Church Government

Morning, church.

Hear the word of the Lord from 1 Peter 5, 1 through 5.

So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders.

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

This is the word of the Lord.

May be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

How about that snow?

Yeah, there's a lot of snow.

It actually felt like winter.

This first half of the week was like summer, and then it was like winter.

Isn't that Colorado?

All right, all right, enough small talk.

Let's pray and we'll move into today's text.

Holy Father, we thank you for gathering us together.

We thank you for your loving-kindness towards us as your church, for your presence and your care.

Lord, that you rule over us as a good king, that you give us good gifts, Lord.

Father, we thank you for drawing us together in unity, that the dividing walls that we would place between us, Lord, you have torn down by your blood.

We pray that we would receive that this morning, that we would learn how to live in the unity that you call us to, and that we would enjoy the brotherhood that you give to us in your church.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

This is our last week in this series, which I've titled Redemption Story, which has been about the church.

We're taking a look in this first part of the year at what the church is and what the callings are of the church, what the functions are of the church.

And I've described at the beginning of each sermon this sort of pattern of the church is something that when it's really working well is sort of invisible to us.

Because when the church is really working, we're not thinking a lot about the church.

We're thinking a lot about Jesus and we're thinking a lot about loving one another.

But occasionally, just like when our glasses get a smudge on them, we take them off and we look at the thing that we are looking through in order to adjust it and then put it back and see through it more clearly.

And so that's what we are doing for this series.

We are looking at the church, the thing which we are normally looking through, in order to understand it better and thus look through it more clearly and see and behold Jesus and love one another more perfectly.

So today is our last uh uh part of the series, and today we are talking about church government.

I was trying to come up with like a really captivating title for this sermon, and I came up with church government, because I know when like you're perusing a like a bookshelf and you see something titled church government, it's like, oh, I've got to read this.

Sounds too uh good.

Um that's not of course that's of course not typical.

Church government is um not particularly exciting.

In fact, it's oftentimes uh something boring, and we might even experience it as a little bit threatening to understand what church government is, but I want to frame it like this.

Let's let's let's remember where we are in the series.

We began by looking at the first principle, the the aim of the church, this this guiding North Star principle for the church, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel is the only thing that is strong enough to hold the central care of the church, because it is the announcement that Christ is Lord, and it is the announcement that he became a man, died for our sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day.

That this is of first importance, that the Lord really has redeemed a people for himself in Jesus Christ.

He really is our Lord.

This is real, it actually happened.

And our response to that is the second uh main function of the church that we looked at, which is worship.

So we see the gospel, which is this announcement of Christ as Lord, and then our response as his people is to worship him as Lord.

Then we saw that our worship uh has these two aspects that are sort of nested within it, and that is the nurture of the church.

The church is a place where we, in relationship with one another, grow in the knowledge of the Lord, that we are not rescued as a mere aggregate, as though God is just uh piling bricks together, but we are rescued into an organism where we become part of the life of the church, receiving its nurture and nurturing the other members of the church.

And then the other aspect of our worship is mission, that Christ calls us into mission for the church.

So we could think of the nurture of the church as the care for those whom Christ has redeemed, and we can think of the mission of the church as care for those whom Christ has not yet accomplished their redemption by bringing them into faith in him.

And so I should say applied their redemption for those of you that are uh taking notes, but taking notes to email me later, not like for your own edification.

That'd be the there's a distinction.

Uh so there's uh so it net now we've got this church which is structured by looking at the gospel, responding in worship to the gospel, nurture, nurturing one another and on mission together.

And last week, since we looked at mission, we might be thinking, okay, so how is it that we reach the world?

How is it that the church will spread to the nations?

But if you have been a part of a church, or if you have read any church history, Lord have mercy, then your question before how is it that we can rally to reach the nations should be something more like how is it that these people will continue to exist?

How is it that the church itself will be able to hold together and preserve a unity together over time and not disintegrate into nothingness or devour themselves and chop themselves so finely apart that they're uh uh uh separated from one another?

Those are the two tendencies of church governments, as far as I can see.

One is we uh make no description of who we are as a people.

And we uh live in, we take such an emphasis of the open-handedness of the gospel that what amounts what it amounts to is that there is nothing that actually unites us that's outside of ourselves.

We just say we're open-handed to everyone and and everything.

And then that becomes a group of people that become indistinguishable from the culture, and there's nothing that actually holds them together, and so they disintegrate into nothingness.

