Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello and happy Wednesday to you all. Happy Wednesday. We have recording happening right now, so this is gonna be locked in. We don't have to restart and cancel our episode or anything like that as the late great prophet, well, he's not late. He's actually still quite relevant. Justin Bieber once said. Never say never. Never say never. I think he said that also some other prophets said, don't count your chickens before they hatch. Or something like that. Something like that. Yeah. Hey, we got some questions from people from a sermon that you preach recently and the people demand answers. Okay. They demand it. We will do our best pitchforks and torches and hint sometimes. Well, I dunno if they had any this time, but here are some of the questions that came up from a sermon that you recently preached. You said something to the effect of. Baptism and the Lord's Supper, that is communion as we often refer to. It should only happen in the context of the local church. And for some people that was brand new information. So, let's deal with a couple of pushbacks on that and you help us to understand. How to best interpret this. And of course there are exceptions, and maybe we can mention some of those, but why do we believe that baptism and the Lord's Supper communion should only be done in the church? Let's start there. We believe that there are two of what we know is ordinances. And if you go into other churches, for example, the Catholic Church, there are more than two ordinances. There's seven what do they call them? They don't call them ordinances. Sacraments. Sacraments. Thank you. And. They would say that there's seven of these and there's more than just communion and baptism included in that. We as the Protestant church largely just identify those two. And there are two things that are meant to be we believe as scripture or instructs us to be carried out within the context of the local church. So that's why I would say these are for the church specifically. So is it okay then? Is it okay then to take communion? And you brought up this example, so I know where you're gonna answer on this, but let's clarify this. Is it okay to do this during my wedding? If I'm getting married and we wanna honor Christ we wanna do communion. And I know that many Catholic weddings still do something like this. Yep. So is this okay for us? Can I do this? Full transparency, my wife and I did. And I will give the caveat because we didn't know, nobody told us not to. This is a tricky situation because. It's in the church. It's in the church, right. And not, although not all weddings are right, ours happen to be. But communion is for the church. And my wedding was not the church. My wedding was us inviting all kinds of different people from all kinds of different backgrounds and there were believers and unbelievers there alike. And granted, we didn't serve communion to the whole church. It was just my wife and I doing this up front. But even that in and of itself is a perversion, not well perversion. Strong, strong it misses what communion's for. Communion is for a corporate participation. It's meant to be all of us coming together to unite around this the elements, the bread and the juice, or in our context or the wine in some context. So, I would say no, it, it's not meant for your wedding because it's not the church that's not. What's happening there? You're getting married, but that's not a gathering of the church. So where do we see in the Bible that it tells us that we have to be in a church context to take communion? Yeah. It's admittedly not explicitly stated, thou shalt take communion in the church. Right. But we see once a month on a Sunday. Yeah, exactly. We see context clues. And I read from one Corinthians chapter 11 in the broader context on Sunday morning before we actually got to observing the elements and taking the elements. Partially for this purpose because Paul is writing. When we jump to for I received from the Lord, what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, I'm not, he was betrayed when we all often start there. But right before that, Paul is actually confronting the local church there in Corinth for, for taking communion in an unworthy manner for coming together. And he says the phrase come together three or four times in the context leading up to the part that we all, all the time read for the Lord Supper communion. He's confronting them for not coming together the right way, with the right attitude to unite together to take the elements. So that's one context where we see that this is where we would say, this is for the church. When the church comes together. Acts chapter two. Now you might say, well, this seems to argue against your position, but Acts 2 46 in there they're talking about gathering in the homes and breaking bread together. That would probably indicate that the Lord's supper was being observed. So somebody might point to that and say, well, that seems to contradict what your argument is, except that at that time in the, Stage of the church. These were local churches. This was the house church that was gathering together. And so it was not so much that these are private homes and individual homes in different places, but the birth of the church, the dawn of the church, there's different things happening during that time as the church is still being formed into what we know it to be today. We often talk about in acts, prescriptive versus descriptive and can we point to something in acts and say, this is prescriptive. Everything needs to happen this way. Most of the Book of Acts. A lot of the book of Acts is