What is Independent Baptist? (Part 2)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Let's go to get our Bible and we are going to continue our study on. We posed the question last week, which is, what is independent Baptist? And we started by looking at the Word, to begin looking at the word Baptist and to understand what are the characteristic doctrines that historical Baptists have held. And again, I think it's very important for us to make it clear that because in this world, there are so many assumptions about when you identify with a certain group that you think certain things. And so I want to be clear about that. And just so there's no ambiguity, that just because a person identifies as themselves with the Baptist people does not mean that they are necessarily saved. Right? We got to get that right. Not all Baptists are saved, but all Baptists should be saved. But not necessarily all are not saved. I used to be one. So number two, we talked about it last week that we do not believe that only Baptists are going to heaven, okay? So that's not something we would teach or say to people. Number three, and this is important as well. We are not right because we are Baptist. What makes a person right is the Scripture. That is their alignment with the Scripture, not their alignment with some identified group. And so that's an important distinction as well. And I'll say this. I'm not stuck on this name Baptist as far as a name is concerned. If there was a different group called by a different name later in history, just like there was prior to our time, there were groups that were not called Baptists but held to essentially Baptist beliefs that align with Scripture, then we would be that, whatever it is. But I'm not dissatisfied with it. Obviously, I'm happy to be called it, and I'm certainly not ashamed of what I am. I am sometimes ashamed of others who call themselves Baptist, as I'm sure you have been as well, at some point or another. But there's nothing scripturally wrong with identifying yourself with what you believe, which is all that it is. It's not an attempt to say us and them or anything like that, but it is a way for us to identify what are the characteristic beliefs that our church holds and that other historical Baptist people have held. So we've looked at several of them already. We'll not rehash all of those, but just to kind of go review what we've studied already. The first one is following the acrostic of Baptists, the word Baptists. The first one is biblical authority. That is, the Bible is the sole rule for what we believe and how we live as a believer The Bible and only the Bible. Not tradition, not church hierarchy, but the Bible. Everything is to be tested by the Bible. Okay, that's number one. Number two is the autonomy of the local church. And that answers to the. In contrast with the idea of a hierarchical kind of national or global church setup, what we see in Scripture is we see single and individual local churches in individual places. We don't see anything outside of that in the New Testament. Alright? And that goes back to the Bible, which is the first point. Number three is the priesthood of every believer. And we'll touch more on this in just a minute, which is that all believers or priests of God have direct access to God and that therefore there is no such thing as a clergy class. All of us are one in Christ Jesus and there are no classes that distinguish us as believers. And then the last thing we looked at last week was the ordinances of the church, two ordinances, which is believer's baptism by immersion and the Lord's Supper, which Lord willing, we will do today. And we'll see more of that in just a minute. Why that's important. But just if you look at historical Baptist in particular, you look at the doctrine of baptism more than any other doctrine, probably, maybe, maybe biblical authority would be maybe one that's a little bit, a little bit higher. But throughout history, today we're going to look at this is what all the papers I have, we have, I have some history I want to share with you, but the doctrine of baptism of believers only by immersion is really a huge distinguishing doctrine among Baptists. It has by itself done a great deal to separate people of, you know, of this, of this, of this kind of faith from those around them, especially as they pass through the Dark Ages and the Protestant Reformation. Those especially those two periods. Now prior to that, it wasn't really an issue, it was a settled issue. But that changed and as a result, those who said no, we only baptize people by immersion and we only baptize believers. That by itself brought a lot of repercussions and fallout for Christianity in general, but also for the Baptist people. So we will pick up with the next one. Let's pray and then we'll get into the next point. We want to try to get through all the rest of them, which we have four more I'd like to get to today. Pray together. Father, thank you for the opportunity to meet together. Thank you for your people that are here. Lord, I pray that you would give us one heart and one soul. I pray that the word of God would be precious to us in these things that we study, that you'd give us the right tone and the right attitude, which is so often, even when the person is right, yet the attitude and the tone can be off. And so, Lord, we want to be right. Not that we would boast, but Lord, that we would have a clear conscience before you. That we are trying our best to do and to believe and to practice according to what your word has said. And so, Lord, we pray you would guide our