This is the story of mainline denominations in the United States that are just dwindling and dwindling and uh won't sell their church buildings, which is a real bummer, because you know, I have a friend who wants to buy who wants to buy them.

But they just hold on to them while they um uh believe believe just the very same things that our culture believes about about everything.

So they disintegrate into nothingness.

But there's another thing that churches tend to do as well, which is this is more the problem on the conservative side, which is they they start parsing so finely, and it we become unable to make distinctions between what are central issues of importance, and every every little minor distinction starts to weigh the same for the church.

And so this church is uh more orthodox than this church, so we split.

And actually, there's this smaller group in here that discovers we're actually more orthodox than all the rest of these scoundrels in here, so they split again and they split again, and you can see that it becomes the same sort of disintegration.

You know, one is uh like a like a vaporous, uh it vanishes into the wind, and one gets chopped up so finely that it just uh blows away like dust.

So, how is it that a people can hold to the gospel and hold together over time?

That is that they have real principles, they aren't just tossed around in open-handedness, but they are able to maintain real unity so that they aren't just parsing one another further and further apart.

The whole world, in a sense, is trying to figure out this question.

How is it that a people can hold together?

When I was a young man, Ed, I don't know why you're laughing.

The uh the stories that I was was interested in were store were like were like tear it apart stories.

You know, like like burn it all down stories.

Um there's uh oh uh I haven't uh somebody needs to write this thesis.

I've probably shared this before, but on the late 90s men's liberation movies.

So we've got Fight Club, we've got Office Space, um we've got um American Beauty.

Um those are all those are all the same movie.

And they're all like, look at these structures of America and stuff, and it we need to tear it all down.

Those feel a little um quaint at uh this moment in in history.

Uh it feels because here's here how do we tear it all down?

It's not an interesting question.

It's a it's a useless and boring question because things constantly tear themselves down all the time.

The interesting question is how does anything hold together ever?

How does a marriage hold together?

How does a family hold together?

How does it how does a church possibly hold together over time?

That's an interesting question.

And it's it's much more difficult to answer than like a bunch of dudes doing weird vandalism tricks in between their fighting each other.

That was the peak of cool to me.

And now it's like a little it's funny.

It's funny.

It just doesn't seem that hard.

It's like way easier than having one kid to just like fight your friends for fun.

That's not hard.

That's okay.

How is it that anything holds together?

There are two sort of uh distinctions that I want us to that I want us to make within the church.

And it you'll kind of uh pick up on these.

You this is more of a Rorschach test, um, because the church is two things at once.

It's an organization and it's an organism.

And the thing that you like more has nothing to do with the church, it just has to do with you.

If you tend towards the organism part, then the organization part might feel threatening because we'll think look, we've got these structures in place, and what these structures are going to come in and do is they're they're going to crush the work of the spirit in the church by having these structures in place.

And we need to create space for the organic movement of the church in the world.

And the other side is if you uh tend towards the organization space, then you'll think, okay, it is it is obvious that if these processes aren't in place, then is anything even really happening within the church?

Like until there's a list of names of members and until there's appointed elders, can we really say that it even is a church?

Or is Jesus just like holding his lampstand and he's like, well, once this membership process is done, I'll be able to give you this lampstand?

And like in Revelation, the churches get lampstands.

It's a Bible reference.

I'll tell you about this book later.

But the they uh uh it Jesus is like Jesus is so um finds uh finds the structures of his church so necessary that until they're perfect and precise, he's not even able to participate in them.

And so we're just like holding back until we can work on the church.

And so that those are those are sort of the differences, but we'll see in the text today that the apostles did not see these as oppositional to each other.

That the organism of the church and the organization of the church were not opponents for the apostles, but these were both works of the Spirit, that only the Spirit could make order happen, just as only the Spirit could enliven the church and transform the hearts and build relationships among the people.

During our sermon on nurture, the church's nurture, we looked at this text in Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 12.

Ephesians 4:11–12

It says, And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God.

So Christ, his gift to the church by the Spirit, is leaders and church offices, structure, people that inhabit these structures that are put in place by the Lord for the church.

But what those structures do is they equip the saints for the work of the ministry, so then the body is building itself up so that we all attain to this knowledge of the Lord.

We all grow in love for one another, we grow relationally together, and these structures support that sort of growth.

And so the apostles, when they saw the organism nature of the church and the organization nature of the church, they did not think of these as oppositional, but they thought of them as fruit of the spirit.