gonna be more descriptive of a specific time in the birth of the church versus prescriptive. But I think when we look at one Corinthians 11. It seems that the normative principle is community needs to take place within the context of the church. Okay. I guess it depends on what you mean by the word church. And in this we have to delve a little bit into ecclesiology. Isn't it true though that my wife and I, or my, my grandmother and I, we're Christians aren't we the church and therefore when we're at home and, we're doing something. We can't make it to church that Sunday, but we're streaming it. We're watching it together. Can't we say, Hey, we are the church. You know? And Jesus said, didn't he? Where two or three are gathered, there I am in the midst of them. Yeah. So help us understand then why a two person unit who are both Christians. Yeah. Do not count as the same thing as a church as you're using it. Let's start with where two or three are gathered. There I am. So Matthew 18 is the context there, and he's talking about church discipline there. And he's saying you have the authority the God, and endowed authority there to discipline. Because when two are gathered for the purpose of discipline, I'm present. There, my authority is present there. So often we use that in the terms of, well, the church is there because when two or three are gathered, that's not the context of Matthew 18. We're talking about church discipline in Matthew 18. But to come back to the idea of can't I just stay home and do communion by myself? And that comes back to that idea that I was talking about at my wedding when it was just my wife and I, that's. That's not what communion is for. Communion is for all of us to come together corporately. That's even in the word communion. We are community together, communing together coming together to to testify, right? And that's what Paul says at the end of the communion formula. In one Corinthians chapter 11, when he says, we'll do this until the, until Christ returns testifying to his death, until Christ returns. And that's a corporate voice that we're meant to do this with. So there's something that we are testifying. Even Ephesians three, the manifold wisdom of God is being displayed. Three 10. Through the gathering of the church body. And this is one of the ways that we are doing that together, corporately coming together as brothers and sisters in Christ to remember all of us together, the common bond that we have in needing the death of Christ for us to be part of the family of God. So that's where, when I stay home and I just decide to do it by myself or with the people that I like because I'm comfortable with them that's not the design that God had in mind for communion when he was saying, this is what you should do. So it sounds like communion then is best in the context of a local varied gathering of the body of believers. And so you're getting at this idea that doing it at home violates the principle behind the idea of communion. Yes. Communion, even as the name suggests, is happening best and community. Right. And to do it so lower, to do it with just people that you select that you like, is it seems like it goes against the grain. Okay. So here's a bigger question then. Is this a sin to do it? Or let's say, I have a neighbor who I preached the gospel to and they get saved and they're saying, Hey, what prevents me from being baptized? And you say, I have a pool right in my backyard here. Come on the backyard. We're gonna baptize you right now. And I do that instead of you or one of the other pastors on staff doing that. Is there sin in this if I choose not to do this? Or is this a matter of a difference of tradition? Is this what level? Do I put this on? Yeah. When I'm considering my church attendance, or even whether I wanna be part of a church that does this or doesn't do this, how do I think this through? This is where we in the Protestant tradition are. I don't wanna say a disadvantage to those in the Catholic church because we often look at tradition and we kind of look down our nose at tradition. We look at church history sometimes and we say no creed, but the Bible alone, or something like that. And I think we miss out on a lot of. Instructional benefit there. And when we look at the tradition of the church from the outset, what we found is that baptism became something that was done within the confines of the church. The Lord's Supper was something, communion was something that was observed within the confines of the church. And this is how it's been throughout church history. As we have emerged into more of an individualized American society, we've been wanting to look for exception clauses to that rather than to say, okay, let's just do this the way that it's been done for 2000 years. And that is. In the confines of the local church. And I think there's something to that to be able to say, okay, why has it always been done that way? Perhaps because this was the design from the very outset, even though we don't have it written in the inert, authoritative word of God, thou shall do this within the confines of the local church, and a pastor has to administer this. I think church tradition points to the fact that that is what the intent was from the outset. And we can hold to that and we can look at that and say, yeah, that that's a good pattern for us. So if your neighbor gets saved and says, I wanna be baptized, you'd say, great. Why don't you come to church? Because number one. Baptism is an important step of obedience, but being involved in the church like you heard this past Sunday, also massively important for a new believer. So get them connected to