Does the Church have Authority to Set a Standard

Lord, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We want to thank you for bringing us to right now. Lord, we have a past, we have a future, and right now you've given us the present, Lord.

And the future is unknown, but we commit it to you, the past we want to say thank you for. And Lord, we want to lift up those who right now, in this present time, are grieving, or have other things going on in their lives. We just lift up the Dale Smucker family down in Honduras as they lost a two-year-old.

I pray, God, that you bring comfort to them, and somehow build your kingdom as a result of this. The pilot in, I think it was Nigeria, somewhere in Africa, Lord, we pray, God, for that pilot and his family, pray for safety, pray for restoration. I pray for the ISIS or whoever the people were that took him, that you would speak to them and convict and deliver.

We pray for Lindsey Mast and the health struggles going on there. We pray for the travel coming up with Stephen and Trevor and Dennis and Grace and Jared. Lord, as they come from Pennsylvania to Oregon, I just pray that you would be with them.

Also, I pray for the Mike Wyrick family, their oldest son, I think, and how he lost his wife to cancer. I just pray for comfort there. Once again, build your kingdom.

Just guide us through this week. Guide the packing on Wednesday. Guide the revival meetings going on.

I just pray, God, that you would come and protect us. Build your kingdom. And now I especially want to pray for my brother Jeremy.

I pray that you'd lay your hand on him and anoint him and give him words to say and help us have ears to hear. And just be with us the rest of this service. We commit it to you in Jesus' name.

Amen. You may be seated. Well, good morning, everyone.

Grace and peace to each one this morning. If you remember two weeks ago, I endeavored to try to do one sermon, and it went way over, and I still had like three pages of notes. And so I'd like to finish that this morning.

And, of course, now that there's two weeks, the thing turned into more pages. So I hope I can get through it now. This was inspired by a brother here in our church that asked me if I would preach a sermon on the concept of a church, setting a standard, setting agreements, setting culture, whatever you want to call it.

Now, two weeks ago, we looked at a bunch of things. We looked at the Jerusalem Council, church orders. Fast forward into the Anabaptists and their church orders.

So if you haven't heard that, go back because this really isn't dependent on that. And then that's dependent on the other Anabaptist sermons to get a concept of why Anabaptists do the things they do. We looked at quotes from opponents of their day, how they described them, groups that fell away.

We even looked at a quote from John Wesley and him bemoaning him, wishing he would have had a requirement in the Methodist church. Also, I brought up some things about Danny Kenniston towards the end of his life and some of the things he struggled with where the charity movement had ended and how he wished he would have done some things differently. Also, I just happened to be back with Trevor one time and I was sitting across the table from Mos Dost, his brother, without even realizing it, and he told me how Mos had gone over to Romania and seen these people under persecution and they didn't need any kind of church guidelines.

But then after many years of living back in the United States and the things he tried, realizing that a persecuted culture is different than a pleasure culture and we live in a pleasure culture. And so the opening verse Brother Bob read was out of Corinthians. It said Paul was wishing they'd be joined together in one mind and one judgment.

I will say this also just starting off here that I haven't always believed like this. Many years ago when I first came out of the Baptist church, this was one of the hardest things for me to stomach. I was in an Eastern church for a year and I just couldn't take it.

Like it was way too defined. That's what actually had me come to this church. So it's a little of my history.

Now one of the things I said two weeks ago was a sermon I heard by Clint Wolfe. I would highly recommend it. But he asked the question in the sermon, why do Anabaptists have such a low divorce rate? And this was kind of a light bulb moment for me when I heard this made a lot of things I've been thinking about the last year or two click.

He said, why do they have such a low divorce rate? And then he said this, is it because of their good preaching and teaching? And if we stop and think about the charity concept when it started, that's kind of what his concept was. If we could just preach it good, if we could just teach it good, we wouldn't have to define anything. And he said, is it because of their good preaching and teaching? And then he went on to say that some of the world's most renowned preachers, Andy Stanley, Paul Washer, can preach amazing sermons, and yet somehow at the end of the day, when they get done with the sermon and say amen, people do whatever their culture says is allowed to do.

And so culture has a stronger influence on people than just good preaching and teaching. He made the comment at the end of the sermon there, or sometime in the sermon, he said, history has proven itself over and over. When a church gives up on church order within not too many years, it really doesn't matter how good the preaching.