That there could be no order without the work of the spirit, and there could be no enlivening without the work of the spirit.

So what we see in this is that there is no structure so strong that it doesn't depend on the organic nature of its members for its health.

So there so another way to think of this is there is no church structure that will keep you safe.

We are um we're the church is at a moment where we're sort of studying disintegration.

Not as much now because it's 2024 and it's not the rise and decline of Mars Hill is not trending anymore.

But when it was, do you guys remember that?

Yeah.

So uh we were studying, we were studying decline, and part of that is like this impetus, okay, we will be able to find the church structure that will keep us safe.

Because we all learned how to be structural thinkers in well, really since 2015.

But our fundamental way of thinking of all problems, like here's the insight if you want to write a think piece, here's something that's bad, and then here's the think piece part.

Here's why it's built, it's baked into the structures of society.

That's like how you write a think piece.

And every editor hears that pitch and says, Yeah, you go run with that one.

I need back on my desk by five.

I don't know how newspaper men work anymore.

But there's uh so our our sense is everything is a structural problem.

If we get the right structure in place, then we will be able to be safe within these structures, no matter how ill-intentioned the people participating in them are.

That's not true.

There is no church structure that can be substituted for the character, the work of the spirit of the people in the people inhabiting the structure.

That is to say, there is no organization that can withstand the decay of the organism.

It will become lifeless.

And there is no organism so strong that it can survive without the structures that the spirit brings.

These are both necessary and essential, these are both works of the spirit.

So I want you to hear, because you'll be in a church meeting and you'll hear things like we just need to let this like organically happen.

And it and then like if we put too much structures in place, we're gonna suffocate this thing, or the other side of that thing.

What I'm hoping to do partially this morning is that dichotomy in your mind, you just think, oh, this is a false dichotomy.

Because these are both works of the spirit.

So what we need to learn how to do is authentically inhabit the structures that God calls us to.

That's what we're looking to do as a church.

To in obedience receive the structures and then participate in them with the fullness that the Lord calls us to.

So we're going to look at this in two ways as we look at church government as it's laid out.

One is within the local church, this pattern of church government within the local church that the scripture shows us.

And then we're going to look at the pattern of church government across local churches.

So, how is it that churches interact with one another?

So, how do we interact as a church?

What are the governmental structures that are put in place, and how do churches interact with one another?

I learned this past week that the word government comes from the Latin gubener, which means to steer a ship.

That's cool.

I like nautical things.

And that means that the purpose of there's a couple of interesting things about that.

No one man can steer a ship.

It takes a it takes a whole crew to steer a ship.

That's why it's a helpful term for for government.

You know, you need to sit, you need to say things.

Go hoist.

And I've run out of words, apparently.

But the um we're in a landlocked state, all right.

I'm from Florida, which isn't, but there's a um so the this idea of government is like this team, there's something like a team effort that guides towards a purpose.

That's what we need to hear in the word government, that there's this guiding towards a purpose.

Okay, so here's what uh this within local churches, here's the structure.

The structure is elders and members.

This is very simple.

Elders and members.

In Titus 1, 5, Paul says to Titus, this is why I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

So Titus and Paul had been working on the island of Crete.

They'd been planting churches all around the island.

And these churches need to be brought into order.

And so Paul leaves Titus in Crete, and he says, the way that you bring these churches into order is you appoint elders in these places.

Because they need to have leaders in order for the structure to maintain.

The pattern of church leadership in Scripture is really basically the same throughout the whole text.

We see something just like this in Israel.

This is why we get the word elders.

Think like tribal elder.

You know, Israel's operating at this tribal level.

When the church takes takes place, we become, in a sense, like these little tribes, but no longer.

National, but like these international tribes.

And these are run by a plurality of elders.

This is the pattern of churches, of church leadership in the New Testament, that each local congregation is led by a plurality of elders that are chosen from among them.

So that is this organizational structure.

But there's an organic nature to this, for that structure to become meaningful.

In 1 Peter 5, 2 through 3, Peter writes this.

Peter is an apostle.

An apostle is like one notch better than elder.

Because they were witnesses of Christ.

But Peter, when he writes this, he doesn't address the elders that he's writing to as an apostle.

He says as a as a fellow elder with you.

He says this as a command to the elders: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

So you see, it is not enough to just put the structure in place.

