We'll go to, I think we're on paragraph 14. So we have two, just a couple, two paragraphs left. This one's appropriate for the fact that our Reformed Baptist Network annual meeting is this week. It says, as each church and all the members of it are bound to pray continually for the good and prosperity of all the churches of Christ, in all places and upon all locations to further everyone within the bounds of their places and callings, and exercise their gifts and graces, so the churches, when planted by the providence of God, as they may enjoy opportunity and advantage for it, ought to hold communion among themselves for their peace, increase of love, and mutual edification. So you have to understand the background of this first before we go into the outline. This would not be something that you would need to talk about as a Presbyterian or a Methodist, or an Anglican, or a Lutheran, because they have denominations. By definition, they are denominated and as part of one another. Baptists, though, are form of government because it's congregational and elder-led, but the local church has autonomy. They don't have to actually get together with anyone, according to their own definition of how church government operates. So these guys, what they said was, well, we recognize the autonomy of the local church, but essentially this one is saying that if you are able and can, the churches should be getting together and holding some sort of formal communion with one another. Not just having the gospel coalition conferences, but actually having churches working together as they're able to do. Now, of course, In England in 1689, that's gonna look different than in the United States in 2022. We can actually have this kind of commune with one another with people that are in Spain because of technology. I'm not saying it's the best thing. If you can do local, that's even better. But at least you're able to be a part of another group and have the kind of things that we're trying to do with the Reformed Baptist Network, which is not just a, we don't just get together to have seminars. We actually get together to do business meetings to talk about how are we gonna help these missionaries accomplish their purposes, how are we gonna get together to work for the effort of planting churches, and those kinds of specific things. Yep. So do we do any of that kind of stuff with Salt and Light? No. Well, no, because they're in their own denomination. OK. We do that within the Performed Badges Association. Yeah. Right. So yeah, it would be very weird to do this just because of the way that those churches work and operate. They already have their own denomination that does the kinds of things that we're trying to do as an association of churches. So what we hope to do, though, is Absolutely, absolutely. But this is talking about something more than that. This is talking about actually holding some sort of formal bond together. Church operations. Yeah. So go ahead and speak to that. With respect to Salt Line, for example, we deliberately put in our incorporation documents the position of associate members. Yeah, we did. It wouldn't work, yes, it wouldn't work that way for them. Like, we can't join the Reformed Presbyterian denomination. Not possible. And they can't come and vote on our situation. But we did agree that we would work together in fields where So that's a good way to introduce how, as we take through the outline here. So see how it begins. universal obligations of each church and member to pray for all the churches. Now this doesn't mean to pray for all the Reformed Baptist churches. This means to pray for all the churches. There were no denominations back in the early church. There was just the church at Corinth, the church churches in Galatia, the church at Colossae and so on. You pray for the churches. And there's that ecumenical idea. Why? For the furthering of their prosperity and for the exercising of their gifts and graces. So that's the universal obligations that we have, but there are specific obligations, and this makes sense, doesn't it? Because it's one thing to just talk out there. Well, we just pray, God, that you'd be with all the church. But it's another thing to be specific and say, we pray for this church's endeavor to do this particular thing that we're able to help them with. See the difference there? So this is the idea of planting local churches, and then holding communion together. Now in their case, they were local. In other words, and I tell this before, like the group that I was a youth pastor with, that Harvest Baptist is a part of, There's like 10 or 12 churches in the Denver metro area in that association of churches. Well, our networks and Reformed Baptists, they don't think like that. They're like, well, we got a church in Chicago already. There's like five million people in Chicago. Why can't you have two churches in Chicago? It's a weird thing to me that they think this way. But at the same time I get it, we're very small and so if there's a church in this smaller town, well let's plant one in the next town over, something like that. That's fine. And back in their day it made a lot of sense that you would have these kind of local churches. But we get together and we're like, we want to plant the churches to be in You know, another church in Colorado, so that maybe we get two