study. Lord, please smile upon our study. Help it to be helpful to your people. In Jesus name, amen. So the next one, the I stands for individual soul liberty. Individual soul liberty. Now what these, these seven points, B, A, P, T, I, S, T. Yeah, I want to make sure I had that counted right. These seven points are mutually supportive. By that they don't really stand alone. They support one another. And they're. And these points, which are, which are biblical points. Now that's the key. Again, it's only right if it's right with the scripture. Otherwise it's just what some guy said, right? Whether it be me or you or anybody else. But they're mutually supportive. They're all part of a biblical understanding of truth and they affect one another. Just like if you have a woven garment, you can't just pull one string in a woven garment. It affects everything else. And so it is with this individual soul Liberty is basically the truth that says that neither the church or any other group, any other power has authority over the consciences of individuals. The church does not have power, the government does not have power. That as a result, and this is built upon the truth of the priesthood of the believer, you have as a child of God, you have direct access to God. And because you have the spirit of God in you, you have the teacher of the scripture in you, so you are directly responsible to him for what you believe and what you do. Right. Now, if we were in a situation where we had a mediator, someone who was required to go between us and God outside of Christ himself, if we had a mediator, then there would always be a go between that serves as kind of a buffer that would create a situation where we were not fully accountable to God. Like in other words, if that person said we had to do X, Y and Z, we would therefore have to do X, Y and Z. But that's not the way it is. We are answerable directly to Christ. And as a result of that, the truth of that, the implication of that is we will all give an account to God. And so Therefore, we must, as individuals who have direct access to God, the person of the spirit of God in us, and who will give an account to God, we must maintain a clear conscience before God as an individual. This is the truth of individual soul liberty. So not even as a church, and this is where kind of the rubber hits the road, not even as a church do we have power to tell you what you must believe. We do not have that power. We have power, and as we've discussed already, we have power to set the guidelines for becoming a part of this church in an official capacity as a member. But we do not have power to tell someone, you cannot believe this or especially or prescribe some sort of punishment. If you do not sign on the dotted line or agree to something, the church has no power to. To do that. So you say, well, then how can you make people believe it? Well, you got to convince them from the Bible there is no force, right? You've got to persuade them and show them this is what the Scripture says. And if they believe it, well, then. And their conscience bears witness to that fact, great. And if it doesn't, they'll give an account to God for that, and that's the end of the story. This is the truth of individual soul liberty. Each one of us is like that. Now, if you're in a situation where you want to control other people's consciences, I personally don't want to be responsible for that. Do you? I don't want that. I mean, I have enough in my own life making sure that my conscience is clear before the Lord to have to worry about anybody else. But each one of us has to keep that conscience clear before the Lord. There is no power of coercion. And the reason this is important, and this is a defining characteristic of Baptists, is because throughout history, matters of faith in particular have been enforced by the state while holding hands with the church. That has been a thing in Eastern Europe. Communism dictated to Christians what they could and could not do. And oftentimes communism sought these links with the church in these various countries. They still do this. They still do this in China. You know, there's an approved church and an approved Bible and there's this kind of marriage between the church and the state. And you're okay as long as you do that, but that's dictating to the conscience, individual Christians. But if you don't do that and you go to an underground church, well, then you're subject to punishment, right? And this has been true throughout history, because throughout history, the church as we'll see in just a minute. As it gained liberty and power, the leaders in the church sought to have political and civil power also and then turned to use that to enforce the rules of Christianity upon individual Christians. And there were always, throughout history, there's always been these people that are like, no, I don't think that's what the Bible says. That's what we're talking about here right now. We'll get to this in a minute. But this individual soul liberty has a companion characteristic which is the separation of church and state, which we'll get to in just a minute. But these go together. Okay, so individual soul liberty. Let's go to the next one. Saved or regenerate church membership. Saved or regenerate church membership. Now this means that if you're going to be a member of a Baptist church and of this church, which is a scriptural truth, in order to join with this church, you have to be baptized with believers. Baptism by immersion. So as you can see, believer's baptism is, is a requirement. So this truth is built upon