Okay, we are continuing our discussion about church's officers, and in particular, what we mean by that is pastors and deacons. Everyone has a different religious background of some sort, and if you say the word minister, or if you say the word pastor, you have a different picture in your mind. If your background is Roman Catholic or Anglican, Baptist, Quaker, Mennonite, Amish, Charismatic, whatever you are somewhat familiar with or whatever you have experienced, you have a picture in your mind of a minister, a pastor, that fits your particular experience. It's not just experience-oriented, though. Each denomination has a different understanding of what a minister or a deacon is. And so what we've been doing is we've been kind of working through this idea of ministers and churches and just trying to discern what the Bible means when it talks about these officers. We're gonna give some review. We are using, of course, since we're Baptist church, we're using the Baptist Confession of Faith as our Sunday school outline. It is, of course, not the word of God. It is a confession of faith that was written some 350 years ago or so. But we're using that as sort of an outline or a curriculum for us. What we wanna do, of course, is look at scripture, ultimately, as our final authority. So here's some background as to what we've talked about so far. Sometimes when the scriptures talk about a church or use the word church, what they're referring to is what we might refer to as the universal church. The universal church is the idea of Christians being saved and part of the body of Christ, but not necessarily in the same local church. All true Christians, regardless of denomination or background, or regardless of what era or age they grew up in, or a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, you know, 100 years in the future. All believers are part of this universal church. And so sometimes when you read the Bible, you get the word church, but it's referring to this concept of the universal invisible church. Then we saw that there are sometimes in the New Testament where the word church is used in the sense of a local church. That is a group of people, such as ourselves, who come together on the Lord's Day for worship, fellowship, prayer, Lord's Supper, et cetera. Local churches are to be made up of those who are part of the universal church, or basically, those who profess faith. Those who stand up and say, I know what it means that Christ died on the cross for my sins. And I trust his death on the cross by itself to pay for my sins. Those who profess this faith and obedience to Christ are counted as saints. Now, our Baptist authors of the confession Put that word saints in there intentionally to countermand and to contrast us with the Roman Catholic concept of saints. The biblical idea is that we are all saints if we are believers. Third thing we've seen is that there are no perfect local churches. There is no such thing on this earth. Christ will always have a kingdom on earth. He will always have a universal church. There will always be believers until he comes back. But in the meantime, there is no such thing as a perfect church. And there have been a lot of errors that have crept into Christianity over the attempt to create the perfect church. Jesus tells a parable of wheat and tares. There's a man who owns a field and he goes out and he plants wheat. But his enemy who hates him decides he's going to get even with him by planting weeds in his wheat field. And they both grow up at the same time and it isn't until the weeds and the wheat begin to mature that you can tell the difference between them. And so the servants say to the guy that owns the field, do you want us to go through and rip up the weeds? And the owner of the field says, no, because if you rip up the weeds, you're going to be pulling up the roots of the wheat as well. Let's just wait until the harvest, and then we'll separate them. The idea behind that is, yes, there are people who are true believers and there are true churches, but if you're trying to create a perfect church and to get rid of all error and all people who claim to be Christians who aren't, then in the process, you're gonna be offending true believers in the process. You're gonna be destroying as much as you accomplish. Instead, Christ says, Wait till the harvest. That is, wait till the second coming. Wait till the judgment. God will sort them out. The fourth thing we've seen is that only Christ is head of the church. There is no one individual or human being who can stand up and say, I have final authority over all the churches, or over all the church, generic. Only Christ has that authority. And fifth, we've seen that Christ actually uses this authority. This is not just a theoretical idea. He uses this authority to save people and then to command them to be part of local churches. Finally, or number six, I shouldn't say finally, because we're not quite there yet. Church membership in the Bible is commanded but joining a particular church is voluntary. In other words, if you are a Christian, you should be a part of a church. Which church you are a part of is a matter of your covenanting, your choice, your will. You choose. There should be no one that says, oh, you live in this area, you go to that church. Or, you must go to this church. One of the basic ideas of separation of church and state is not that we all have to be non-Christians when it comes to government. The basic idea is that church has no right to rule in such a way that it mandates the civil authority to enforce its decrees. You don't go to this church, we're going to throw you in jail. You say, has that ever happened? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So the Baptists are champions of the idea that which particular church you join is voluntary, and you give account of that to God yourself. Then we see that Christ having authority doesn't just use it to save people, he also uses it to give to the church. And this is an important concept. Each local church is granted authority. Now this authority is under a certain proper use. And what I mean by proper use, I mean it has to be bounded by what Christ himself tells us we can do. He doesn't give us authority to do whatever we want to do. But the church is granted authority and that authority is to carry out the worship or the discipline that he commands. So my example was a minister stands in the pulpit. And he opens the word of God and he says, sexual relationships outside of marriage are sinful. And he shows you in the Bible where it says that very thing. Our society is prone to look at such a minister and say, where do you get the right to say that? And what we've seen from scripture is Christ gives the right to the church. to preach, to teach, and to declare only those things that are commanded and directed of us in the word of God. Any questions about that so far? All right, here's what our confession actually says in the most awkwardly worded paragraph of the entire confession, in my opinion. But two major points, this is what our Baptist forefathers wrote 350 years ago. A particular church, gathered and completely organized according to the mind of Christ, consists of officers and members. And basically you can summarize that by looking at the blue underline. A local church, a church, has officers and members. That's the first point. Second point, the officers, And then if you jump all the way down, are bishops or elders and deacons. And what we saw is that bishops, elders, pastors are all the same thing. Where we're gonna go today, however, is we're gonna look at a particular phrase that's right here. For the peculiar administration of the ordinances. Okay? So let me just kind of flip through for review real quick. A particular church consists of officers and members. We looked at the term bishop, elder, and pastor, and we saw that these are actually used interchangeably in scripture depending on the function of the man. A pastor is a shepherd. The elder is the older, spiritually mature person. The bishop is the overseer. And when you look in the scriptures at these words, they are used interchangeably. You have more than one in each church. You don't just have one bishop over several churches. You actually have, for example, in Philippians 1.1, you actually have several bishops in one church. Won't go through that again. We also saw the church has deacons. So pastors and deacons are the officers. Here's what we want to focus on this morning, the peculiar administration of ordinances. What is a peculiar administration of ordinances? First of all, what do we mean by, pardon my handwriting, what do we mean by ordinances? Now, I'm gonna say something just because this is my soapbox, okay, this is just me. When the Baptists wrote this confession 350 years ago, they cheated. You know what I mean by that? They borrowed almost everything, 95% of the content, from the Congregationalist churches, who also cheated by borrowing 95% or more from the Presbyterian confession, the Westminster confession of faith. So we can actually look at Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Baptists and say, 95% of what you guys thought was so important 350 years ago that you put it in a confession of faith, we agree on. Here's my soapbox. If you have a copy of the confession on your computer, type in search word on the Baptist confession for the word sacrament. You know how many times it occurs? Zero. We don't call them sacraments. Now, I'm not picking on you, John. This is just my soapbox. The Baptists took every usage of the word sacrament that was in the Presbyterian or the Congregationalist, and they changed it to the word ordinance. It's not there. Sacrament implies implies what? Doesn't necessarily mean it, but in particular, if you're in the Reformation and you're coming out of the Catholic Church, Okay, and by the way, how many sacraments does the Catholic Church have? Seven, okay. John, and then Daniel. Yeah, it implies something holy, which, yeah, Joby. Okay, and something we do to earn merit from God, and that merit is given to us because Yes, you do it, and it becomes a part of you, and you become, as a result, more holy, more sanctified. The point being also is, it just works. A sacrament, and by the way, this isn't limited to just Roman Catholics, by the way. But a sacramental view at least implies the idea, in