The Anabaptist View of a Disciplined Church Part 1

Well, good morning, everyone. That was a yeah, that was inspiring what you had to say there, and especially in Revelation about being at war. You know, I thought of the verse as he was reading that in Second Timothy that talks about us being at war, and it says, Thou therefore endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

And sometimes I think we forget that we are at war. Even in our Sunday school time, we were talking about that third seed, and I think some of those allurements and things cause us to get blindsided and not realize where we're at. I was late this morning, but Brother Bob, I think, read or somebody read Philippians chapter three and verse 16.

It says, Nevertheless, whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule. Let us mind the same thing. A while back, maybe several months ago, at first, Brother Bob asked me to preach a sermon on membership.

And after studying it himself, he decided he came back later and said, you know, I'd like to preach that sermon, which is a blessing. But then he said, after that, he said, would you preach a sermon on why we have written agreements, why we would think it's okay to write down things as a brotherhood and agree to things? So at first, I tried to research and tried to come up with what that would look like. And I found myself getting more inspired by the Anabaptists as a whole and studying them out as a whole and then coming to that subject.

And so I've tried to do that. I've tried to bring several sermons to bring us up to date of who the Anabaptists were and what they thought. So in a sense, this sermon today is a continuation of last week's sermon, which was a start on what the Anabaptists thought of the brotherhood.

I'd encourage you to listen to that if you hadn't heard it. And that was definitely contingent on many of the other subjects that came before that. I wrote down here to start off with, should a brotherhood create and write down practical applications to biblical principles? Some claim a church having a written standard stifles spiritual life.

Spirituality is a matter of the heart and standards take our eyes off of Jesus. Others argue that the church has no authority to prescribe specific applications of biblical principles. God intentionally left these principles for each individual to work out personally, seeking his guidance to apply them in their own life.

Still others contend that if a church neglects to establish a defined culture and clear practical expressions of biblical principles, it gradually conforms to the world's culture and forfeits the distinct values it once upheld. Who is right? And by the time we find out, will it be too late? I want to look through at church history, the scriptures, and I want to talk about some of the observation I've made over the years. Now, I think this was going to take me 50 to 55 minutes to get through and we're running a little bit later.

So I'm just going to ask right now for your grace because I'm probably going to go over. But if somehow we miraculously fast forward and I've cut out as much as I possibly thought I could because I really didn't want to do it in two sermons. Acts 15.

I'd like to start out with Acts 15. Many of us know the story in Acts 15, but we'll start off with the very first verse of Acts 15. And it says here, a certain men, which came down from Judea, I'll wait for you to get there.

A certain men, which came from Judea, taught the brethren and said, except you be circumcised after the manner of Moses, you cannot be saved. And so the early church was faced this question right off at the beginning in Acts that you had to be circumcised to be saved. If you weren't circumcised, you weren't a Christian.

And this brought some upheaval in the church. What is this true, if anything? And so they sent some people up to Jerusalem to ask the apostles, to ask the elders, what is the truth on this? Do we need to require circumcision and even possibly keep the law of Moses? It says the apostles and the elders came together to consider this. And it says that they were led by the Holy Ghost, that they sought the Holy Ghost and that they, they, they worked this thing out together with, in a sense, with the Bible in their hands, you might say, as a brotherhood, they worked it out and they came out with four things at the end.

Now first they determined that to require circumcision would be adding to the gospel. And so they determined we can't do that. We can't add to the gospel.

So we will not, we will not include that. But they said there would be four things that they wanted them to do. The first was that they would abstain from meats offered to idols, that they would abstain from blood, that they would abstain from things strangled, and they would abstain from fornication.

And so they didn't see it as an intrusion to list something. Now they were careful not to list a lot of things because it would be, it could, it could bring us back under the concept of being under the law, but they were, they didn't see it as an intrusion to list some guidelines. And they were cultural issues.