believers baptism. Okay, so if a person must be baptized by immersion to be a member of this local church, and in order to be baptized, a person must have personal conversion. They must be of age and have personally put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be baptized, then this means that only born again people are permitted to become members of the church. Now you might say, why does that matter? Why not just have families join the church altogether? Or why not have, you know, why don't we do infant baptism and that kind of thing? Well, the biggest reason, and we talked about this already, but the biggest reason is that, is that the Bible only ever has baptism by believers. I mean, and really I mentioned this last week, but the verses that are used, there's one or two verses in all of the Bible that are used to support the idea of infant baptism. And they are pathetic, pathetic uses of scripture. They're allegorical, they're figurative uses, and definitely nothing direct in scripture. You look throughout the Book of Acts, what you find is clearly people believe the gospel. They believed in Christ and they were baptized. I'm not going to go into that right now because we've covered that. We went through the Book of Acts. We covered that. We've already covered that in our Sunday school class as well. I want to show you though why this matters. Why this matters. Why does it matter that you have a church body that is composed of believers? Some of you might have heard of the term pedobaptism that just means infant baptism, baptized babies. When you baptize someone, when you baptize a baby, what you're doing. And there's a lot of different ways. I'm going to read you something, an actual liturgy in just a minute. But when you baptize a baby, what you're doing is you're admitting that baby into the fellowship of the church as a member of the church. All right, number one, there is no scriptural warrant for that. The best you get is the comparison of baptism to Old Testament circumcision. That's the best. That's the best they got. There is one more. For those theologians among you, there's one more proof text, which is that when First Corinthians says that the children of Israel were all baptized in the cloud and in the sea, that was all the children of Israel, including their kids. This is it. This is our proof for baptizing babies. That's it. Circumcision and that. That's it. That's not very good. All right, what's that? Yeah, that's a good point. Girls are out of luck. Sorry. We baptize ladies too here. Just so you know. We baptize ladies. Saved ladies. We baptize saved ladies. So when you baptize a baby, though, and we're using that term in the broadest way possible, because most of the time it's not done by immersion anyway. But when you baptize a baby, what you're doing is you're admitting through baptism that child into the church as a member. Well, that child's not going to stay a child. That child's going to grow into an adult. And now you have someone who has been baptized and is a member in full standing with the church who may or may not have a personal conversion, who may or may not have the spirit of God in them, who may or may not be going to heaven, God forbid. So now you have a mixed multitude, that is the membership of the church. This is one of the reasons historically why churches and have just absolutely gone off the deep end as unbelievers now in the church are influencing whatever believers are there to embrace wickedness. Little by little, over time until now, it is many, many denominations are wholly lost, wholly lost. And it all got started because they babies were baptized without any scriptural warrant. Yes, sir. [00:18:23] Speaker B: The road. And probably about 35 years I thought that I was saved. I came here and understand Christian's message and I went down to join the church. [00:19:11] Speaker A: His history. But. But imagine if Brother Vernon was a deacon at a church and yet and wasn't ever converted, but relying upon his baptism as a child because he did. That's one of the damning things about infant baptism, is that people. Absolutely. People don't want to admit they're lost and they need to be saved. They don't want to admit they're without Christ. They don't want to admit that they're dead in trespasses and sins. They're one of those people. They don't want to admit that. So what do they do? They look for some religious thing that they've done that suits the purpose, to convince themselves everything's good and that paedobaptism does that. I've been baptized as a baby. That's great. What does that mean? Tell us, David. [00:20:07] Speaker B: Are members of the visible church and part of the covenant because they've been baptized, they are due all of the rights of members of children. [00:20:15] Speaker A: That's what I was saying a minute ago. [00:20:17] Speaker B: Which means that they are administered communities. [00:20:20] Speaker A: So did they grind up the. The cracker and put it in the baby bottle? Okay, exactly. We are not making this up. And this is why I actually printed this. Someone sent me this to get my opinion on it. This is Dominion Church. I have no idea where this church is, but this is an actual document used by actual church. Okay, great. Okay. So this is real. David. David can attest. I didn't make this up. Okay. This is the baptism liturgy. Okay. For this church. I'm just going to read you certain portions of this. Okay? They're baptizing a child, a baby at this point. Now I'm just going to read it. I beseech you to call upon God the Father through our Lord Jesus