the church, bring them in, have them meet with the pastor. Say, let's talk about getting you baptized. And communion. Yeah, bring them into the church again. And here's the risk we run if we rush too quickly into these things, is we run the risk of conflating trust in Christ with trust in the ordinance. And we wanna be careful not to do that. And so you don't want somebody to walk away saying, well, I, I feel like I'm confident in my salvation because Joe baptized me in his pool, in his backyard after I came to faith in Christ. You want them to go, no. This is something that is, is. Part of of a community affirming this, confirming this, for example, with baptism and then with the Lord's, with communion. I want to participate in this meal with my brothers and sisters in Christ. In fact, in one Corinthians 11, that's part of what Paul's condemning is he's saying, Hey, you guys all you care about is yourself and your own comfort in this, and you're neglecting the fact that this is about the unity of the body of Christ. And so when we say, well, I'd rather just do this at home by myself and not with the church, we're falling prey to the same mentality there in one Corinthians chapter 11. That's helpful. One final question. I know we're running a little longer, but that this is an important subject matter to at least ask some of the more pressing questions about. And here's one that I know we get maybe with some degree of regularity, and it has to do with the frequency of our chosen. schedule. Yeah. So some people come from a different tradition where, hey you do this as often as you gather. Doesn't Jesus say or doesn't the scripture say do this as often as you gather or something like that. Help us understand why Compass chooses to do it. The frequency that we do, and we happen to do it once a month, but there's other churches that do it once a week, right? Others who do it once a quarter and some even beyond that. I'm not sure what all goes into their decisions, but help walk us through your decision about our frequency. Yeah. So the Bible doesn't say, do this. Anytime you gather it, every time you gather, it says, whenever you do this, do it this way. Mm. That's a big, that's a big difference in what most people understand. Huge. Yeah. Big distinction. Yeah. There's no verse that says, do this every time you come together. One of the reasons why we landed on it monthly is because of the danger of it becoming something that is so rot and so routine that it loses its impact and. That's something that we have to guard against in other aspects of the church too, not just communion. We show up at church and we sing and we hear the scripture reading and we hear preaching, and then we're dismissed. Right? We do things in a rhythmic pattern, in a routine. So not all of that is wrong, but when we're doing something that is so. Often similar, which is the observance of the Lord's table. It's easy for us to let that become white noise. And I think if we were to say, Hey, next week we're gonna start doing communion every single week, that for a short amount of time, the people that are really high on that would say, yeah, this is great. This is great, and it would be great. I'm not saying it wouldn't necessarily be great, but the risk that's, that somebody could run is it becomes so commonplace, so familiar that it loses its impact. So we do it monthly because I think it allows us for that time to say, man, this is good. I've been looking forward to this. I've been wanting to do community, I've been wanting to observe the elements again, and we can approach it with that intentionality and purpose that I think it's due and so that's why we do it once a month. Other churches that do it. Every week. Not wrong. Churches that do it less frequently, not wrong. I don't think we would ever do it less frequently than once a month. But the scripture never says, every time you gather, it doesn't give us a prescription. So it sounds like there's freedom to choose in this particular case For sure. Some churches can choose to do one thing and another, another. Approach. But the point is that the church does it, and the frequency is chosen by the leadership and the direction of the pastors. And you're free to enjoy as you see fit. I like that. In fact, first Corinthians 11, lemme just point this out to you in case you, you happen to be surprised by what PPJ said which is that there is nothing that says you have to do it weekly. So he says here in chapter 11, first Corinthians Chapter 11, I guess you might wanna start at verse 24. He says, this is my body, which which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Verse 25. In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper saying, this is the cup 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 this. Drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes now. And that's the passage that most people refer to when it says to do it as often as you gather. It doesn't say that it says as often as you drink it and as often as you take the bread. So there it is, one Corinthians 11 verses 24 through 26. That'd be our key text there. One other note I would say is. If you're doing this in a gathering in your home, like you're having people over for dinner you're getting together with, you know, a large group of people and you're going, Hey, we should do community together. I'm gonna do community with all these people. Lemme just caution you because the Bible's warnings about taking community in an unworthy manner. That if you're leading that and you are leading unbelievers into participating in the Lord's table I think there's a danger there for you. And so