I don't think any of us are struggling with going to the market and wondering if this thing's been offered to an idol, right? This was a cultural issue for their day. Meat sacrifice to idols is not a thing for us, but this was a cultural issue for them. And so they made an application.

So the leaders were guided by principles in the Bible, in the Old Testament. They were guided by the Holy Spirit. They had the apostles and they made an application.

Now there is, there is a supposition and this is left for interpretation for all of us to struggle through, but that supposition is this. The early church leaders were only allowed to do this once for all time because they had the apostles there. But every other church after that is not allowed to do this.

That would be a supposition. And it, you know, it's an interpretation. They could make collective decisions about application in their day, but we cannot in our day.

I also want to point out that it wasn't each man deciding for himself. It was a collective decision. In fact, it's referred to as the Council of Jerusalem.

They were, they went up and they, they made a collective decision as a church. And it wasn't even just that church that was affected because the letter was sent out to all of the churches. It was also not a majority vote, interestingly enough.

Then we could talk about this later, but I want to leave that aside. Let's start off with that. So the very first thing we see in the Bible is a church order, in a sense, a four rules for Gentiles that were, that were applications, not just principles, but applications for their modern day culture.

Now throughout church history, most churches have sooner or later written down some kind of document to fit, to defend their faith. Now, one of these documents is called an apo, sorry, is called a confession of faith. We've seen that term and you probably all heard of the apostles' creed, right? I believe in this and I believe in that.

And I believe in this, right? That's the apostles' creed and it defined what the early church believed. But there's also another document out there, probably dated somewhere between 50 and 100. They say most likely 80.

So there's a good chance John, Apostle John might've still been around then. It was called the Didache and what it was is it wasn't a book of beliefs, but it was a book of practices, a book of church order. In fact, Philip Chaff, which is a historian, calls it the oldest church manual.

This was in the 80s, like I said. It was used to instruct applicants for baptism and it served as a discipline for the church. Interesting enough, I'm just going to point out a couple of things because we need to move quickly.

But it said in there that if abortion was murder, for anybody who was wondering if abortion was allowed, it was considered murder. And it said that if you shall not kill your baby after it was born, there was a real cultural issue in their day where the Romans would leave their babies out to die. And the Christians were actually known for going and getting those babies and taking care of them.

So they had it in their church order that leaving a baby out after birth to die or killing it in any way is not allowed. It said in there that you needed to confess your sins to the congregation. It talks about and it defines baptism, which I find amazing.

It said that you needed to baptize in preference in running water. But if if running water wasn't available, well, then you could baptize preferably in cold water. But if cold water wasn't available, then baptize in warm water.

And if none of that was available, then you could pour three times in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. For whatever reason, they found this. They found this something to write down as a church order, as a church discipline.

And then this was an interesting cultural one. They said that the Christians needed to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, but never to fast on Mondays and Thursdays. And you think, why? Well, they said, such as the hypocrites in those days, there were some hypocrites that were around them and they always fasted on these other days.

And they said, you know, as a testimony to Christ, we don't want to associate with hypocrites. So we'll fast on these days instead of those days. Interesting.

So as early as the year 80 A.D., they're doing they ask their people to pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day. Now, did Jesus say we had to do that? No. But did Jesus say to do it? Yes.

But they asked that they're the brothers and sisters would do that. They talked about who to exclude from communion. If somebody was in strife, they talked about how to even identify true prophets.

This is an interesting one. So a prophet would come into their town if he would stay one or two days. Great.

Take care of him. If you say three days, you started to have to question if this was a true prophet because he was in their day. There were a lot of itinerant preachers running around and they had a problem with false prophets.

Did Jesus not to say to beware of false prophets? Yes. And so they define some of that. What a false prophet looked like.

Moving along several hundred years later. Well, about 100 years later, to be exact, there is a handbook called the Apostolic Traditions, probably written around 215. It was widely used because it was in many languages.

It wasn't just in Syrian. It was in many other languages. But they went on to explain things like this.