Christ, that of his bounteous. If that's a word, mercy. He will grant to this child that thing which by nature she cannot have, that she may be baptized with water and the Holy Spirit and be received into Christ's holy church and made a living member of the same. First of all, misinterpretation of John, chapter three. And the water found there. Okay? Assuming it's baptism received into Christ's holy church as a baby now and made a living member, not dead in trespasses and sins. Living member. Okay, it says this. And by the baptism of your beloved Son Jesus Christ in the River Jordan did sanctify water to the spiritual, washing away of sin to the parents. These are the baptismal vows to the parents. Do you bring this child for baptism in faith, trusting in God's covenant promises to be your child's. Your child's God and savior from sin. Persuaded that God desires to receive your child into his family and flock and speaking on her behalf as her representative and sponsor. Where is this? So when you bring your baby to be baptized, you're representing your baby and your faith stands instead of your baby. Are you going to say something? They say we do. Do you bring this child for baptism in faith? I'll skip a little bit. To make her a member of the body of Christ and to make this baptism her entrance into the new creation in Christ Jesus. You know what this is? A declaration that this baby is saved. This is. Listen, this is not. I want to tell you something. Sometimes people, like. People look at us and they think, you know, we're just quibbling about, you know, how much water we use or something. This is not. This touches on the core of the gospel. This touches on the core of the gospel. Whether that child. You think that child is saved by this right or not. Whether you think this has the power to save. When the Scripture says plainly, for by grace are ye saved through faith. Not the parents faith, the individual's faith. It goes on. They do these various vows. In the name of your child and on her behalf, do you renounce the devil? In the name of your child and on her behalf, do you believe in God the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? We do. They ask the members of the church to stand. Then they do the sacrament, which is not what we say. We do not use the word sacrament. Baptism is not a sacrament. Baptism is not a sacrament. There is no grace conveyed to the person who receives it. There's no grace given. That's what the word sacrament indicates, that some grace is received by it. That's not what the Bible teaches at all. The Bible teaches. It is a testimony. It is a symbolic testimony. Okay, then I baptize you, et cetera, in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen. Let us pray. Now, this is the prayer at the end. Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit, you have promised to bestow upon this your servant the forgiveness of sin. Receive her as your own child by adoption. Make her a member of your holy church and raise her to the new life of grace. She says, now, speaking to the baptizee, we receive you into the fellowship of the church. And then he turns to the church and says, I introduce you to the newest member of our covenant family, ladies and gentlemen. This is why it matters that you have saved church membership. And the way that you baptize is important because that you can't believe in Christ for your child. Not possible. Yes, ma' am. It's all done. Imagine, though, on a practical level, imagine for, well, and there's no doubt, well meaning people that have taken taking part in this. Imagine how difficult it is and confusing it is when that child grows up unconverted without God with this veneer of pseudo Christianity. Right. Why is the child going wayward? Why is the child throwing themselves? Because you know how it works. The first generation comes to the Lord, the Lord works in their hearts, and that's probably the parents. In a lot of cases, that's the parents doing this. The child is unconverted, grows out into the world, goes out into the world. The child's been around Christianity of some sort his whole life. He's tired of it, he's gone. No God in him. Despite this act. What hope is there? That must be really heart wrenching for parents. What we should be trying to do for our kids is we should be trying to make sure our kids come to the Lord Jesus. Like Jesus said, suffer the little children to come unto me. Notice just a slight understanding, just a slight note about what Jesus says there. He doesn't say, bring them to me. He says, suffer. Allow them to come to me. They're coming to him, right? They're coming to Jesus. And little kids can be saved. Absolutely. Little kids can be saved. Little kids can be. As long as they understand where they're at with the Lord and understand the Gospel, little kids can be saved. There is no, like, you know, minimum, you know, age, I mean, outside of the understanding they should be allowed to come to Jesus, but not given this false assurance. This is not. Listen, this is not just little quibbles about, you know, this church or that church. No, this touches on the very Gospel. All right, the next one. Two offices. Two offices. Pastor and bishop. Pastor, Bishop or deacon, rather. Look at, if you would, Philippians chapter number one and also First Timothy, chapter three. Why do we believe that there are only two offices in the church? It's very simple. Most everything in these things are relatively simple. Philippians chapter 1, Philippians 1:1 says this, Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons. Boom, there it is. Notice how they're