If the culture allows it, it will happen. We talked about that. We also last time talked about why we all make different rules in our lives to protect the things we love.

I told you about how I made a rule in my own family. My children came up to me afterwards, but I made a rule saying everybody leaves their phones over there on the counter because I wanted to protect something. I wanted to protect family time.

I didn't want everybody on their phones. And so in the same way, we make rules because we want to protect things. Now I could make way too many rules and end up not protecting what I love.

Pretty soon my children are walking around on eggshells because what rule now am I breaking? We could end up unprotecting what we love by making too many rules. This church, in our practice, it says something about a color of a head covering. I think I mentioned this last time.

Why do we do that? Well, it communicates some things. It says, first of all, we think the head covering is very important. It's something holy.

It's something we don't want to express self with. It's something we want to pass on to the next generation. It's something that we consider that is an important thing.

Now does it guarantee if we say that everybody that does it is a Christian? Everybody that does it is now spiritual? No, we can't legislate morality. This is some quick review. Also we spoke a little bit about the concept of something that's being expressly in the Bible.

I read something there from a statement last time. But the idea is there's a position out there that says a church can only specify things that are expressly written in the Bible. And I brought up some thoughts last time.

What about things like mohawks? Some guy comes in next week, a member of our church, and he's got a mohawk on. And we say, well, you shouldn't wear that mohawk. And he says, well, where's that in the Bible? Well, okay, we could tie it down to that.

What about a tongue ring or feminine slacks I brought up last time or drugs or muscle cars for you young men? What if a lady came in with spandex? And we said, well, the Bible says modesty. And she said, well, that's your definition of modesty. I looked it up, and modesty just means not luxurious.

We could get into all of these interpretations at the end of the day and walk away throwing up our hands not knowing what to do because we don't believe that the church can collectively, with wisdom and the Bible in their hand, make some applications. And we looked last time at what the Jerusalem Council did. They collectively, the apostles and elders, with the Bible in their hands, actually came up with four different things, applications for the church.

You know, every era faces new moral, cultural, and technological situations. Think about AI and what we haven't even dealt with 10 years ago. We didn't even know this was coming.

What are we going to do with AI and all of it can do now? Yeah. So if the church is not allowed to collectively discern as a brotherhood, if individuals become the final interpreters, it leads to chaos. And in Judges, it says everyone does what is right in their own eyes.

That's a very dark time in Israel. A collective discernment guards unity, order, and holiness in changing times. Now, I want to talk a little bit about this idea about a father.

I think we all understand the concept that a father is allowed to make rules in his own home. He can make extra biblical rules. He can make rules.

So let's just draw this. So we have this family. Actually, let me do this.

I need to leave some room. We have this family and the parents get together and they have some rules, right? And there's some rules like you cannot lie. You cannot steal.

You cannot murder your brother, right? These are things that we could all say are God's laws, right? They could easily go back to the Bible and say, yes, these are God's laws. So thank you. But then maybe the dad has some rules.

Thank you, Chad. You're not going to wear T-shirts and the children are like, well, where's that in the Bible? You can't watch TV. Where's that in the Bible? So we have these two sets of rules in the family, and I think children with time can be trained to understand that.

And how many remember children, at least I do, you have these family rules, and they grow up and they pretty soon look over and say, how can that family be Christian? They're doing this, this, and that. And those are our family rules. They're not their family rules.

We're going to let them be. And so we natively figure this out with time. It's not always.

I remember one time Timothy rebuked some guy for smoking as we walked by him, and I had to work on him and go talk to him. But anyway, so we have these rules and we learn how to work with them, right? We say there's express rules from God like lying and stealing and fornication, and then there's rules that are our family rules. Now, the idea here is in a brotherhood, a church, the idea is only we're allowed to do the express ones and not make any local brotherhood concepts and applications.

Now, my question is this morning, can a church do the same thing? Can it have some guidelines, some applications, and in the same way be taught like a family to say these are express rules of God? We look out there and that church has fornication going on. We can say they can't be a Christian and allow that. That's not allowed.

You can't be a Christian and lie. But then they wear T-shirts. Well, we'll just say that's between them and God.

That's how they want to do their culture. We're doing it a little bit different. Can we not have the same kind of concept in a church as a family? It's just a question I asked this morning.