or three of our churches here that we could join more locally with. And we actually have a guy joining, I think as an individual member right now, but they're trying to constitute, and he visited here a few months back, who's in South Denver, who's trying to plant a confessional church. And so that would be hopefully the beginnings of a local kind of working together in Colorado. And again, for their peace, for the increase of love, for the mutual edification. And then it talks about as you're able. And so what would be some of those? Well, geographic ideas, like it probably doesn't make a lot of sense for us to join an association of churches with a whole group of people in Australia. You could. We have enough technology that it would be okay. But if you can do something where you can actually see each other, get to know each other, that would be better. Yep. Well, let's go with this. Let's go with two and three here. Vocational and providential. So as you're able, we've tried to start a church in about 2010-ish, I guess. Why did we do that? Well, because we had a guy named Tony Jackson who was a pastor who moved to Colorado because he wanted to start a church. That's why we did it. We actually had the providence and the means to be able to attempt it. If you have 30 people in your church and you can't afford your own pastor's salary, It's foolish to go, well, I think we should send half of our O's people down to Parker and start a church down there. Because now you're not even able to support one church, let alone two. So providence is part of those means. Has God put it in your way, in your ability to be able to do that? And he makes it clear for that. Now obviously you can pray for it and seek that kind of an idea, and God can answer that prayer positively in ways that you might not ever expect. I mean, we were no bigger than we are now when we started that church, but we felt like we had the means to be able to do it, that it would work. Okay, yeah, I can tell you that history of that so we were at harvest And my parents had been here for 15 years, involved in the church here in this building. And I was a youth pastor in North Denver that I told you about today. And then circumstances led me to not be there anymore. And I was at Denver Seminary getting an MDiv. And that was the start about 1997. And so I didn't have a church to go to. So I started coming back to Harvest, which is where I went in college and high school. And so we were here with a really good pastor at the time, his name was Bob Buchanan, and he was a Calvinist. And he's the reason why we decided, me and Janelle decided we would come here to this church. Well, Bob, this church, the church itself was not Calvinist, but Bob was, and they brought him in supposedly knowing that he was. you know, like attracts like, and so he actually ended up attracting several Calvinist families to this church, and we had this pretty decent-sized group of Calvinist and Reformed people that were at harvest. Well, Bob ended up leaving. He went in to start a church down in Parker, believe it or not, Castle Rock, Parker, and so we brought in another pastor, which was Sam, who's still here. And I was still going to school, but I've been here for a year under Sam now. So I've been back at Harvest for three years, I think. And now I've graduated with an MDiv degree. I didn't just graduate. I didn't just appoint myself or something. I graduated with the purpose of, this is my degree. So what are we going to do? Well, we kind of talked to each other. And we knew that we had a handful of people that were already here at Harvest. that were Calvinist, and we started talking to them. We saw that there were some folks on the internet named the Bonners that wanted to start a Reformed Baptist Church, and it just seemed like there were some folks that this could work. We also talked to Sam about it. And Sam knew that I had just graduated. He also knew that he wasn't a Calvinist, and that that whole idea of Calvinism had always been causing friction in Harvest, always. And so we asked him what he thought about it. And he said, man, I think it's a great idea. I think you should do it. We're going to lay our hands on you and send you out. So we didn't do it against Harvest's will. We did it with their blessing and their actual sending us out to do it. And I think that's also a very important point. So they knew what we were doing and obviously we still have enough of a relationship with them that When we lost the building in Boulder and we didn't have any place to go we called up Sam and said Can we share the building with you for a little while? He's like come on in so I Don't know if you have anything else to add to that But see, the point is that there were providential circumstances all along that led us to say, you know, I don't think this is a foolish thing to try, let's see what happens. It's one thing to do just, I'm just gonna start a church and I'm the only person that's here and I'm gonna go out and win converts. Well, I mean, you can try that. But we had a little different circumstance. We actually had, I don't know, 18 or something charter members before we ever had our first formal service. And we have been talking to them, and yeah, I mean, so it wasn't a giant group, but it just seemed like God's hand was in it. And like I say, we're still