my mind, that you could be thinking of the Super Bowl but partake of the Lord's Supper and it still works. And I think my opinion, I can't prove this, but I think the Baptists changed that word to ordinances to get across the idea that we're talking about something that Christ has ordained, not something that the church has ordained. So in the Baptist perspective, when we talk about ordinances, what are we talking about? Yeah, Lord's Supper and baptism. And again, pardon my chicken scratch. So we're talking about Lord's Supper and baptism. Now, the idea behind this is that we do this not of our own, but because Christ ordained it. That's why they are called ordinances. But let's look, if you will, also at this word, because we don't use this word the way it was used back then. Peculiar. What does peculiar mean today? I look at Lee and I say, man, he's a peculiar guy. I'm sorry? Or you look at me and go, and I wouldn't blame you. Odd, right? Eccentric. Oh, good word. The word in this sense doesn't mean odd, or eccentric, or strange, which is the way we use the word peculiar. By the way, I'm from Missouri, and between Kansas City and Springfield, where I went to college, there's a town called Peculiar, Missouri, and it had 13 people in it, which was always strange. Not 14, not 12, 13. It's a peculiar town, anyway. No, it was just odd. They didn't have to be exclusive, nobody wanted to go there. No, it's just a small little town, I have no idea why they named it that. Now, 350 years ago, the word peculiar doesn't mean strange, it means exclusive. And so what the confession says, what the Baptists say is that the administration of the Lord's Supper and baptism is exclusive to the officers of the church. That is, when the church meets on such occasions as we observe the Lord's Supper, It is the ministers, pastors, officers I mean, pastors and deacons, who will administer the Lord's Supper. When baptism is done, it is the minister who will administer baptism. Now, is that universally accepted in every church? Okay. Give me some differences, some examples, some illustrations. In the back, Joby. Okay, and I have witnessed that. There are churches where the elements of the Lord's Supper are placed somewhere, and if you feel like taking the Lord's Supper, you go do it yourself, okay? Yeah, there are churches that actually insist on the father doing the baptism, the parents. And again, I've seen that as well. There's always the, hey, there's three Christians, we're out on a fishing trip, and we have some leftover Coca-Cola and potato chips, let's have the Lord's Supper here on the banks of the river. Which if you've been using worms as bait, I don't recommend. Yeah, because the water in the Jordan River is more holy. Yeah, we had a guy come back from an Israeli trip and he had a little vial. This is water from Jordan River. He was just teasing, you know. For $29.99, you too can get. Then he had this rock and it was kind of reddish color. This is from the valley where David fought Goliath. It may or may not be the stone that killed Goliath, but for $29.99, you too can. Now, he was being facetious and sarcastic to the max, but there might be, you know, reasons for that. And my response would be no. The question was if you're way off in an isolated area, which is awfully hard to find in modern world, but not impossible. But you have a group of Christians in those situations. And the answer is one of two things. Like Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch, you can have a man who is an officer of another church sent by that church to assist this group of people over here until they become their own church. And that's the second point. A group of Christians somewhere should as soon as is feasible possible, form a church. Now, are there going to be situations where that may not be possible? And in those situations, baptism doesn't save you, it doesn't help you get to heaven, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't seal your salvation. So are there situations where things become, what's the word, improper? Well, yeah, but you know, normally a couple gets married, right? What do they do? They get a marriage license, they have some sort of a ceremony, some sort of a commitment ceremony of some kind, okay? Single man and single woman get stranded on a desert island and they wanna get married. There's no minister, there's no church, there's no marriage license. What do they do? Well, they have a commitment ceremony, right? Are there any witnesses? Is there any, you know, I'm assuming she doesn't have a wedding dress. Well, it's kinda improper, not improper, what's the word I'm after? Irregular. It doesn't fit the normal pattern. There's always situations where something is gonna come up that is gonna be irregular. And when we get to the chapter on baptism, we'll talk about that. Oh, Mark Landers, Jeff Massey. I'll tell you what, let's you and me talk about that one when we're done. Okay. Yeah, can I tell you what, brother, can I move on real quick? Because I'm looking at the bottom of the hour here. Let's start talking for a moment then about how do we know from Scripture that pastors and deacons have authority in the church, and in