Now, I agree churches can slip, and they can start moving some of these over here and thinking that way, and then pretty soon, you know, everything becomes over here. And so we have to guard against that. But can a church, just like a family, accomplish the same thing to where some rules are God's explicit commands and other rules are our shared, our collective understanding on how to best obey and protect those commands on the right? And I think if we're honest, we have to realize that we're in the middle of— I've been trying to show you the Reformation, Anabaptists, the Catholic Church, all of the thoughts that were going on during that time.

And if we're honest, I think we have to realize we're in the middle of these two extremes of thought. One was sola scriptura, which was a product of the Reformation. And what that said was they were sick and tired of all the abuses of church authority in the Catholic Church.

The Catholic Church interpreted everything. And so they, in a sense, went to one side, and they swung in the pendulum. They went to another ditch, and they said, there will be no churches defining things.

Only the Scripture will be defined. Only the Scripture will be our rule. And that sounds good, but what it leaves is a bunch of people having to interpret it.

Have you ever run into that? You tell them a Bible verse, and they say, well, that's not how I interpret it. And pretty soon, I heard this statement before. Actually, it's a statement against— it was an Orthodox making a statement against the Reformers and all of the people that are not in the Orthodox Church.

He said, you have all become a Pope to yourselves. We all have our Bibles, and we all interpret it ourselves. Well, that's what I say, and that's what I say.

And it really turns into everyone doing what's right in his own eyes. And so I think there's a balance here. The one ditch is church authority.

Only the church defines truth. And the other ditch is no church authority. It's only the Scriptures, which leaves it in everyone interpreting it in their own kind of way.

Now, I want to draw some ideas here. So let's imagine on this side of— we're going to imagine a ditch here. And this side of the ditch is no rules.

We'll just make it short. And on this side of the ditch, we'll put over-regulation, which means too many rules, right? Now, this is a spectrum. This is a gradient from one end to the other.

Now, what are—you can help me out. What are some things we can say, some cons to a church model that says, you know what, we're not going to specify anything. We're not going to sit down and figure out any applications.

What would be some cons that would be on this side? Okay, lack of unity. Somebody else? How about individualism? Remember I said you've all become popes to yourself? What other things could happen here? Okay, I would put—how did I put that? I'll just put a short-term thing. Yeah, I was thinking like multi-generational, but lack of passing on, okay? You can't stick with— Kind of like unity, yeah.

Yeah, basically. I put—one of my things I put that I've seen in church models that do this is drift towards to worldliness with time. It's not overnight.

Okay? And what really concerns me above all of that, I mean those are kind of very important things, but it's very important to me, coming out and forsaking so many things. The most important thing is forsaking Jesus' teachings. You know, I've watched it and I've seen it over and over with my friends, which people at one time would have, you know, believed just like us, and now it's gone.

Like no more non-resistance. No more important things that Jesus taught. Now what are some things—now let's fill up this side.

What are some cons to this side? Okay. I'll say lack of personal conviction. I add that, but yes.

Okay, what else? Okay, hypocrisy. Okay, we'll put pride. Okay.

Okay, yeah. Let's see if I put— Okay. Oh, I have one here that's really good.

Well, I have two more. Oh, man. Poor evangelism.

And I've got to walk back over there. And here's what I add. Add to the gospel.

This is a dangerous one. We'll talk about it a little bit, but we could add things to the gospel. Go ahead.

Okay. Okay. Man, you guys can fill this list up really fast.

What's that? Okay. We're going to spend the whole day here. Can we stop there? I know.

Okay. Well, that's exactly my point. So thank you for illustrating that.

You know, this will be a great conversation for afterwards. So, you know, I could add over there, I could add the word formalism on the right side. Religiosity.

And I could write over here, worldliness. These are the dangers. I'm not saying it always happens, but these are the dangers.

Now, what I'd be concerned about is we have reactionism on both of these ends, right? Some of us have been over here and seen the hypocrisy under a plain coat or a cape dress, and we are running full tilt away from this side, right? That ditch, the farther we can get from the ditch, the better. And some of us in this room have been on this side and have seen the hypocrisy, have seen the deadness. You know, you think there's only hypocrisy on this side, and there is, but there's hypocrisy on that side, too.

There's deadness on this side, too. There's people who are emotional, hallelujah, Jesus, and they're still dead, and they're still hypocrites. And I've seen it.