I, I would say that's another reason to trust your church in that, because that they get to cover you in that, to say, okay the pastor's saying, Hey, I'm gonna fence the table appropriately, which is important, but then this is gonna fall on me. And ultimately I'm the individual who eats or drinks in an unworthy manner. But we gotta be careful not to do community in a mixed company of believers and unbelievers and not make sure that we're fencing the table there to say, Hey, this isn't for you who are unbelievers. This is only for Christians in this context. All right, let's get into John chapter five. John chapter five, only one chapter today. And John chapter five is not in the. All too distant rear view mirror for us as a church. But Jesus begins by healing a guy that was paralyzed for almost 40 years. And I love it because he asks him this question, do you want to be made? Well? And the guy is laying there as a paralytic going yes. And Jesus is really asking a double sorted question. A double-edged question there. He's asking him, do you wanna be made physically? Well, but more significantly. Do you wanna made, be made spiritually well, and the man is healed by Jesus and he is then. Takes off excited about this and goes, but because it was the Sabbath the religious leaders are not happy. And they go to the man and they say, Hey, who did this? And the man says, well, I don't know. And then Jesus finds him, seeks him out and says, Hey, you know what? You've been healed. Now go and sin no more. Put this healing to work the way that God wants you to put it to work. The man instead of doing that then goes back to the religious leaders and tells on Jesus and says, it was that guy. That guy did it. Don't be mad at me about breaking the Sabbath. It's his fault. So that leads to this sparring match between Jesus and the religious leaders where Jesus is going to defend himself, not by justifying. His actions, but rather by doubling down and making himself equal with God. And this is one of those passages to go to when you have people challenge. Well, Jesus never made himself equal with God, but indeed he did. If you fact, in fact, if you look at verse 17, Jesus said, my father is working until now and I am working. Remember context, the Sabbath, you weren't supposed to work on the Sabbath. The Jews believed rightly so that God continued to work on the Sabbath because if he wasn't doing the work of sustaining the universe, then everything would fall apart. And so Jesus makes this claim to say, if God is working on the Sabbath, I'm working on the Sabbath too. And then the Jews, they understand what he's saying here. Verse 18. This is why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him because not only was he breaking the Sabbath. But he was calling God his own father, making himself equal with God. And from here on there's this back and forth between Jesus and the Jewish leaders, or really not much of a back and forth, really just a fourth from Jesus with the religious leaders here where he's making statement after statement after statement of his power and authority and is equality with God. And there's some amazing verses in John chapter five where we look at and say, okay, I don't know how you can argue that Jesus did not believe that he was fully equal with the father. Amen to that. And I'll even echo the fact that in John five there I have highlighted things and underlined all sorts of things. I think there's two things that I wanna bring to your attention that I think are helpful. And the first one is at verse 14, he says to him after he healed them, see you are well sin no more. That nothing worse may happen to you. What conclusions should we draw from that phrase? Oh, yeah, yeah. There's speculation that this guy was a paralytic because of sin in his life. That this could have been God's discipline or judgment in his life or this is just Jesus simply saying to him, Hey, as bad as you had it there's discipline. There's consequences that are even worse than what you just came out of. If you continue in sin in your life, and so either one of those we could see is a valid warning to us and something that we should fear God as a result of that. Amen. I actually lean on the former, not the latter. That is, I think that there is something in this guy's life where he brought it upon himself. How he does that, I don't know. I don't pretend to know, but I think he's. Warning him to say, look, you sinned and this happened. I do also believe he's saying sin no more, because there's a lot worse that could happen as a result of ongoing habitual rebellious sin. And so I think that's important for us. He's gonna say to someone else later, this is, this didn't come because of sin. It became from, it came from my glory. So that's not to say that every ill or malady that afflict you is because of a sin. But it might be, and it's up to you to determine and discern whether or not you see that in your life. And I think that's an important point too. You have to do the work when you go undergo some kind of affliction, it's up to you to say, okay, Lord, help me to see things that I can't see. Am I in, am I sinning here and this is your chastisement or. Is this one of those things that you're doing it for your glory and you're just asking me to go through it faithfully? That's a good thing for you to keep in mind. Here's one more now. John chapter five, verse 44. He says, how can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Okay, help us untangle that. I think that's profound, and I think there's something really important there that many people might miss. Do you have any insights or thoughts on verse 