In order for the structure to work that's put in place, it needs willing participants.

And so Peter speaks right to the heart, to the motivations of the elders that are put in place over these churches.

That you would shepherd them.

That means a guidance and a care and a protection and a being with them.

Exercising oversight, but not under compulsion.

But willingly.

Eagerly.

Seeking out your growth in the Lord.

We would have this sort of thought experiment when we were first developing the eldership for Redemption Church.

And part of the experiment was Jesus comes into one of our elder meetings and he says, Hey, how's Betty?

She's one of my sheep.

I died for her on the you guys know about the cross.

And I've given her to this church for her care.

And we say, Betty, Betty, Betty, Betty.

You know, we've got some some great programs that she'd be able to opt into.

And if she hasn't opted into them, you know, I mean, it's probably on her.

And he's like, Yeah, it's a little different from the approach I took.

So this call on elders is to be seeking, participating in the very care that Christ has shown for the church.

So we could we could not we couldn't conscience the idea that that we would be responsible and then not know names.

The very call of eldership is a call of being a loving example to the flock.

And then you can see that relationship becomes real.

This is why we, in light of that, adopted the parish structure which we have in our church.

So that is the members of our church are divided up into smaller groups called parishes.

And there's an elder over each parish.

And the purpose of this is so that we could build into our local church's structure what would hopefully become that organic participation in the relationships that we're called to, so that you might really know your elders, that your elders might really know you, that we'd be able to pray particularly for you by name for the things that you're really going through in your life, that we would be able to be examples.

You can't be an example if you if you're never seen or never known.

That we would be able to shepherd the flock of God that is among us.

So let's build into our monthly rhythm just being able to be among one another.

I don't know if you've tried to have an organic friendship, uh, but it's almost like as an adult.

But having an organic friendship as an adult is the same as just not having a friend.

Those are the same thing.

And so we need to build structures in place so that we might be able to participate in the relationships that were called to.

Okay, so I think our church, you can kind of understand this, the elder member dynamic.

I want you to see the structure and the organic nature of it.

So there is no structure so good, and you can see this so clearly at the local level.

Of course, it is not just the appointment of an elder that allows you to experience their care.

There is no structure so good that it does not need to be inhabited by the organic relationship that allows it to function and to be life-giving.

But what about across churches?

This is something that we don't talk about often.

That the Bible gives us instruction for how churches are actually to relate to one another.

Now, this is where I'm shifting a bit, and as we're looking towards, part of the impetus for this series is that our church is joining a denomination.

We're becoming non-non-denominational.

And we're joining the Presbyterian Church in America.

And what I'm going to lay out here is the Presbyterian church structure.

Because here's the assumption that the Bible does not merely describe how it is that we are to relate within the local church level, but the Bible also gives us the patterns for how churches are to work among one another.

And that there is actually a unity that can be described there, even among one another.

And we can see this in this story.

And the story takes place in Acts 15.

So let's look at the problem of what took place in Acts 15.

Acts 15.1.

Some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

Now, they're coming down into Antioch, and this is where Paul and Barnabas are teaching.

Now, if I'm going to be slinging heresy and coming into a new town to start slinging heresy, I probably wouldn't go where Paul is.

I'd pick another town, but they went where Paul is.

And so they're coming into these newly established church communities, and some folks from Judea, which is the sort of Jewish center of Christianity, are coming down, which means that there would be a lot of Jewish converts to Christianity.

They come to these new church plants in Antioch, and they are saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, we've got a lot of uncircumcised Gentiles here.

So we've got a lot of people who are not Jewish and they are not practicing, they're not living in obedience to the patterns that Moses has described for us.

So they were teaching, unless you are circumcised, according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.

Now I want us to feel sort of, we hear that and we're like, I know that's wrong.

But imagine the force of that argument.

You, Christian, believe that the writings of Moses are the word of God.

And I can go to Genesis and Exodus and really Leviticus, and I can show you how the Word of God is instructing you to live in this way.

And so you can, you, you're a you're a young Christian and you're coming into this Jewish tradition, and these people who have been a part of this this whole time are coming to you and they're saying, look at the laws and the customs that you must live by.

It would be torturous to your conscience because you've become convinced that the story which leads to Jesus, as described in the Old Testament, is the very word of God.

And so these young Christians, these young Gentile Christians, their consciences are tormented by this, and many become convinced.

But here's the distinction: Christ has fulfilled all that was required in the law of Moses.