Or they're wearing their suits and ties and preaching really nice sermons at Baptist churches, and they're still dead. It happens everywhere. And so maybe some of us are running full tilt from this side, right? So we've got these two sides running, and if we're not careful, what happens is there's some carnage, a little battle, and we keep running, right? Really, that's what could happen.

Some of us maybe didn't see the hypocrisy over there, but we just don't want to be told what to do. There's all kinds of reasons. We just don't understand that model.

I was there for many years. It's a scary model. But at the end of the day, we've all had our experiences.

I've seen it. You've seen it. We're in the middle of this crossing of paths.

Clint Wolfe said this, sometimes we're dealing with reaction. Some of us have seen rank hypocrisy, terrible sin, hiding under plainclothes. A conclusion was apparently made that the best way to have spiritual life was to get rid of the structure.

Structure was the problem. Let's have life and throw out the structure. But he went on to say it hasn't turned out so well.

So I want to write something else that's a little weird here. It might not make a lot of sense. But on the same parallel ditch, I'm going to put evangelism.

And some of you evangelists might be like, what are you doing that for? And I'm going to put over here on this side of the ditch, multi-generational. Now, it seems strange to put that up there. But let me tell you something interesting.

Did you know that the more conservative the group, the more able they are to pass on whatever their belief is, whether they're Christian or not? Did you know that? Did you know that the Andy Weaver Amish, I guess they're the most conservative group out there, retains 97% of their youth? Did you know the old order retained 86% of their youth? The new orders retain 60% of their youth. And the best I could, with all my research, figure charity probably maintained about 30% of their youth. And Baptist, well not just Baptist, all evangelicals right now, all evangelicals, it just came out, an article, 75% of youth are leaving.

So they're retaining 25%. So there's an issue here. And these spectrums are on both ends.

So some people, they focus on evangelism and they say, we need to go to this side of things so that we can win the world. We need to win the world. We need to reach out to the world.

And that's a true truth. And what happens is, as they get over in this model, somehow this starts getting lost. They start looking around.

We're losing our next generation. What's going on? And then some people focus heavily on, we've got to pass it on to the next generation. This is the most important thing in life.

And for whatever reason, no new blood's coming in. Nobody's being witnessed to. I know that sounded bad, but it's the truth.

Dean Taylor himself, I guess out of this Kingdom Fellowship weekend, said that in the early days of charity, they were losing a lot of their young people. And he said, and somehow the old orders were keeping their young people, even though vast portions, a large share, even though they had church services every other week. So somehow their culture, whatever it is, it was helping them retain.

Now, I remember being in this, when we first came out of the Baptist Church, we were conservative. And for a while there, we thought, let's take off things. Let's not be so conservative.

We want to be like the world. Let's try to be like the world. So we went to different things we were doing.

But I just remember thinking, okay, if we could just wear skirts and shirts, that would still be modest, but closer to the world. Well, let me just tell you, when you're in skirts and shirts, and they're all not in skirts and shirts, they still think you're odd. They still think you're not like them.

The world will still call you legalist. So I've heard these arguments back and forth. Now let's talk about legalism a little bit.

You know, many times, if you ever get in a conversation with somebody about these models, they'll say, this is just legalism. I was reading on a forum and somebody said, if any church ever told me what to do, I would run from that church as fast as possible. That's just legalism.

But did you know that Jesus said that the opposite was the true in the end days? He said, because of lawlessness shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. So it's not legalism necessarily, or if we want to define it exactly as law. It's not law that's the problem.

It's lawlessness. Leonard Ravenhill, I think you all know who he is, he said something interesting. He said, when there is something in the Bible that churches don't like, they call it legalism.

But somehow it wasn't legalism. When the apostles and the elders came together and they looked at those four things, they said, hey, three of these are specific applications. Somehow, even though they were to the negative, abstained from this, abstained from that, it wasn't legalism.

But what was legalism was when, if they did determine something was legalism, what was the legalism? What did they say they did throw out as legalism? Live by the law of Moses and to be circumcised. So they had to differentiate which things was God's law that they were requiring, which things weren't. And so they had to work through those things as a church.

Now, I'd like everybody to turn to Mark chapter 7. This is a classic verse we would go to to say that Jesus is against legalism. In Mark 7, verse 7, Jesus speaking, I believe the Pharisees, he says here, Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Now, if we stop there, we could say that Jesus is teaching that it's always vain, it's always wrong to teach commandments of men, to teach doctrines, the commandments of men.