particular, authority to baptize and observe the Lord's Supper? Because we can't just assume it. You go to church, there's the pastor, he does the baptizing, they administer the Lord's Supper, of course. Well, wait a minute, let's backpedal and let's figure out, does the scripture itself actually give us warrant for saying this? All right, let's go to Matthew 16, 19. Jesus is speaking and he's speaking to Peter. And Peter has just confessed that he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, okay? The Son of the living God. And so Jesus says to Peter in the verse before, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this unto you but my Father who is in heaven. You are Peter, upon this rock I will build my church. And then he says, and I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Now, we need to understand what he means by this. The keys of the kingdom of heaven. What do we mean by keys? Keys are those things that open and close, if you will, gates and in particular this is probably a reference to the gates of a city. I haven't seen this done in a long time, but it used to be more popular in America. Some celebrity would visit a city, and the mayor would present the celebrity the keys to the city. Well, it's a key to nothing, you know. But in 400 years ago or so, when you literally had a city with a wall and gates, a key to the gates of the city was was crucial. You had the authority to unlock those gates and let somebody in. You had the authority to lock those gates and keep somebody out. And so these keys of the kingdom that are talked about here are used to not only open and shut, but also to bind And to loose. Now that's rabbinical language. To bind and loose in Jesus' time meant the authority to declare right and wrong. To bind. No, you can't do that. Why? Because the Bible says da da da da da da da. Now, often in Jesus' time, the rabbis might say, you can't do that, why? Because Rabbi so-and-so said that Rabbi so-and-so said that Rabbi, and it might be rabbinical authority rather than scriptural, per se. But the idea of binding and loosing is the idea of declaring what you can and cannot do, what is right and what is wrong. And that's not just morals, but that would fall into any area, including worship. So Peter here is given an authority. He's given an authority to open and shut, that is to open and close the gates of heaven, of the gospel, of the kingdom, and to declare what is acceptable and what is not, what is right and what is wrong. What we find out later on, however, is that same authority is given to the local church. In Matthew 18, Jesus, I say to you, and in this case, he's talking about the church, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. We've talked a little bit about the tense of those verbs, in Matthew 18, binding and loosing there, is referring to what has already been declared. That is, when the church, excuse me, that is not how you spell declared. When the church declares right and wrong, it's doing so on the basis of what heaven has already declared is right and wrong. Now, since this language is the same, we're assuming the same thing. And I think it's a good assumption. When Christ says to Peter, bind, right, or loose, I think it's a good assumption that when he uses the same language elsewhere regarding the church, that there are two points you can draw. That one, this authority is not exclusive to Peter. It's not just Peter that has the authority to bind and loose. Two, the authority to bind and loose is not a authority which Peter or the church possesses of themselves. It's an authority to stand up and say, this is what God has already said. Again, the minister stands in the pulpit and says, the Bible says you will not steal. And somebody says, who gives you the right to say that? Me, in myself, I don't have the right to say anything. But I do have the power and authority to tell you what God has said in the Bible. Any questions about these two verses before we move on? Because they form the basis of the idea that the preaching of the gospel with authority And the declaring of right and wrong with authority comes from Christ given to the apostles and given to the church. No, I'm saying that the will be In English, modern English implies a future tense. And I think that is the wrong translation of the tense of the verb. It's not the church makes a decision and then God in heaven goes, okay, I'll do that. You guys made a decision to bind something, I'll go along with it. God's not making up his mind based on what we vote on. Rather, the will be bound should not be understood as God responding to us, but rather you should understand it as something that's already been decided. What you bind on earth is based on what God has already bound in heaven. Okay. Oh, no, to bind means to exclude from something. To loose means to permit something or to say that that's acceptable. Okay. To forbid something, to say something is wrong or to forbid something. To loose is to say such a thing is acceptable. Okay. Or thou mayest do. Okay. But again, this is not something based on whatever we decide. So, I was raised, and I'm gonna give an example that maybe some of you can identify with. I was