And so the Gentile and the Jew are brought under Christ by his blood alone.

We are brought into salvation, into the church by Christ alone.

But you can see that is a that is quite the thing to grasp.

So when we hear something like, when we hear the Great Commission, we think, yeah, of course, we these people should live and dwell in unity, and we should be brought together in unity.

But we underestimate what does it take for people from diverse backgrounds to actually at a real participatory level be brought together in unity.

And so now we have Jews and Gentiles both united together under Christ.

And the Jews are thinking, this is literally threatening my obedience to the Lord because I am not keeping myself pure, I'm eating with Gentiles, I'm fraternizing with the uncircumcised.

There's a sense in which I'm denying this obedience that I've thought I've been trained in in the Lord.

And the Gentiles are thinking, I I thought it was Christ alone.

That's why I signed up.

And how is it that we, that these people can really be brought together in unity?

So in Acts 15, 2, it says, and after Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and debate with them, Luke always says that, and I love that way of talking.

It was no small debate and debate with them.

Paul and Barnabas and some others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and the elders about this question.

Okay, so this is an important verse, because Paul, like Peter, is an apostle.

And the apostles spoke with a unique authority that was attended by signs and wonders, so that in their authorship of the New Testament, the early church would be able to be convinced that they were speaking the very word of God.

And so they spoke with a unique authority in the church.

And so, Paul, we could we could think, you know, you're an apostle.

Just tell these folks, no, you're wrong, and then compare how high into heaven you've been caught up into.

And then Paul would say, I've been caught up into the highest heavens.

And then that's that's how you that's the trump card.

That's how you win an argument.

But he doesn't do that.

Instead, he says, we're going to handle this at the church level, the whole church level.

We're going to take this beyond our local church bounds, where we have hit a stalemate.

I have tried my most compelling arguments to convince these Judaizers, as they were called, that they do not need to, it is not by holding to the law of Moses that we are saved, but it is by Christ alone that we are saved.

And so we should not put this burden on the Gentiles.

But they are convinced that the Mosaic law is still binding.

And so what will it mean to form a church here?

How could there be the how can the gospel be preserved?

Worship among this diverse people be fostered?

How can the nurture of the church take place?

And what will the mission of the church mean if we aren't to go to Gentiles?

And so, with all of these things structured, what's going to hold this picture together?

It is government.

And so they move through these processes.

In Antioch, the local churches gather together, they reach the same sort of stalemate as the elders of those churches gather together.

And so they decide to send Paul and Barnabas to the largest gathering of Christians, which is in Jerusalem.

This is the largest church, and many other churches would, the elders from many other churches would be able to gather together to have a council.

And at this council, they would debate and they would state their cases before one another.

They would seek the Holy Spirit to inform what is it we're going to do with these Gentile Christians?

Will they be included into the church?

Okay, so they go up to Jerusalem to answer this question.

And as far as we can tell, it looks like this took place over about three meetings.

There were three main meetings.

First, Paul and Barnabas arrive, and they have a mixed greeting.

A lot of folks are like, wow, this is incredible.

You're planting entire Gentile churches.

The Holy Spirit is moving among the Gentiles in this way.

And so half of them are excited and thrilled about what the Lord is doing.

And the other are really skeptical.

And they are they're they're seeking to discount what the Lord is doing among the Gentiles.

And so into this mixed room, this gathering of elders and apostles, there are three speeches given across these three meetings.

Now, the first speech is given by Peter.

What a church council.

You've got Peter, you've got Paul, you've got James, the brother of Jesus.

This is a pretty good church council.

And Peter says this in his speech regarding the inclusion of the Gentiles.

He stands up before the whole room.

He says, Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?

But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they will.

What a speech on the house floor.

It's like Mr.

Smith goes to Washington stuff.

It's very good.

And he it says that though the room fell silent when Peter explains this.

By the way, these are the last words of Peter in Acts.

And so they carry this particular weight.

So the last thing that we hear see that we hear Peter do in the book of Acts is defend the inclusion of the Gentiles.

And he defends it by saying, Look, we ourselves, if we were held to the law of Moses, we and our fathers, we failed.

But our hope is that we are brought in by the blood of Jesus Christ, just as they will be.

So if we are going to merely appeal to the law of Moses now for our salvation, we ourselves will be destroyed.

And so, what how does the church operate when I'm getting ahead of myself?

The next speech was by Paul.