But then he goes on in verse 8, he says, For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold to the traditions of men. So if we hadn't had the next verse, we wouldn't understand what Jesus meant. Jesus said here that when we hold to some man-made tradition and we lay aside God's commands, we're in grave problems.

If we take something that we as a brotherhood have come up with, a cultural thing, and then we lay aside, because of our command, and we lay aside these other commands, according to Jesus, we're in grave trouble. He goes on, For laying aside the commandments of God, you hold the tradition of men, as, and he gives some ideas, washing of pots and cups, and many other such like. And he said, full well, next verse, you reject the commandments of God, that you may keep your own traditions.

And he goes on to tell about this whole concept of Corban, where they would say, They would say, well, if we do this, this money is set aside for God, and I don't have to take care of my parents now. See, in their heart, they didn't want to do what God said. They laid aside the commandments of God and held their own traditions.

Now this is true legalism. Legalism is following our own traditions and disobeying God's commands. Legalism is not, according to what we're reading here, somebody having a carefully regulated life to honor God.

Legalism is really an attitude. It's an attitude, and it's a condition of our heart. How do you look at the things that we do as a church? I want to talk a little bit about Pharisees, you know.

I think, Brother Bob, you said, well, one of those things you said, Phariseeism. And that is something that comes up. Are we Pharisees? We could just become Pharisees by doing what we do.

Did you know that the Pharisees actually started as a reform movement back in the second century before Christ? They were a group of people who had seen the Jews. The Jews were acculturating. That means they were going into becoming liberal, if we want to say in our day terms.

The foreign influence, the Greek influence on them, was causing them to fall into the Hellenistic culture. And the Pharisees were spiritual men. They said, we don't want this to happen.

We want to reform Israel. And so what they did is they wanted to uphold God's law, and they wanted people to live wholly separate lives. Did you know the word Pharisee actually means separated ones? The word actually means separated.

And so they wanted to make holiness, obedience to God, to be a daily thing. They wanted it not to just be something you practice in the temple. But over time, what went wrong with the Pharisees is they became more and more emphasis on outward, and less and less emphasis on inward.

They cared more about what they look like than they cared about the inward transformation they had in their hearts. They started off as a really good thing, but with time they became proud in their superiority. Did you know that Jesus never condemned them? Once, that I know of, for their desire for righteousness, for their desire for purity.

We always want to throw them in the bad rap. What did he condemn them for? For their hypocrisy, for their pride. In Matthew 23, Jesus called them hypocrites eight times.

That's a lot of times. He said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. He said, hey, you Jews do anything they tell you to do, just don't be like them, because they don't practice what they preach.

He said, they clean the outside, they make the outside look all good, but he said the inside are full of greed and self-indulgence. He said they're full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. He said, they honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

He said, you appear righteous to all men, but within you're full of hypocrisy and iniquity. They were hypocrites. Hypocrite actually means actors.

They also were full of pride. Jesus said that they loved the places of honor. They loved to be called rabbi and greeted in the marketplace.

He said this, all your works you do are to be seen by men. If there is anybody in this room today and that's you, then you are a Pharisee. You are a legalist and you need to repent, because if you've fallen into that and over to that ditch to where you love what people think of you more than the inward transformation of your life and you are living a hypocritical life, then that's wrong and Jesus is speaking to you.

Jesus said to them in Matthew 23, he said, Woe to you scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites. He said, you pay the tithe for mint and dill and all these different things, but then you've omitted the weightier things of the law. So they had these little laws.

Hey, make sure you pay this percentage of this and this and this. But then he said over here, justice and mercy and faith you've omitted. See, they're laying aside God's weightier things and they're keeping to their little traditions.

And did you know Jesus didn't say, so stop tithing. He said this, this you should have done, paying the 10% or 5% and not omitted the other. Jesus never was saying that they couldn't have these little things.

He just said, don't omit these things over here. He said this, you blind guides, you strain in a gnat and swallow a camel. He wasn't saying now, so now from now on, I want you to swallow gnats and strain at camels.

He was saying strain at gnats, sure, but strain at camels. Keep the camels out of your life. That's way more important.

