Baptist Distinctives: The Offices of the Church

I tell you what, when he comes, he will turn it around. I promise you that. Looking forward to the day he does return. Turn your way in your Bibles to Luke chapter six.

And we're going to be in three different verses tonight. And we'll read this one to start and then we'll be in Ephesians 4 and Acts chapter 6. Baptist distinctives.

I'm guessing that all the, the sheets I passed out and had up there in the bookstore are gone. And I'll try to get, I'll make sure by next Sunday there's a next Wednesday there's some more that all 12 the Baptist distinctives are on there.

And so next Wednesday night, I hope that you'll at least grab one, keep it around somewhere and remember this group of lessons. And so tonight's a real simple one. It's on the three offices of the church. Yes, there was originally three offices, not two.

So we'll talk about that tonight. The office of the apostle, office of pastor and office of deacon.

And I kind of in my office today, as I was studying again the subject, I thought about, well, all our church families coming here tonight. Our core group is going to be here tonight.

This is more of a Sunday school lesson and not as much application, but I do think there are some things in here you could take from tonight and grow from, but also just some misnomers, some misunderstanding, some non biblical views of these offices. And so maybe that'll help you as well to kind of solidify what does the Bible say about apostles? What does the Bible say about pastors?

And what does the Bible say about deacons? And you could really preach a message on each one of these subjects. So Luke, chapter six. Luke, chapter six. I guess I ought to turn there.

Let's look at verse 13. And when it was day, he called unto his disciples.

And of them he chose 12, whom also he named apostles Simon, whom he also named Peter and Andrew, his brother James, John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas and James, the son of Alphaeus and Simon called Zelotes and Judas, the brother of James and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor. So here the apostles were chosen out of them. Out of them. Who was the them? We've already studied that.

The them was the church that Christ had already established. And so let's pray. Heavenly Father, again we thank you for your word. We pray tonight.

And as we look at the offices of the church, Lord, may you again encourage us and strengthen us in Jesus name. Amen. The Baptist distinctives are a collection of biblical truths Unique to Baptists.

It's not again, that some of these doctrines or some of these teachings are taught by other churches and other denominations, but it's the collection of them, all of them put together is unique to Baptists, to the Baptist, to historic Baptist faith.

And I believe, again, if I didn't believe Baptists were as close to the Bible, doctrinally, as close to the Bible as what the Bible is intended to mean, and it's an interpretation, then I would be something else. I would be a Lutheran or I'd be a Methodist, or I'd be a Catholic or whatever else there is.

But I believe without a shadow of a doubt, not one little iota of an inkling in my mind that it is Baptists who are as close to the Bible as you can get. And I'm so thankful for that. I'm glad that I'm Baptist born Baptist, when I'll be Baptist dead anyway.

Churches, we churches are to be caretakers of God's truth, caretakers of biblical truth. We are the pillar and ground of the truth, and so we are to do those things. Second Timothy two, two is kind of our theme verse for this study.

Paul said to Timothy, the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful man who shall be able to teach others also.

So the things that he was taught, Paul says, the things that you were taught, the things, the doctrines, all the biblical truth, you were taught the same teach to others. Not what you think, not tradition. No, you're going to teach the very same thing to others also.

And so we don't have the right to change what the Bible says. We don't have the right to say, well, there's not enough water here, so we're just going to sprinkle somebody for baptism.

We're just going to pour on somebody for baptism. No, no, no. The Bible makes it very, very, very, very clear that baptism is by immersion only. In fact, the word baptism means.

Baptism means to dunk, to plunge, to go under. And so we don't have the right to change what the Bible says.

Doesn't matter that some hierarchy has made some decision, and some guy in a big, you know, big house somewhere over in Italy decides that something means something else. No, he doesn't get to decide. The Bible is clear. The Bible.

We are to follow what the Bible says the same commit thou to the to faithful men in the Bible. There are three New Testament church offices, the apostle, pastor and deacon. So let's look at the word apostle first. The word Apostle means sent one.