here to this day, so he still wants his church here. What's your suggestion on somebody that would do that in that way? Say the person had a sinning church, but there was no congregants in the area. Right. To start a church like that. So I think that's circumstantial. I think a lot depends on the man himself. If this is a guy who's like me, probably not the best idea. If he's a guy like my uncle Dick, who was a pastor for many years in Wyoming, I'd say not a bad idea. He's a total evangelist. He could probably get away with doing that. I'm not like that. And it also depends on what the church, how much they're willing to help. How much is this going to put the guy out? Like, is he going to work a full-time job and then he's got to go out knocking door to door for 20 hours a week just to get people to show up? I mean, you just have to be wise about it. In other words, it's an Ecclesiastes kind of a thing. You need to be wise about what you're doing. If you have an idea that, like we've had this idea that we would love to see 20 churches in the Front Range that are Reformed Baptist churches spring up and we'd like to plant them all. Okay, that's a great goal, but it would be stupid to just do that. So you pray to that end and hope God will bless it and maybe he'll use you, maybe he'll use somebody else, and then you just continue going. hopefully in wisdom. That's my view of it. So I wouldn't say don't do that. I know a lot of people that say, don't do that, you should never do that. Well, maybe the guy's really called to do that and the church really feels strongly he should do that. Okay, then give it a try, why not? Yeah, okay, go ahead. I think you need to look back at the paragraph 14 where it says, so the church And that's the thing that you're talking about. Because God's hand was clearly on this work. Because as you mentioned, Albert showed up, Mason showed up before we ever had a group of people. And so God brought to us people of real substance and wisdom. He did. And then Stan and Fay came right away as well. I mean, this was a really cool thing because I felt very strongly like we started the church, it was just two families. And we did that just for the reasons that we didn't want to fight over what a constitution was and all that kind of stuff. It was more pragmatic. But I felt very strongly like I do not want to be, this is not a Van Doren church. Well, what did God do? He brought Sean Killian, he brought Stan Campbell, and he brought Mason Staub to us right away. And we were able within less than two years to have a vote adding three more elders to a small church. And the reason I wanted that was so that we would be outnumbered. I didn't want that to be what it could appear to the outside. You got some pillars. And church, pray for us. One of the things I'm really having joy now in is I've been with my company six years. Devin now works with us. And just to see his face in the yard is so refreshing. Now he's been moved over. I'm like, oh, God, keep him here. But I'm really building. And, you know, trying to be blameless and confess the dead flies in my ointment of Christ to them regularly if they see something in this. And there's a lot of people in our workplace professing Christ. And I sprinkle them with a little more truth and they're like, really? Hmm. And they're not even in church. Ceci and I went to a home of some men, as I told you, last summer before, just recently. And we became friends. And I keep giving them little crumbs in our busy, busy terminal where you're not allowed to say hi anymore. And me and Devin talk about that. But I pray because I don't know what to do. I don't know what to tell them. I think they want Christ. I think they might be called. And they won't travel far. And that's been, you know, we're a commuter's church, not a community church. But I really, I'm with you guys still to this day. How do we know if God's gonna raise these men up? And I feel like I'm neglectful to it. And I get too busy. And you know, like the parable says, you're choked out by the, That's why I said like if you've got a guy who has to work 80 hours a week already to pay the bills Not a good idea to send him. I was a missionary church planter many people sensitive to the law of God. By the way, we actually had a visitor from next door here today, this morning. Somebody that my girl, a couple of my girls have gone over and helped do some stuff over there because of Tim. So it was through Tim's contact and she just lives right there. I think her name is Gail, but I can't remember. I think that's her name. So pray for her. That was pretty neat to see her here. So Doug, I mean, would you do, We can talk about that kind of thing. We can talk about that kind of thing. Yeah. What's your next words to any of us? people and we want to bring them to the door, to the door of Christ. Easy with the poker after Bible study. Yeah, Tim used to play poker after we had our Bible study at his house. But of course, it was never for money though. These guys I Mean I I've heard of this too. I mean, so just from our, yeah, just from our experience, there's a lot of guys out there that call themselves reformed that really aren't. I'm not saying they're doing it in a malicious way, but when I talk about reformed, I talk about your confessional, your confessional church, that like you actually have