raised with the teaching that all alcoholic beverages, no matter what, are sin. Well, drunkenness most certainly is, inebriation is, right? But even partaking smaller amounts, it didn't matter. I had a, in fact I knew of a pastor and I had a professor in college that would not gargle with Listerine because it has alcohol in it. Because alcohol in and of itself is sinful. Now regardless of what you think about partaking of alcohol, eventually I came to the point where I was loosed from that teaching Because I looked into the scriptures and I see, oh, it's not the thing that is sinful, it's my heart and how I make use of it that is sinful. So, anyway, I won't go into details about Christian liberty and ethics and morals. We'll be here all night. The point being is that Christ is declaring to Peter as apostle and to the church that they have authority to make these declarations provided, of course, that they are doing so under Christ's own authority and commands. We'll see that as we move through. Now, let's move into the ordinances then. I'm going to just get into this first verse. This is what's often termed the Great Commission, Matthew 28, 18 through 20. All authority has been given to me. This is Christ speaking. I should have that in red. I don't. I apologize. Not because it's mandatory. You know, whether you have it in red or not, you are loosed. but because it just clarifies. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore, make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them, and that's what I want you to focus on, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. So we have baptism specifically mentioned, and I'm going to say that when we are taught to observe all things that Christ has commanded you, we will see that this also includes the Lord's Supper. Now, to whom is Jesus speaking at this moment? I'm sorry? It's the 11, in particular. If you were to look this up, Judas Iscariot is dead. He's gone and hung himself and other bad things. So this is the 11 apostles to whom Jesus is addressing. Don't jump to us too quickly. Modern day American religion goes to Matthew 28 and says, oh, he's talking to me. as an individual. I'm supposed to go and make disciples and baptize and teach. Take it one step at a time. Don't immediately assume that everything in the Bible is addressed to you as an individual. The immediate audience, the initial audience is the 11 apostles. Okay, I do have time, let's go to the second one. Luke 22, okay. And he, Jesus, took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, this is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Likewise, he also took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you. Notice the phrase, do this in remembrance of me. To whom is Christ speaking at that moment? The 11 apostles. I believe Judas has left the building. Okay? Yeah, he's gone to make his betrayal final and final preparations. And I think if you coordinate the four gospels together, you can see that Judas by this time has left. So here are the 11 apostles. Okay? Now we're gonna talk about Lord's Supper with Paul, who has made an apostle out of time, as he calls it, later on. And he says, I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you. Now this is the section on the Lord's Supper. The Lord Jesus on the same night in which he was betrayed took bread. Where does Paul get the idea of the Lord's Supper? I received from the Lord. Now, Jesus Christ is dead, buried, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. So Paul is claiming that he has received this as a result of a apostolic vision or an apostolic, what's the word I want? Vision from Christ, the resurrected Christ. Christ gives this to an apostle. So here's the solution. Matt, BJ, and I are now apostles. No. But how do we get from there to here? And because I'm out of time, I'm gonna use that as a segue. How do we get from Christ giving instructions for baptism and the Lord's Supper to apostles to us doing it today? And what I want you to think of over the week is this. What are the possible alternatives? What are the possible options? and there are lots of them. That's where we're gonna pick up next week as we talk about the officers and, in particular, the peculiar administration of the ordinances. All right, let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, we gather together today, first and foremost, to enjoy The privilege of knowing from your word that you have promised salvation to all who confess their sins and believe in Christ's death alone to pay for those sins. It is a free gift given to us without any merit on our part. And we enjoy the knowledge that our sins are blotted out and forgiven. We ask you, Father, then, that in the spirit of this joy, we would enter into worship this morning, that as we sing together and pray together, as we read the scriptures together and confess our sins together, that we will do so as a family of Christ, brothers and sisters of our Lord himself, made so by the promise that you have given to us of salvation. May we rejoice in our salvation this morning and return back to you all praise and worship. We thank you in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, amen.