Paul and Barnabas stand up and they share that the Gentiles are coming to know the Lord and they share their experiences as missionaries together, of entire Gentile churches being formed around the Lord Jesus Christ, that they are being filled with the Holy Spirit just as the Jewish Christians were at the day of Pentecost.

And so they give that speech, and then James, the brother of Jesus, who is the elder over the church in Jerusalem, which is the largest church, he's like the megachurch pastor of the day.

So he stands up and he makes this summary statement, which it ends up being received by the whole council after these days of debating.

He says this in Acts 15, verses 19 through 21.

Acts 15:19–21

Therefore, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he has read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

I'll explain that last part a bit more, but here's the point that I want us to see.

This, by the way, this that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God.

We should not require circumcision.

We should not hold them to the law of Moses or these cultic practices, these temple practices, because all has been fulfilled in Christ.

This is received by the council, this gathering of elders and apostles.

And the decision is made that a letter would be written, and the letter is actually recorded, and it says just exactly what James says here.

They write to them, and it says, uh, you should not be troubled, but uh abstain from sexual immorality, don't eat things sacrificed to idols, don't eat things with their blood in them, and don't eat things that have been strangled.

And you're probably thinking, that seems like a weird list.

But here's the point for our purposes: the the governmental structure that the scripture shows us is that when the church hits these stalemates, the spirit works by gathering together the elders from these churches to make decisions together, which are then binding for all of the churches.

And this is the means that the Lord uses to maintain unity within the church and to maintain the focus on the centrality of the gospel.

This is the structure that's in place.

And so this is the structure of the Presbyterian church.

The reason it's called Presbyterian is the Greek word presbyteros, which is just means elder.

And the point there is that the eldership is the structure that the Lord has given us to maintain this unity in the church.

And when that goes up to a level that is making binding decisions across churches, we do not create a new hierarchy to participate in those.

But instead, we utilize the plurality of elders from the churches to gather together and seek the Lord together and make decisions as a plurality of elders.

So that there's this subsidiary structure of local churches, regional churches, as the churches gathered in Antioch to send Paul and Barnabas, and then the church as a whole.

And this is the structure that we will be participating in as a church.

So our elders will be over this local church, and then we will join up into a regional presbytery.

This regional presbytery is the Rocky Mountain region.

And it is at that place that we will.

Make decisions on things that we can collaborate on together.

We provide oversight for one another's churches so that if on our elder board, for instance, we hit some sort of a stalemate that seems irreconcilable, well, are there structures in place by which we can maintain the unity of the church and seek it keep priority on the gospel?

Well, this is a structure which can help us participate in that.

And then when that happens across regional levels and there are decisions which are important for the whole church to come together and make, then we're able to do that at what's the Presbyterian Church calls the General Assembly, which is the gathering of the elders from all of the Presbyteries.

I just want you to see that this is where that structure comes from.

That there is a subsidiary-tiered structure that the Lord shows us in Scripture that my hope is we will be able to participate in as a church in coming into the PCA.

So one more thing.

The Apple Vision Pro.

Just kidding, it's not one of those one more things.

There's but that's a dystopian device, by the way.

It's a whole other sermon.

Look at the ruling that the council makes.

The Gentiles are included.

But we need to let them know abstain from sexual immorality, abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from eating things with the blood in them, and from eating things that have been strangled.

Now, why do they say that?

Like, look, Christian, you don't have to abstain from eating things with the blood in them.

Like this is not a this requirement that was given to the Gentile churches is not binding for all time.

You know, Peter, the cloak, the sheet that comes down with all the animals on it?

Means we can eat all kinds of stuff.

It's not all it means.

But it does, but it does mean that.

So why this prohibition?

James describes it.

He gives the reason in verse 21.

He says, For from ancient generations Moses has had in every city those who proclaim him, for he is read every Sabbath in the synagogues.

Now the synagogue structure really develops once the nation of Israel is sent into exile, and and they pop up in these local churches that are really like the our church structure is really a synagogue structure.

Notice we don't have a temple structure where we all gather to a temple and offer priestly sacrifices.

We have something like a synagogue structure.

And so James is saying: look, all over the world, Jewish people are gathered together in synagogues and they are reading the law of Moses every week.

And we are at this moment where the Gentiles are by Jesus Christ being integrated into this story, and we are all being formed into a new people in Jesus Christ.