Sent one. We just read where the apostles were chosen. They were chosen. They were chosen out of them. And the of them is the church that Christ established.

Remember Matthew, chapter 16, verse 18. Jesus said to Peter, thou art Peter, upon this rock I will build my church, speaking of himself.

And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and so forth. And so Christ took the materials that John the Baptist had prepared. And as John the Baptist gathered these materials.

I'm talking about people now, not building material.

But as John the Baptist gathered converts, he was gathering those converts, those to be saved and baptized, who would become a part of the first church that Christ established. It was John the Baptist who prepared the way. Look over in Mark, chapter one, verse one.

If you get there before I do anyway, I'll go ahead and read it. But Mark, chapter one, verse one and two and three, says the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, verse 2.

I'll give you a little time. Again, John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ.

He was the one preparing the way for Christ that was prophesied in Isaiah 40 and a couple other spots in the Old Testament. John the Baptist would make the way, verse two, as is written in the prophets.

Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare the way before thee. It's found in Isaiah 40, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight.

And John did baptize in the wilderness and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. And there went out unto him all the land of Judea and they of Jerusalem, and were all baptized of him in the river of Jordan, confessing their sins.

And so John the Baptist was the fourth forerunner of Jesus Christ. Born six months prior to Jesus, started his ministry six months prior to Jesus Christ, and again gathering, preaching the gospel, preaching.

The Messiah is coming. The Messiah's coming. And then the Messiah is here.

Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world and baptizing them, prepared the materials of the first church, prepared by John the Baptist. That includes the apostles, by the way, all of them.

Again, when Matthew's at the seat of customs and he's collecting taxes, and Jesus walks by and says, follow me. I'm gonna make you fishers of men. Matthew gets up and he follows him. Sometimes we get the idea that Matthew didn't know who Jesus was. Jesus was.

Matthew wasn't following Jesus blindly. He'd already been converted and won by John the Baptist. He knew Who Jesus was. And when Jesus walked by, he followed the Master.

And so when the apostles were replacing Judas. I do want you to turn to this one. This will help you, I think. Acts, chapter one. Turn over. Acts, chapter one.

Remember now, Judas, Judas Iscariot, betrayed Christ. He was one of the apostles. And he. He. He died, hung himself. We want to read that part of it where he burst asunder and his boughs came out.

The Bible's pretty graphic. And then it's called the Field of blood. Anyway, as kids, you like to read that part. Like, that's so gross. That's awesome. The bad guy loses. I love it.

When some of y' all were here when Brother Avery Henderson preached about Pontius Pilate, and Pontius Pilate apparently committed suicide by riding a donkey off a cliff. And Brother Henderson said that in one of his Christmas messages. And I was like, I never heard that before.

And I went and researched it, and sure enough, you go read about it. It's there. History proves that that Pontius Pilate killed himself by riding a donkey off a cliff. That's. What a way to die. Just. That's random. That's.

For your free information, look at Acts, chapter 1, verse 20. For it is written in the book of the Psalms. Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein. And his bishopric. Let another take.

This is talking about Judas now. All right, so again, let his habitation be desolate. Talking about Judas and then his apostleship.

Let another take wherefore of These men, verse 21, which have accompanied with us all the time, that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us. So he's given the qualifications here. You had to have walked in and out with Jesus Christ. In other words, you had to walk with Jesus.

Not like we walk with Jesus spiritually, but physically. You had to have walked with Jesus in order to qualify to be an apostle. Look at this. Verse 22, beginning from the baptism of John. What does that mean.

It means that you had to be there in the beginning when John was baptizing to be an apostle, you had to be there. All the apostles were converts of John the Baptist, and the two they nominate were also converts of John the Baptist.

So look at again, verse 22, beginning from the baptism of John under that same day that we was, that he was taken up from us. Must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection? What does that mean?