So is the problem with having a tradition culture, is that the problem? Or is the problem that we reject God's commands? Pharisees, here's a good definition. They love little easy-to-follow laws, little easy-to-follow man-made laws, but then they love to find loopholes in the big laws, right? Justice, mercy, and faith, those are very important. So my question is, can we come back to this? Can we be a church that has these things and still have justice, mercy, and faith? Jesus said, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.

So everyone sitting here this morning, your righteousness needs to be higher than what we saw the Pharisees. We need to be people that are inwardly transformed. Now I like to think of it like this, there's two kinds of people in a church.

I don't know. So let's imagine the church gets together and they set this line. They say, this is where we're going to set our, we'll just say church standard.

This is our definition, whatever it is. And let's imagine up here, God's work in your life. And here's the start off of your life.

Now one kind of person, it's like all their life ever reaches to is right here. You know, they do it to be seen of men. They're hypocritical.

That's their measure of holiness. Another kind of person, they see this line down here as kind of like kindergarten, as like foundational. Oh, so the church asked me to do that? Big deal.

I don't mind doing that. Because in their mind, they're developing their own conscience, their own personal convictions. And those can far out go some simple thing the church comes up with.

The problem is we look at these guys and we say, look at this hypocrisy here. And we turn around and blame this line here for it. I would love to hear somebody who wakes up.

And I did this too, by the way. I woke up as a dead person in a Baptist church. And guess what I did? I blamed the Baptist church.

I'd love to have somebody wake up sometime, realize that they're dead and say, it's my fault. You know, it's my fault. It's not the rule's fault.

It's my fault. It's not the tradition's fault. You know, some of my wife and I were talking about, there's some good godly traditions that our parents taught us.

And I remember I threw some of those out at the beginning because I was like, you know, that must have caused me to be a Pharisee. So we view that as a measurement of our spirituality. So I want to talk a little bit about judging the fruit.

We could discuss this. You know, I could do four more sermons on this. No.

But we could keep talking about this and talking interpretations. We could sit afterwards and talk to her. Blue in the faith till four o'clock this afternoon or five if you want to.

And talk about all these interpretations and how we see it differently. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, this is my thought. Could we just judge the fruit? Could we just look at different models we've seen and judge the fruit from it? Can we look at church history? Can we look back and say, what have we seen? Jesus said this, wisdom is justified of our children.

I remember when I heard that verse and it clicked. I was actually back at Living Hope. Wow, what is that saying? Somebody comes to you with some great idea, some new ideal, some new way of doing it.

You know what? Wisdom is justified. The wisdom, what they're saying, is justified. When they have grandchildren, you'll know if what they're saying is right.

Give it some time to prove out, right? The fruit of what they're saying takes time. Wisdom is justified of our children. I was recently talking to somebody who grew up in a charity church.

He told me this. He said, no one he grew up with is still Anabaptist. That, to me, is shocking.

I'm not blaming it all on charity. Just saying, whatever happened there, I think that church went through several splits. I'll give you one thing.

That will mess with children. That unity thing is important. One of my sons was at an event.

It was a very eye-opening moment for him. He saw these two brothers side by side. Brother one and brother two.

He noticed that all of their children, well, most of their children were there. We'll come down here. He had all these children.

Then he had all these children. Same over here. He said it was really interesting seeing three generations all in one big, broad scope.

He said this brother had chosen this model. This brother had chosen more of this model. I don't know which ditches they were in.

I don't really know. This is what he came home with. He said it was really interesting to see by the grandchildren the differences in both different models.

There was a difference. But it took 25 years to find that out. That was a light bulb moment for him.

I was standing in a church meeting once. These older men were sitting and talking. They were talking about an event that happened 40 years ago.

Somebody died, and they were talking about this death. This day they were over here in this field, and this guy was over here. They all came together.

They heard this happen, and they come running together, and they're helping him. I sat there in this light bulb moment. Where have I ever seen men who grew up together who are standing around and talking about an event and are still in the same church? I know that seems strange to some of you.

But the church my wife and I grew up in, my family church, like my great-grandfather founded, is no longer in existence. The church my wife and I met in is no longer in existence. And many of the churches, if you'd go back to the churches we were in, there wouldn't be the same faces there anymore.

There's something about passing on a unity and a faithfulness to each other, too. There was a young man visiting here a couple months ago, and he was talking to another one of our young men. He was talking about he was grown up in a conservative Mennonite church.