a standard of beliefs that ground what you are and who you are. Yeah. No, I'm just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like reformed Jews, like they're the opposite of reformed, so they're as liberal as you get. All right, let's go to the last paragraph here. This is inter-church communion in the practice. In the case of difficulties or differences either in point of doctrine or administration, wherein either the churches in general are concerned or any one church, in their peace, union, and edification, where any member or members of any church are injured in or by any proceedings and censures not agreeable to truth and order, it is according to the mind of Christ that many churches holding communion together due by their messengers need to consider and give their advice in or about that matter of difference to be reported to all the churches concerned be it, these messengers assembled are not entrusted with any church power properly so called, or with any jurisdiction over the churches themselves, to exercise any censures, either over any church or persons, or to impose their determination on the churches or officers." So again, this is showing that this would not be something you would confess as a Presbyterian or a Lutheran. because they're a denomination and they already have their structure of how they work. The denominations, the synods, they come together and they tell the churches what they're gonna do. In Baptistic government, each church is autonomous. And so what this is saying is that we believe that it's right for churches to be involved and hold community together and if there's a problem in a local church, it's wise for other churches to come along so long as there's not a conflict of interest going on and be able to help that church sort through the mess that's going on locally. But those people do not come in and tell the local church what to do because the local church is autonomous. It has its own, it is its own authority according to the institution of Christ. So Rome can't come to Corinth and say, we determined that we don't like your pastor anymore and so we're gonna give you a new one. It doesn't work that way. Corinth was its own church and had its own rights to do what it wanted to do. We did modify the procedural part of this paragraph when we wrote the Constitution. There were some very sensitive issues in terms of saying that the church that's having the difficulty must ask for help. so that there's not even that ability for our association to impose our help without being asked. And there are some other changes to it, but basically we're conforming to this. Okay, so this is a Baptistic way of doing denominations but without denominations, okay? maintaining the autonomy of the local church. And that's a difference. So a denomination is a group of people that are operated by a hierarchy. And that church falls under its authority and jurisdiction. Baptists are not denominations. We are not a denomination. We are association of churches. We associate together. We do not give Arbynette any authority over the local churches. And Arbynette doesn't want authority over the local churches. Arbynette wants the local churches to work together for common causes because we can't do it all by ourselves. Totally different way of doing church. Now, we need to clarify also that the denomination that Harvest is part of is in fact different than our association of churches. Yeah, that's interesting, because they are Baptists. They're Baptists, but they're part of a denomination. And so, as an example, in the Baptist General Conference, which is a denomination, if Harvest were to disband, it's right in Harvest's constitution that the building would revert to the denomination. So there are elements where Baptists... They can be denomination. That's a good point. And that's probably the, I don't know, I know nothing about Southern Baptists, but my guess is they probably operate more like that than like us. But I don't know. All right. Hopefully that makes sense, and that's four weeks of the doctrine in the church there. But it's an important one, which is why it's the longest. Let's go to chapter 27, now this is new in your notes this week. Deal with the communion of saints. There's only two paragraphs dealing with, so communion. We're gonna deal with union with Christ. Do you see the similarity of those words, communion and union? And then fellowship and communion of the saints. So this chapter speaks to the question of Christian fellowship, and so it logically and naturally comes after a discussion of the church. You wouldn't talk about this in chapter five of the Confession. You would talk about it after you've dealt with all the ways that churches associate. We form churches for the purpose of fellowship, don't we? And this fellowship is rooted in our common fellowship and participation in Christ as our head and the church as his body. So it's grounded, our communion is grounded in Christ's work where we're protected from error by him and this describes for us how this takes place. So the first paragraph, 27 one, all saints that are united to Jesus Christ, their head by his spirit and faith, although they are not made there by one person with him, have fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory. And