It means that you had, in order to be an apostle, you had to have seen Jesus and company with him after his resurrection. Again, not like we do by faith, physically had to see him, physically had to be taught by him.

We only have a very little minute detail of all the teaching Jesus did in those 40 days. He did a lot. We know that. It's inferred. And so that person would need to have been there. And part of that.

So there's your proof text again, that to be an apostle there was qualifications. And one of those qualifications was to be there in the beginning when John the Baptist was baptizing.

I believe that infers that you had to be baptized by John the Baptist. And then you prove it out by knowing that these apostles were indeed baptized by John the Baptist. So tasked.

The apostles were tasked with finishing and getting the church age fully launched. So it's the apostles who took up the banner that Jesus had begun of launching the church and the church age. The church age. Right.

So we were in the Old Testament economy. Now we're launching the New Testament economy. We were underneath an Old Testament program. Now we're under the New Testament program.

And it's the apostles who are going to carry on that transition that's taking place. We've always used a bridge as an analogy. But a bridge transfers you from one side of a gulf to another. And that's what the Old and New Testament is.

And the apostles were part of that bridge to help you get from the Old Testament to the New Testament program.

Part of that was the sign gifts, the gifts of tongues, the gifts of prophecy, the gifts, these special gifts were part of that transition to help the Jews, especially the Jews, understand that we were going from one economy to the next. We were going from the Old Testament to the New Testament. We know also that again, it's like the church going from a child to adult.

That transition taking place over the period of years from A.D. 33 to A.D. 100. The church in transition, Paul and Barnabas were functioned as apostles. We know that Paul says he was born, born out of due time.

You say, well, did Paul know John the Baptist? Absolutely. Did Paul talk with Jesus? Well, apparently he did it for part of three years, and there's so much there.

And so Paul and Barnabas were a part of that apostleship, if you would. All right, so the church office of the apostle was a temporary office. There are no apostles today because no one would qualify to be an apostle.

The apostles were tasked by Christ to help believers to make the transition from the Old Testament program to the New Testament program. It speaks again that the apostles were to testify of the resurrection of Christ. Why?

Because they had seen him, physically seen him after his resurrection. They're part of that 500, part of that. Other groups that have seen Jesus after his resurrection. And they were to again testify as a resurrection.

They were to affirm salvation by grace through faith. What did Paul do over and over and over again? Reaffirm that salvation was not found in what we do, but what Jesus did on the cross.

And he reaffirmed it over and over again. And we know the apostles, all the apostles did that again.

The apostles especially helped the Jew to make the transition from the Old Testament economy. They were to make that. Help make that transmission, a transition for the Jew, especially from worshiping in the temple to that of the church.

Can you imagine the difference?

You know, here we were having to come to the temple with our sacrifice and have the priests make that sacrifice and watch the blood run, run down and watch the. Watch the blood be sprinkled on the altar and watch an animal die. No longer have to do any of that. The final sacrifice had been made.

And it's the apostles who were helping with that transition, preaching the resurrection of Jesus Christ, preaching and affirming that Jesus Christ was indeed the Messiah and that he rose from the dead and helping the Jew especially, again make the transition. We see this in Acts, chapter 8, verse 1. If you want to look these verses up later.

We see this in Ephesians 2, verses 19 through 22, which is one of my favorite passages, where it says, we're no longer two. There's no longer Jew and Gentile, but one and the same under the fellowship of God, under. Under the household of God.

And that we come together as a church to make a holy habitation unto God. In other words, we're here to have a home that the Lord will feel comfortable in. And showing up in our church, isn't that amazing?

It's a spiritual house. It's no longer physical. Each one of us represent a lively stone. A stone. And we have built up this spiritual house.

And then as we build the spiritual house and we make the Holy Spirit comfortable, he'll make himself evident he's promised to be here. I always remind you that he says, where two or more gather together, he'll be there. But it doesn't mean he has to make himself evident.