And he said, he was explaining why he thought having a strong church culture was a good thing. And he said this, he said, my grandfather was not a spiritual man. And he said that, but he came to the church services and was faithful to that even though he wasn't spiritual.

And then he said, but my father, because of being raised up in that culture, is a spiritual man. And he said, and now today, I'm a spiritual man. And so even though the grandfather wasn't spiritual, it had a retaining effect, and it was able to bless others down the line.

Where would he be today if he wouldn't have been in a stronger cultured church? My question is, can we look at history and learn from it? Why do we think we can try a model that has failed over and over and get a different result? Clinton Wolf said this, he said his old elder said, we do not know the outcome of the decisions we are making today until we have grandchildren. Powerful statement. John D. Martin says it takes about 25 years to see that super spiritual rhetoric, or how he calls it, bear fruit.

But then, by then, it's too late. Back in World War II, there were some engineers. They were trying to determine how to keep these planes from falling out of the sky when they got shot.

And so they got together, and they made some data. They took some analytics, and they decided, okay, take all of the different places of the planes that made it back to base, and wherever they were shot, let's put it all into one image, and let's look at this and decide, what should we do? We need to armor this plane. We need to reinforce this plane so it won't fall out of the sky.

Now, if you haven't heard of this, I want you to answer. Where would you think the natural place we should start armoring the plane? Fuselage. Okay, where? Right here? Okay, right there.

Okay, good. That's a good thought. What else? Where else would you naturally think we should, where should we put some more steel? The engine.

Did you hear of it? No. Okay, well, that's very good. Yeah, okay, did you hear that? So the thing is, is this data is for the planes that made it back.

Now, it's called survivorship bias. What that means is, can you all see it in the back, or is it too low? You're okay? Okay. What it means is, okay, so we see this plane, all these planes that made it back, they're all shot up right here, and our first thought is get the metal out and cover up all the holes, right? We've got to fix the holes.

One engineer said, I think his name was Mark Wald, he said, wait a minute, these are all the planes that made it back, right? What about all the planes that never made it back? They're at the bottom of the sea somewhere, they're burnt up. So this represents all the places that the plane was strong enough and still could make it back. That means these spots are dangerous, these spots are dangerous, this is dangerous, we need to reinforce these spots here, here, here, here, and here.

That's called survivorship bias. Now, why did I bring that up? I believe that we can do this with churches, too. We look at a church, we see it survive three, four, five generations, and what do we do? We all look at that dead person.

I saw a dead person in a plane coat. You know, I, anyway, that has two meanings. We start looking for all the holes and all the hypocrisy and all of that, but we don't tend to realize that where are all the churches that aren't even in existence today? You know, like the ones I told you that aren't even in existence today in my own home, in my own life? We don't realize its strength, you know, it still made it back.

It's still passing on, like the young man that told us, third generation, he's still here because of it. We don't see all the thousands of people blessed because it was there. We don't realize the doctrines it's still preserving.

If there wasn't a church today that stood for Jesus' teachings, I don't know where I would be. But there's a church that says, hey, Jesus' teachings really mean what it means. And so we want to look at all the holes and the problems with it, but maybe these are its strengths and its stronger areas.

Maybe we need to look at some other places that are weaker. You know, how many of the planes that went down, the churches that don't even exist, that thousands maybe are in Satan's kingdom, that don't even preach a true gospel anymore because of it. Survivorship bias.

It's a truth that scientists, it taught scientists something very important that to this day is still remembered. I have one more illustration. I got this from Roger, and I don't know, did you get this from Melvin Lehman? So here we have a picture, here, let's just put this up here so everybody can see clearly.

Here we have a picture of a plant. Now, this plant, we have all this dirt around here. Now, where's the life of this plant? Is it the dirt? Is the life for this plant, does it get it from, is it the dirt that provides the life? Okay, what provides life to a plant? Sun.

What else provides life to a plant? Water. Okay. And so if I would go around and dig it all up and pull the plant out of there, hold it up and say a day or two, hey, it's dying.

It must have been the dirt, right? It must have provided the life. No, the dirt didn't provide the life, but it was essential for the plant to live. The dirt was essential.

I want to liken culture, standards, brotherhood agreements, guidelines, whatever you want to call them, to this dirt. This dirt is not the life, and we have to keep that in mind. This dirt is only a protective measure.