together. Bishops and deacons. We say, well, well, hold on now. Your church doesn't have bishops. Yeah, we do. Don't get hung up on terminology, the word bishop just means overseer. I know denominations have coined that term to refer to the upper levels of their hierarchy. You know, your bishops over a diocese or however. You know, I'm not super familiar with every different group's terminology, but generally a bishop refers to someone not on a local level, but someone on, like, a regional level or higher. But that's not what the Bible has here. This is spoken to a single individual church. It had bishops and deacons. These are local offices in this individual church. You see it. Local leadership chosen by the congregation and from among the congregation. So notice you say, well, why are there only two? Well, because there's two mentioned. It's that simple. It's that simple. Look at First Timothy, chapter three. What about the word presbytery? You know, because that word's found in, I think, First Timothy. What about the word presbytery? All that means is elder. I mean, it's the same thing that's referring to the same thing. Again, don't get hung up on terminology. And just so you know, you know, historically, throughout history, Baptist people have used different terms to refer to their spiritual leaders. Sometimes it was elder, sometimes it was bishop, sometimes it was minister, sometimes it was pastor, sometimes it was the other one I'm missing. Somebody help me. No, Reverend was more of a title. Overseer. Yeah, there's one I'm forgetting anyway, but. But they've used different things throughout history, even recent history. But the key thing is not the term, because all three terms are used in Scripture. The key thing is the office. That's what we're talking about here. Two offices. First Timothy, chapter three. Look at what it says in verse number two. Says this, a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. Notice now in Philippians 1:1, you saw Bishop and deacon together, right? Two offices in a local church. Here you also see them together in verse two. And in verse eight, the requirements for the bishop and the requirements for the deacon together in the same context. You see it. That's how we know that these are all of the church offices. Right? And this is not the only ones. There are other ways, too. But notice, he says, a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. And he goes through the rest of the requirements. Verse number seven. Moreover, he, the bishop, must have a good report of them, which are without, lest you fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. Notice verse 8, first word. What does it say? Likewise. That means the word likewise means, like the bishop. So the deacon. Okay, the idea Is. They're connected, you see? They're connected with that word. Likewise. In other words, this is the sum total of spiritual leadership and service in a church. As far as offices are concerned. This is it. That's all you got. Anything else is man made. Everybody with me. This is the way you see it in Acts. This is where you see it in the epistles. Any other hierarchy that goes up above that, which is a local office, is just made up. It's just made up. It has. What do I mean by that? I mean it has no scriptural warrant for its existence. Okay? Now it might have a use. It might have a function. For instance. I'll give you an instance because some of you are familiar with Bob Jones University, okay? I'm not against Bob Jones University. Bob Jones University has a president. That's fine. But that is not a scriptural office of a church, full stop. That's not what it is. It doesn't mean we hate them, doesn't mean, you know, we want to burn the campus down or anything silly like that. It just means that it's not there in Scripture. So we recognize that the university and a church are not. Are not the same thing. They're different things, right? This goes back to biblical authority, right? You say, well, the Bible doesn't. And this is where the rubber meets the road, folks. Some might answer, and they say, well, the Bible doesn't say, you can't have a bishop or an archbishop or a cardinal, okay? There is no such thing as an archbishop in Scripture. You could argue the bishop point, because the Word is found in Scripture, but there's definitely no cardinals found in Scripture. But the thing is, it's not. When you are providing the spiritual leadership of the church, it should have its basis in the text of scripture and not just be made up. And that's part of the problem. Because what happens is I'm out of time. I'm going to have to pause here. But what happens is when these, when. When these other offices are made up that go up into this hierarchy of regional and national and then even global religious organizations that have no scriptural warrant. It's one thing if they want to make that. I'm not going to participate in that. But it's when those then seize the authority and the power that God has given only to the church, the local congregation of believers. That's a no, no. That's a no, no. And historically, I'm not just making this up. This is exactly what has happened. This is exactly what has happened. And here you have a local. Nothing. Congregation of people, you know, just a. Just like a little blip in some locale somewhere with a group of people that are like, you know, I just don't see that in the Bible. We're just not going to do that. You know what? That's okay. That's okay. Because the Bible is our final authority, you see? So we'll pause here and pick up here next week. Let's pray together.