And so as we are making this ruling to bring in the Gentiles absolutely under Jesus Christ, we need to teach the Gentiles how it is that they might be loving and caring towards their now brothers, these Jewish Christians.

And so one of the ways you can do that is don't harm their conscience by eating meat sacrificed to idols.

Don't eat meat that's been strangled, and don't eat meat with the blood in it.

Accommodate them in love.

This is the way that we can shape our communities coming together.

And so it's not binding for all time, but for this moment, you can see, I love this because this is what church leadership is like.

It is like, okay, we've got people with all sorts of different things and pet projects and uh differences of emphases.

And the way that the Lord calls us to operate in that is you you need to seek a unity that is found in the gospel, even if that means making accommodations.

Paul will write elsewhere, just don't ask about the meat.

Maybe just don't ask.

But Christianity is full of decisions like that.

It's full of, okay, I need to figure out how to be a Christian in this type of place.

And we see the early church doing that.

And the governmental structure that the early church demonstrates for us is the that is the structure that we have to make calls of wisdom that preserve the unity of the church and preserve this true teaching.

It is by the grace of Jesus that we are held together as a people.

How does that hold together over time?

Well, this pattern that the church shows us is one of the ways.

The Lord has given us these structures to preserve the gospel, to preserve his people.

So let us learn to inhabit them in that organic way where our hearts are really transformed to be able to participate in them.

The early church models this for us.

And my hope is that we'll be able to participate in that, receive the benefits of it, receive the unity that the Lord calls us to.

We will, of course, do this imperfectly.

You won't get church government servants all the time.

But we see the patterns here, and let's receive them in hope.

In hope that these these patterns are for our good.

All right.

Are there any questions today?

Great.

Are we in rebellion against structures like the Roman Catholic Church or the Council of Trent?

We are in rebellion.

Well, rebellion, I mean.

What we would say is that we have innovated church offices that go beyond the offices that are described to us in Scripture.

And so there is such a thing as the creation of inordinate structure.

And that's related, the opposite side of that is the elimination of all structure.

So the thinking of this model and the argument that I'm making today is that there is a structure given to us in Scripture, not no structure, but there is a structure given to us in Scripture.

Let us meet it and let us not go beyond it.

So this is why it is organized around eldership, without the innovation of offices beyond that, because that is the office that we see described in Scripture.

So yeah, this is not a this is not an argument for structure generally, or that all structure need be received.

This is an argument for the biblical model of church structure, of church government.

Does that make sense?

Great.

Well, one of the things that we are called to do together.

In this text, we see that the Lord preserved his church in this means that in the participation of it looks really clunky and can feel really clunky.

You know, gathering together, debating.

Wouldn't this be easier if this were just sort of like we just got an answer?

But we are called to participate in this structure, and the Lord used that to preserve this reality, that we are held together by Christ alone, that it is the work of Christ which has been absolutely effective to make us his people.

And so when we gather together, we remember that by participating in the meal that he has called us to, gathering around his table.

Paul writes this in 1 Corinthians 11 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Paul continues, and he says, Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.

For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.

That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.

That is an incredible warning, and I typically leave it off.

But it is worth considering as we come to the table that the Lord calls us to examine ourselves as we come to it.

And what we are examining is our hope and faith that the Lord has offered himself to us in his broken body and his poured out blood.

That the Lord, on the night when he was betrayed, he took the bread and he said, This is my body which is broken for you.

And he broke the bread and gave it to his disciples.

And he took the cup and he said, This is my blood of the new covenant.

The new covenant is the promise of God that we hope in.

And the new covenant can be understood like this all that Moses pointed towards, all that the purity laws pointed towards, have been fulfilled in Jesus.

That the circumcision which pointed towards a cutting off is fulfilled in Christ, as he is cut off so that we might be brought in.

That we are united as one people under his blood.

So we remember that this morning as we partake of communion.

So I invite you this morning to the table.

This is the Lord's table.

And if you have been baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we welcome you to partake with us.

Discern on your way, consider what it means that you are brought in unity under Christ alone.

This is our hope.

Holy Father, we pray that you would bless this meal, that in our coming together today you would unite us.

Lord, that the structures and government and these principles by which you hold together your church would not feel merely dry to us, but we might be able to participate in them with fullness of heart, Lord.

Lord, I pray that you would serve us in these structures that you've called us to, and you would give us hearts to be able to participate in them joyfully and with love for one another.

That we would not be crushed by them, but that we would be built up in love.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.