What we want is for the Holy Spirit to feel at home and for him to make himself evident in our services. And we do that by every. Every church member ought to be here at every service.

I'm preaching to people who are not here, every church member how to spend and walk and spend time and walk with Jesus during the week, show up to church, not necessarily every time needing their gas tank full. You know, sometimes we do get wore down and beat down by the world during the week, and we come on Wednesday night to get a charge.

And it is important and that's part of it.

But as we walk with the Lord, we want to come to church having already spent time with the Lord, walking with him, having already prayed for the services and prayed for the pastor as he preaches and praying that God would show up in a special way, a holy habitation of the Lord. So again, the apostles were there to help the Jewish make that transition from the temple to the church.

And then the apostles were there to set up church governance, church polity.

In other words, they were there to rectify and help the church set up the governance, how services to be handled and how the Lord's Supper is to be handled. Remember how Paul addressed these things in his Epistles. How are we to handle squirmishes and schisms in the church?

How do we handle open sin in the church? Think about Corinthians. And we have Matthew and Corinthians both giving us understanding of how to handle a problem in the church.

By the way, we ought to handle problems of the church biblically. Amen. Instead of talking about somebody, why don't you go to them one on one, as the Bible says, and try to get that thing resolved. Amen.

Just, just, just quoting the Bible. So good. And then lastly, it was the apostles who authored or authorized the 27 New Testament books.

So we know there are four writers who weren't apostles, but all the rest of them were apostles. And the four writers who weren't apostles was John Mark. Well, I mean, who's John Mark?

Well, he hung out with Paul for a little while, and then they had a little problem. And then. But we know later on Paul said, john is a good guy. You know, he goes on and they get. They get back together. And God's good, right?

So you have John, Mark, you have Luke the physician. You have James and Jude, both half brothers of Jesus.

But it was the apostles who either wrote the New Testament, authorized and put the New Testament together. That's why at the end of Book of Revelations, it says, don't add to or take away from this book.

It was John the apostle and other apostles who determined what books would be a part of the New Testament. That is an apostle. The apostleship was a transitional office. Anybody see that? If somebody says today they're an apostle, they're not.

Second Corinthians. I'm sorry. Number two is pastor. All right. The word pastor, there are three different terms.

As we've said before, we've covered a little bit of this already. But the word. But the prominent title is pastor. Why is the prominent title pastor?

And even today, most men who hold the office that I hold are called pastors, most of them. And that's because of the shepherd analogy. And pastor, it means shepherd.

And so that analogy is mentioned over and over again, not only by the apostles and the writers of the New Testament, but Jesus Christ himself, talking about the church being a flock, that he is the shepherd of the flock. And so to set up on the Old Testament presentation of the shepherd and their role, but also, again, Christ.

Using that same analogy, the word elder means. Basically means maturity. You think of an elder, you think of someone who is older. I won't go into that tonight.

We already mentioned Brother Renz and Brother Clovis the other night. Won't mention their names, but we think of maturity when we think of elder. So this word does not necessarily mean older. This word means mature.

And it doesn't necessarily mean somebody mature physically, but it means. Means somebody mature spiritually. Spiritually. So it's not negative against a young pastor, if you would.

But any young pastor who takes a pastorate would be. You would. You would. If you hung around them. You want to be able to characterize them seemingly older. Does that make sense? Okay.

In other words, in conduct and judgment, they are mature. So I mean, again, the Bible says, let no man despise thy youth. So I don't want to say like that.

It's not saying that a young person, a young man, couldn't pastor. But they do need to be a certain amount of maturing there in order for them to pastor.

And all of us in this room would agree that that maturity in the last 20 or 30 years has changed. It has changed drastically in my Opinion. And so there needs to be some time for most young men to do some more maturing.

And we see this all over and there's ample opportunity in this day and age. So again, Bishop, elder means mature. All right. And then lastly, Bishop, the word bishop means overseer.