being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces, and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, in an orderly way, as do conclude to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man. So we got an A, B, and a C, and a D. All saints are truly united to Christ. All saints. Anybody who's a true Christian is truly united to Christ. It doesn't matter where they're at. It doesn't matter what church they're in. They're united how? Well, this goes back to way earlier in the Confession. By His Spirit, through faith in Christ. So this is talking about people who are regenerate. Therefore Christ is our common head and by implication we are His body. Now it says this does not mean we're all one person. It's not pantheism or something. We remain individuals. But it does mean that we have common fellowship with Christ first. Fellowship with what? Fellowship with His graces. Fellowship with His sufferings. Fellowship in His death, in His resurrection, and in His glory. We, because we're united with Christ, have fellowship in those things that He already underwent. True communion. He communicates those things to our souls that He underwent. because of the mystical union that we have. Because it's not just one person and Jesus, because it's a whole bunch of persons and Jesus, we are therefore united to one another. This is marriage language, by the way, where we are united in love, in each other's gifts, and each other's graces. So you could go, for example, to the gifts in 1 Corinthians, or Ephesians, or Romans, those lists of gifts. So one person has one gift and another person has another gift. I don't have that gift, that person doesn't have some other gifts. Well, God puts us all in church together so that we can all have communion with one another's gifts. Because your gift belongs to me and my gift belongs to you, because we have union with each other in Christ. And then the same is true of our graces and our love. So that's the foundation, therefore, of performing our duties together. How? Well, you do it publicly and you do it privately. You do it in church, you do it in your family. You do it in an orderly way. You do it for mutual good of one another. You do it both to the soul and the body of a person. In other words, church isn't just about getting fed spiritually, but if somebody needs physical food, you go and you give them food. Somebody needs their rent taken care of this month, you give them their rent. So it's body and soul, the whole person. We are obligated to one another. And so this means something, folks. Some of you have learned this the hard way. Some of you have never learned this lesson. If you have need and you are part of this church, come to the church and tell us your need. And don't be prideful about it. Because that's the whole point. Remember Acts 2, what are they doing? This is kind of a segue back into politics for a moment. What are they doing? The state is forcing them to all give to a mutual account so that the state can disperse it however it wants. Is that what they're doing? No, they all share everything in common and they all give willingly to help each other out. It's literally the exact opposite of communism, which is so funny because so many people think Acts 2 is communism. You couldn't get any more opposite of communism. Communism is somebody takes my stuff from me and gives it to somebody else. This is I have something and I give it to you because I love you. You couldn't get any different. Oh, it drives me insane. Get me off on politics again. and community, right? They both have commu in it. Isn't that interesting? One is forced and one is coming from within. Communism is the anti-everything of Christ. I mean, it's a utopia. But it's a utopia that man brings. It's basically wanting the millennium or the eternal state that we're gonna usher it in. So Christians have that idea. But we don't do it forcibly through politics. We do it because we believe Jesus is the king and he's gonna usher that in himself and he's doing it. So, yeah, in so many ways, communism is just, oh, it's such an evil thing, such an evil thing. So we're obliged to perform our duties together. Obliged means that God expects you to help your fellow brother. However, you are able to do that in your gifting, in your talents. And we all can't do that the same way. And then these duties are fleshed out more in paragraph two. So let's go to paragraph two, then we'll have discussion if we need any. Saints by profession are bound to maintain a holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God, and in performing such other spiritual services tend to their mutual edification, as also in relieving each other in outward things according to their severe abilities and necessities, which communion, according to the rule of the gospel, though especially to be exercised by them, in the relation wherein they stand, whether in families or churches, Yet, as God offers opportunity, it is to be extended to all the household of faith, even those who in every place call upon the name of Christ. Nevertheless, their communion with one another as saints does not take away or infringe the title or property which each man has in his goods and possessions." Just mention that last one here. Communism! Written in 1689. This is not communism. That's what that's saying. Isn't that interesting? So we got three points here. A, all