44? PPJ? The, this is similar to when I believe when Jesus was confronting the Pharisees for loving the seats of honor and praying at the corners and, fasting. So other people notice their fasting and, all of that that we're even gonna get to in the Sermon on the mountain a couple days here. They were willing to receive the praises of man, they were willing to receive glory from one another. In other words, as he puts it here, but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God. They're not seeking the true manifestation of God's glory. John chapter one, which is found in the person of Jesus Christ. They're rejecting that we have seen as glory glories of the only begotten. Full of grace and truth from the father. The, they're rejecting him and instead all they're really focused on and concerned about is, is the glory that comes from mankind. Yeah. And I think that's so powerful because he says here at the beginning of verse 44, how can you believe in other words, there is a kind of love Yeah. Of a man's praise and man's applause that you can't believe in God. You can't see his glory 'cause you're so infatuated with your own. Oof. That'll hurt. Beware of the love of man's applause and his approval. Lest you become so ensnared by that, that you can't believe Yeah. You're so consumed. You have no room for God. Yeah. Yeah. Let me circle back really quick to our ordinance conversation. No, we're done. Because you mentioned the exception clauses and I, we did get some questions about that. Oh yes. That is worth bringing up. It's worth bringing up. There are gonna be times wherein if somebody's sick and homebound and they can't make it to church, that's it. It's appropriate. Ideally probably for a pastor or somebody from the church to go and visit that person because they love them and they care for them. Yeah. And bring elements of communion there and do communion with them in their living room there or wherever they happen to be. So shut-ins or people that are sick or in re rehab centers, they can't get to church. That's a time to go and do that. Other times I think it's not outta bounds is when somebody is nearing their death and they want to do this again. Last rites last. Well, no, not last. Right? It's not last rights. That's Catholic. It's not the same thing. Yeah. No. But to go and have this as a, another memorial of where their hope is ultimately placed as they are on the pre Pacific eternity to, to testify once more, one more time to the death of Christ. I think again, that's a good thing to do. And again, the church should be involved in that through the pastor being there doesn't. Have to be, but ideally that's the right situation for that. Similar with baptism we've heard stories of somebody who was saved literally on their deathbed and wants to be baptized. Mm-hmm. And you go you do put them the bathtub, what's not normative. You put 'em in the bathtub or I've heard of pastors who are Baptists and full immersion that will go and do a baptism of pouring or sprinkling because of the physical limitations of the person that they're, I will bring the pool to them. I will turn the pool upside down on top of them. On top of them. Yeah. And the reason why, guys, even with something like this, this is still the church authorizing this. Yes. This is still the pastor saying, yes, we agree to this particular expression of the Lord's supper or baptism. And this exception is through the church. Yeah. I think far too much. We as. Protestants Evangelicals, we as Westerners are looking at our religion through the eyes of an individual expression. Yes. And that's probably at the heart of many of our issues with some of these things because we like our individuality. We like to have authority over ourselves and we really don't like being under the authority of anybody else. But this is how God has designed the church. He meant it to be a community of believers submitting to the leadership of their pastors and their elders who are submitting to the leadership of Christ. This is the way that he's designed it and could you find flaws in it? Sure. But this is what Jesus designed and therefore I wanna do my best to submit to that and live underneath that blessing and that benefit. Oh yeah. A hundred percent man. Yeah. I think, yeah, our Protestant tradition has lost some of the sense of the authority of the church. Even in, in that the represent how important that is, that yeah, you're right. That it is a communal thing. It's not the individualized thing. Yeah. In fact, we're gonna talk a little bit more about that on Sunday too. Are we? We are. Okay. Yeah. That's the idea. At least Lord willing. Okay. Let's pray and that we're done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Lord, we are grateful for the church. We truly are. And I just pray that you would continue to stir our affections and love for the church. Is she perfect? No, she's not perfect. Not a single one is. And if we found one, then we would. Bring the flaws ourselves by showing up. But God, we are so thankful that you have designed the church to be our family and to be the place that we live out our Christianity. So help us Lord, to do that with excellence. We pray as pastors that we would lead well and faithfully and not with a heavy hand, but but genuinely wanting to see Christ formed in the people that are under our care. And so we thank you so much for our church family and for this time. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep in your bibles. Tune it again tomorrow for another Editioning of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye.

​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said