And we know that First Peter speaks about the pastor as being to take the oversight of the church. I do want you to turn to this scripture as well. First Peter, chapter two. First Peter, chapter two. Because I want you to see these scriptures again.

What is a pastor? What is he to do? What does he should be doing? Well, again, these three names, Pastor, elder, bishop, describe the office of a pastor.

First Peter, chapter two. Look with me in verse number 25. All right. So it says, for ye were as sheep going astray, but ye are now returned unto the shepherd.

And what bishop of your souls. So he puts both those words together. The main chapter I want you to see is chapter five, verses one through four. Most of you'll know these passages.

The elders which are among you. Verse one. Now, First Peter, chapter five, verse one.

The elders which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed. Here's what he's saying to pastors. Feed the flock of God which is among you. Take the oversight thereof, not by constraint.

You say there are some pastors who pastor because they feel like they have to. Absolutely, yes. I know some off the top of my head, but willingly not for filthy lucre. There are some pastors in the ministry for money.

That guy up by the Eagle Mountain lake might be one of them. But of a ready mind. Neither as being lords over God's heritage. And I'll use the word dictator.

A pastor shouldn't be a dictator, but being an example to the flock. And when the chief shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Pastor's role is very clear.

They are to be the shepherd, the elder and the bishop. That's why we as Baptists practice pastoral leadership. It's like a football team. I know this is a silly analogy, but it is. It works.

We have the owner of the football team. We'll just. Again, this is almost heresy, but blasphemy. The owner is the Lord. He is the head of the church. Amen. He is the chief shepherd.

He is the Lord of all. And you have the under shepherd. Say the head football coach. Head football coach has a staff. Has his staff.

Staff that he works with when A head coach leaves, usually the staff resigns, or when the new head coach comes in, he hires his own people. And then you have the players. But all have the same goal to win.

We all have the same goal, and that's to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'll never forget first time I hired Brother Wiggins. This is back when we were at Lakeland. I was at Lakeland and years and years ago.

And then when we went to hire him again 12, 13 years ago, the men did ask me, a couple of men asked me on the finance team, how can you hire your best friend? How's that going to work? I said, we both want the same thing. We want to see people come to Jesus. Amen. And guess what? It worked.

Because we have the same goal. The same goal. I'm thankful to pastor this church, to be the overseer of this church.

I understand maybe not to the degree I should of the magnitude of that and the responsibility of that. I try my very best not to be a dictator, but to lead.

Try our very best to keep the main thing, the main thing, that we're here to win people to Jesus, to do our very best to get the gospel out, to baptize converts and to disciple. Over the years, we've ebb and flowed. I think every church does that. Little ups and downs, ups and downs.

By the way, that's the Christian life as well. But always regaining the focus. Regain the focus. The focus is getting the gospel out.

The pastor, the church, its members, its staff should have one goal, and that is to spread the gospel. Lastly is deacon. The word deacon means what? Servant. Servant. And this is probably again very misunderstood even in our own circles.

What a deacon is to do what a deacon's tasked to do. And I don't have time now because we were out of time, but Acts, chapter six, most of you know the passage where they chose the first deacons.

There was some murmuring among the church. The widows were being neglected. And so the apostles came to the church and said, you guys choose you out among you seven men.

These men should be of honest report. They should be full of the Holy Ghost, should be men of wisdom. And we know also there was an addition later down the road said to full of faith.

Full of faith. They chose these men to be servants to help the pastor so that he would be freed up to minister and to preach and to study and to pray.

That was their responsibility. They were chosen out by the church, but appointed by the apostles. He said that you choose out that we may appoint These men to their duties.

In other words, I do remind you, and this is biblical, that the pastor is given the final who, where, and how of how the deacon is to serve. It's not the opposite way. And I know most of you, hopefully all of you agree to that, whether I'm pastor here or somebody else is here. The pastor.