saints by profession are bound to each other. We're bound in holy fellowship, since you usually need a two, that should be, the second one should be in communion. And then we do this in worship of God together, in performing our spiritual services to mutually edify each other, and in relieving each other of outward distresses according to, and this is wisdom, ability, and necessity. What does that mean? It means you don't give more than you need. Somebody needs something, you give them what they need, you don't give them more than what they need, it's not, this is, you know, but also ability. If you don't have the ability, you give what you can. Still give something, that's the widow's mite sort of an idea. And then this communion extends in four ways, in families, in churches, in private lives to fellow Christians, and to all the household of faith, to other Christians everywhere, okay? And then like I said, this does not in any way imply socialism or communism. It says, does not take away or infringe the title or property which each man has in his goods and possessions. Ananias and Sapphira had title and deeds and property. What was their problem? They lied about it, right? They had the obligation to give it to the church. However, that worked itself out according to their needs. They lied about it. All right? So this is basically, this chapter is describing to you how it is that we have communion with one another. And it's rooting it in our communion that we have with Christ. And it's telling you that because we are all united to him, we all share in his benefits. Therefore, we all share in each other benefits that he's given to us by spirit. And therefore, we are obligated to each other to take care of each other, body and soul. You're obligated to do that. Now, I'm gonna spend just one second here talking about the universal church. You can't do that with the universal church. How are you gonna do that? This is something where you need to know people's faces and you need to know who they are because you can't, you need to, you don't just give to the Red Cross, you give to people. And that's part of what it means, that's part of why you belong to a church in membership, why you commit to a local church, so that you can have the benefit when you're in need and so that when somebody else is in need, you can have the blessing of being able to help them. It's an incredibly important thing. And there's reasons why communism and stuff is forced upon people. It's because Christians don't take this seriously enough and go, well, I don't really need to do that. Well, yes, you do. You're obligated by Christ to do this. And if we actually did what we were supposed to do, we wouldn't have to worry about all these politicians coming in and creating a bizarro Superman of what it's supposed to be. You like to say, I've thought about this a lot over the years, because you said this way back in high school, that the welfare state created by FDR was one of the worst things that ever happened because it created in the church this idea that, well, I don't really have to take care of my brother now. It took away both the obligation to take care of your brother and the privilege to take care of your brother. Well, we can say that all we want, but it does not take away our obligation to one another, right? So if you live in Sweden and you're taxed 90%, you still have the obligation to personally take care of your brother. And if we actually take that seriously, maybe Christians would go out and fight this socialism and say, enough is enough. I want to be able to give my money to the people that God has put on my heart to give it to. And I will do that because I'm a Christian. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. There's so much wisdom in these two paragraphs that is the opposite of what we're seeing in politics in our day from both parties. It's disgusting. And they also knew how it would line their own coffers. and how it would give them votes and everything else. It's just sick. It makes it hard to even supply for brothers and people around you. It does. That's my point. Because it makes it so burdensome on the church, if Christians actually took this more seriously, they would then, out of necessity, go and fight the governments who are taking their money away and stealing from them. Because it's not right. Yeah, exactly. Great, great tie in. Yep. It lays out exactly who you're supposed to give it to in this pair, in the second paragraph. That's right. So we've got, we got the double obligation where you are obligated to give to your brother, but you're also obligated to let your brother know that you have a need. And that's probably even harder for us than the first. And some of you have learned it and you've said, I have a need, I don't wanna do this, but this is the whole point, the whole point of church. All right, so hopefully these two chapters on the church will work its way into your heart and help you see how important the local church is and why it is that we take it so seriously. And we now are gonna eat and then we're gonna drive to the RV network. So pray for the network, that's why I wore the T-shirt. and that we don't get into some crazy accident on the way there. It's in Indiana. And one of these days, maybe we'll actually have it in a place where people want to go visit.