It's a tool. It's a tool that we can use to pass on to other generations. But at the same time, we have to realize where the life comes from, the water, the sun.

What would it be like if the plant was dead and it woke up one day and realized, I'm dead, and it looked down and said, what is all this dirt? It must be the dirt's fault, right? That's what we can tend to do, is tend to blame something. We tend to do that as people. I did it like I said.

But it's not the dirt's fault. It was my fault for not eating the water, for not taking up the sun. We're almost done here.

Colossians chapter 2. Another passage that is commonly used against this concept. I'd like to talk about that a little bit before we close. Colossians chapter 2, towards the end of the chapter, verse 20.

Now Paul is writing to the Colossians, and he says in verse 20, he talks about the rudiments of the world, and then he says at the very end of it, he says, why, as though, as through living in the world, are you subject to ordinances? And then he says in verse 21, touch not, taste not, handle not, which all to the perishing with the using, after the commandments and doctrines of men. Stop there. It could be interpreted that Paul is telling us here, that we should never have any ordinances like, touch not, taste not, handle not.

Those are commandments of men and we should never do that. Or we fall into sin. And that could be an interpretation.

But I see some issues with that interpretation. Number one, the next chapter, chapter 3, just one verse away, starts off with a bunch of rules. Colossians chapter 3. A lot of things we're supposed to do, putting off this and doing that.

In fact, one translation says, some rules for Christian living, for the title of chapter 3. Another issue I have is, in Corinthians, Paul says to them, he says this, I praise you, brothers, that you keep the ordinances that I have delivered to you. He also, and along with Peter, said things like, hey, be careful the way you dress. Don't wear these kind of jewels.

And he goes on with a very specific list of things. And then along with that, the Jerusalem council came up with four applications, three applications to be specific. I'd like to point out a couple of things in this passage.

Verse 18, says this, of chapter 2. It talks about, not letting someone beguile you. Let no man beguile you of your reward, in a voluntary, and he goes on. Beguile you of your reward.

One translation puts it like this, let no one condemn you. So somehow Paul was dealing with some people in Colossae that were condemning them if they didn't do whatever they were telling them to do. Verse 10 talks about circumcision.

He says circumcision is now spiritual. Verse 14, he says that the handwriting of ordinances have been blotted out, which goes right along with Ephesians, saying that he abolished in his flesh the law and commandments contained in ordinances. So he's talking about these ordinances have been blotted out.

And verse 16, he says this, don't let any man judge you in meats, drinks, holy days, new moons, and Sabbath days. To me, this is my interpretation, it's clearly talking about a Jewish context. There were these people called Judaizers, and they would say, unless you do this, this, this, and this, you cannot be saved, clearly teaching Jewish customs.

Now, could we stand in jeopardy of this verse? I believe we could. If we would turn these laws that I put over here on the left, if we would start putting these laws, whatever they are, and start putting them over here and saying, if you don't do this, this, and this, and this, you cannot be saved, then we are in danger of what the verse is talking about, adding to the gospel, right? But if we can keep a proper balance, think of these two spectrums, if we can somehow learn not to fight with each other and somehow learn to find the muscles and the bones and the strength of each other and not push the limits both ways, if we can somehow be like a family who says, you know what, we know which ones are expressly God's commands and we know which ones are our family's commands. And so we're a church here, somebody comes along and they say, well, why can't you wear t-shirts? Well, we're not saying you're not a Christian, but we're saying this is how we want to do it.

We're saying that, you know, if you don't agree with our little culture we're doing here, then we're kind of like monks, okay? If you don't like this monastery, find another monastery. So that's the idea here. So there are dangers on both ends of this.

We need to be aware of those dangers. Either one has a ditch, over-regulating and under-regulating. We need to be careful that we don't become Pharisees and do things out of hypocrisy and pride and lose our personal conviction.

That is a real danger on that side. But we also need to be careful of individualism. John D. Martin says that individualism is the greatest danger to true spirituality.

We need to be careful about drifting into worldliness. There's been a widespread acceptance of the typical Protestant pattern. Preachers preach fine sermons, but then it's left up to the individual to decide how to apply it.

So here's my parting question to you. Thank you for your attention. Here's my parting question.

Can the Church, or this Brotherhood, define culture, agreements, applications, standards, whatever you want to call them, as a tool to pass on the valuable interpretations of principles to the next generation without setting aside the commandments of God? God bless you.