We believe in pastoral leadership because the Bible teaches pastoral leadership. And the men who are chosen are nominated, chosen by the church.

We do that here, and then appointed to the service, whatever that may be, by the pastor. I'm thankful for the men who've served over the years and what blessing they have been and help they have been.

I remember when Brother Juan was a deacon and man we had. There was somebody sick and they went to the hospital and I couldn't get to them. And I remember Juan running down there, like, at midnight one night.

I think he had his gun on him or something. I don't know. Anyway, going down there, helping me. And that could be rehearsed over and over again of deacons who have served in that capacity.

A servant willing to serve. I miss Brother Lassiter. I miss the Lassiters, both of them. But Brother Lassiter came to me the last time he was nominated.

He served as a deacon for nine years, and you have to rotate off one year. So he served three, rotated off one, served three, rotated off one. The last time he was nominated, he said, pastor, I.

You know, I really can't move tables anymore, and I can't. I can't move chairs around and I can't come up and, you know, paint or I just can't physically do it.

I said, brother Lasseter, we don't need you for that. We don't need you for that.

There are many other ways you can serve, and Brother Lasseter is so faithful to serve this church, so faithful to be at visitation, so faithful to help, visit and follow up, so faithful to give the pastor some advice now and again. He was such a blessing in that way. One of the most wise men I've ever met, and I'm appreciative of that. The deacons represent.

Were to represent the apostles to the people and not vice versa. You can think about that on your own. Here's one I never thought about this one as I did the study this time.

I'll ask some of the former pastors in here. Think about this one. Although we see deacons teaching and preaching like Stephen and Philip, it's never found to be a qualification.

And though I was taught growing up that in order to Be a deacon. You need to be able to teach and preach. And we have not made that a qualification at Heritage. And you can't find it in the Bible anywhere.

If you have a deacon who can teach and preach. It's the gift of teaching and preaching that is talked about. In other words, they have a double gift, but it really isn't found in the Scripture.

So there may be another misnomer that some of us may have had in our head that's not found in the Scripture, though we have examples of. Especially think about Stephen man in Acts, chapter seven, preaching to that crowd and them stoning him.

And then he says, I see Jesus standing at the father right hand, thinking about Philip and others. Okay, all right. Pastors are not to be dictators, but leaders. Again, I already said I was thankful for.

I'm not only thankful for pastoring this church, but I'm thankful for men who have been examples to me. I think about Eddie Johnson and I talk to him often, or at least text him often, my pastor.

I'm thankful for my dad, who were good examples of leaders. And I even think about Roy Martin and I think about Brother McCaskill and Brother Tuck. I go on and on Brother Jernigan.

I actually talked to Nathan here a while back and I told Nathan, his son, what a blessing Brother Jernigan was to me. And I named off the things that I learned from Brother Jernigan.

Every pastor who's been in my life, the influence they've had, the blessings they are. And then apostles is a transitional office. It doesn't happen anymore. Anybody who claims to be an apostle is a false prophet. Run from them.

Oh, you know apostle so and so. I like to hear him. Don't listen to them. Don't give them an ear. And then deacons serving and helping.

And again, what a blessing our deacons have been over the years. God's good. Amen. And God has set up the governance of the church. The Lord has set up the governance of the church, the polity of the church.

And he set it up now with two offices. The office of a deacon, the office of a pastor. And yes, they had a treasure. And yes, we have trustees here as well.

And certainly there are other things we can put in place as the church decides to do those things. But we can never say those are church offices, if you understand what I'm saying. God placed those two offices in the church.

Let's all stand, have a verse invitation.

Tonight we'll sing hymn 159, Jesus, I come After We Pray Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word and we thank you for the blessing of structure in the church that allows the church to function in a very Christ honoring manner.

I pray God we continue as a church to follow the Bible's definitions and the actual structure the Bible gives us and not to follow the tradition of men. And may we Lord serve you. May we keep the goal to reach people with the Gospel in Jesus name, Amen. As.