need to be honored. And they
go in and they cause division in churches because they do not
understand divinely established authority. They cannot get along
with others with whom they disagree. And so they cause problems in
churches and they try to overthrow the duly appointed leaders that
God has established in that church. And it's a wicked thing that
they do. But it's often an infection among those who embrace principles
of age integration. Here's another. Lack of love
for Scripture. Often in family-integrated churches,
you find people who want something better than God. They want something
more interesting, more innovative. They want to hear their hobby
horse. They want their special interests dealt with. They may
always want a sermon about the family, or some element of politics,
or debt reduction, or something about food, or something like
that. But they don't want to hear the whole counsel of God.
They want something that interests them more. when the focus of
a local church is on anything but the Word of God. Not only
is it vulnerable and underfed and underweight, it just makes
for a very pinched, truncated and sick church when Scripture
is not the center of it. God leads His church by His Word. And Jesus intends that His church
would be nourished on the words of truth alone. It's an infection
when there's a lack of love for Scripture. Here's another infection. Parents who allow their children
to run wild after the service on Sunday. One of the most common
questions that I'm asked by people either leading family ready churches
or who attend them is, what do you do with your children after
church? And, you know, it's interesting. Some people, for some reason,
assume that the other children in the church are somehow good
companions. for their children, which is
not true. But because of the problem, various alternatives
end up getting proposed. Sometimes people will come and
have come to me, and our elders, and propose that the older boys
teach the younger boys, and we find a godly girl to teach the
younger girls. These are just more inventions.
This is just the roadway right back to where we are right now
with age-segregated youth ministry, and it's just the wrong direction.
Some offer organized sports. Some, you know, attempt to appoint
a babysitter to organize, you know, activities on a rotational
basis. But there are a number of problems
with these kinds of things. Other than the fact that they're
inventions, often the real problem is that parents are not disciplining
their children. And it's just symptomatic of
that. Where adults just want to talk to adults. As much as
everybody wants the glory in being family integrated, their
eyeballs are family segregated. Because all they want to do is
talk to the eyeballs that are horizontal to theirs. They don't
want to engage the younger generation. They want to just let them run
wild. So that's what you get. We want to have serious conversations
with adults, and there's a good part of that, but we don't want
to take the time to instruct our children for how to conduct
themselves in the Church of God. And of course, we want to make
Sunday this big, wonderful family reunion of rejoicing and celebrating
the work of Christ, tying us together with our fathers, our
spiritual fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and
grandfathers and grandmothers. We want to do that, but parents
seem to break out of their intuitive patterns of communication and
learn how to engage their children in conversation and relationship
with other people. So parents need to prepare their
children and they need to be prepared to understand how they
should conduct themselves in the household of God. And this
is not just an adult time. Often the problem is a lack of
understanding of the nature of the celebration of the Sabbath
day, that there are certain things that that are required of that
day in terms of what you speak and what you do and how you conduct
that day. And often children running wild
after the service is really Children who do not understand what Scriptures
say about the celebration of the Sabbath, because their parents
are unclear about it, because they don't know and they don't
know what to say. So, here's an admonition. Understand what
the Bible says about it. Teach your children to observe
the Sabbath. It will be a great blessing to their souls. Yes,
it probably will be a break in a pattern of your life, but it
will be a greater blessing. than going your own way and inventing
your own Sabbath day mentality. But parents who allow their children
to run wild after the service can be an infection in family-integrated
churches. And don't think that Hope Baptist
Church has this perfectly wired, okay? Because it's a struggle,
because we have a struggle discipling our children and bringing them
up in the training and the admonition of the Lord and helping them
to fulfill And so, the parents are not getting anything out
of the commandments of God by giving them a day of rest. Here's another one.
Children not getting anything out of the gathered church services.
Now, the root cause of this is the parents' fault. They give
poor instruction to their children. And they might begin meeting
in a family integrated church, but after a few years, they realize
that their children are zoning out. And they're zoning out because
their parents are not helping them And so what started out as something
so revolutionary became passé. And the parents stopped helping
their children to get as much from the gathered worship time
as they possibly could. So they're in the service with
their bodies, but their hearts are all over the place. And it
may stem from lukewarm parents who do not say in their hearts,
I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house
of the Lord. There's much to say about that.
That will have to reserve for another time. In terms of exactly
what parents can do, and also what preachers can do, and church
leaders can do to help this along. And then there's also an absence
of humility. This is another infection. People find something
that's been neglected. And they think that somehow their
church is superior. And their chests swell. They think they've found the
missing jewel of the church, family integration. And they
exalt the importance of that obedience. And it stems from
a misunderstanding of sin. And it comes from minimizing
the other areas of blindness to sin. So when a man has been
able to have a victory in a certain area, It should not suck the
humility out of his body so his chest swells up and he thinks
he's such a hot shot because he has finally embraced the missing
jewel of the church, family integration. Because it's not. It's just one
of the things that God has established for church life. And then finally,
the final infection is lack of love for the church. And the
question I would just ask is, do you feel the same way about
the Church as Christ did? Do you labor for the Church?
The Lord Jesus gave Himself up for the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He worked for the Church. Zeal
for His Father's house consumed Him. And often people use the
Church as kind of a convenience institution, something to fit
into their schedule. They exalt their family schedule
so much. that they let it take priority
over all church meetings. And they end up in a pattern
of life where, well, if I have time this week, I'll be a part
of prayer time. If I have time, I'll do this.
And they leave it up to each week to just sort of decide on
the fly. That's hating the church. People
often sit on the sidelines. They participate in Sunday churches
where there's no fellowship throughout the week. Or maybe they got their
feelings hurt. and they just don't want to be
vulnerable anymore. Well, all these things are sinful
reactions, and it's required of us to treat the church the
same way that Christ treated His church. And He loved her,
and He shed His blood for her, and He had zeal for her, and
He worked for her. He said, I am working even as
my Father is working. And they were working for the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So, these are a number of common
infections. My prayer, my burdens for the
church is that we have humble churches, not wise in their own
eyes, obediently trusting the sufficient scripture, family
life and church life ordered by scripture alone, her members
courageous, willing to suffer in a wicked and perverse generation. always reforming, always crying
out for the healing salve for all of her infections, which
will continually be discovered until He takes us home to glory.
Let's pray. Lord, may it be so that we love
Your church as You have. Amen.
Common Infections in Family-Integrated Churches
| Sermon ID | 119111526341 |
| Duration | 40:15 |
| Date | |
| Category | Conference |
| Bible Text | 1 Corinthians 3:17 |
| Language | English |
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