They said a sculptor or a painter that was coming in to become a Christian in the church needed to be told not to make idols. And if he did make idols, he could not become part of the church. He'd be rejected if you were a charioteer and you enjoyed going down and racing with your chariots in the in the in the Coliseums, you were to stop or to be rejected.

Now, do we have problems with charioteers anymore? No. But do we have a problem with Mustangs and Corvettes and those kind of things? Yes, we do. And so they they found it in a need to say this is what we view as being a Christian, being involved in the gladiator games, training gladiators, helping in any way with the gladiator games in their mind was anti-Christ.

We're not going to do that. And so they wrote that down. Gladiators and huntsmen and any connection with that would needed to stop.

If you were a soldier, you were told you had to become if you want to become a Christian, you're a soldier. It says you must be taught not to kill men. Now, did Jesus say those exact words? Well, not those exact words, but they brought it up into an application.

If you're a soldier, you want to become a Christian, you can join. You just never can kill men. You know, you can if you get in a battle, you're going to have to let your life die.

But then they went on to say, if you're a military commander, so now you're commanding soldiers. No, you're going to have to you're going to have to reject that position. And that might cost you your life.

But that's what they said. They said once you were a Christian, if you sought to be a soldier, then you would be rejected because that's a different thing. One is a soldier becoming a Christian.

One is a Christian willfully going out and becoming a soldier. They said that the women should stand separate from the men during church services. And then they went on to explain what a head covering should look like.

They said that the women should wear a head covered with an opaque cloth, not with a veil of thin linen, for this is not a true covering. OK, so they had some some thoughts. They wrote some things down.

Were they in error? That's the question. In the third century, we had another document called the Didascalia. I can hardly say that word.

I think it means instruction in Latin or Greek. But it talks about women not dressing to please men, not dressing in the same clothes as prostitutes or wearing the same shoes as prostitutes or wearing the same hair as prostitutes. It forbids them from styling their hair.

And I like this one, youth, take this one to heart. They said that you always had to have the permission of the parents before getting together so they didn't learn mischief. I thought, wow, that's a pretty good rule.

But anyway, moving on. So we're going to fast forward. There's lots of other groups that had different ideas of these things, but we're going to fast forward up to the Anabaptists.

And there are the Waldens and the Lowlards. There were different groups of monks. I don't have time to go through those things.

But the Sleightham Confession, we had that up here to several, four sermons, three sermons ago. Remember the Sleightham Confession, the very first confession of faith. Now, we typically think of confessions of faith as belief.

But no, if you remember, they had things like this. They said in the Sleightham Confession, they said that you couldn't attend Catholic and Protestant church services and activities. They didn't want you to go to drinking houses.

Did Jesus say you could ever never go to a drinking house? No, but they felt it was wise for their people not to. They said not to take part in secular government. They said not to use a sword or armor in defense.

And they said you could not serve as jury duty as long as soon as early as the 1527, the Anabaptists were saying that. And they said you could not serve as a king. That was all in the Sleightham Confession.

So applications to principles now were all of those things, things we could go back to Jesus teachings and support. Could we fairly go back and say Jesus said, judge not that would exclude you from jury duty, Jesus says, don't resist evil and love your enemy. That would exclude you from being a soldier.

Jesus said those are all connected to principles we can find in Jesus teachings. The Anabaptists had other church orders, one very similar at that time came out. It was in the Swiss area.

And I'm going to quickly just jump through a couple of these. But it said things like, hey, you brothers, sisters meet four times a week. We meet four times a week.

Wow. They're tense. Or I guess it said three or four.

The one with the best understanding should read and interpret. They should live impeccable lives. Number four, they should admonish one another according the rule of Christ.

We learned about that last week. They should share one another with their goods. They should celebrate the Lord's Supper each time they join.

These were seven different articles they wrote to say, these are things that we feel we should write down. In Strasbourg, around the year 1530, most likely, they met again. That's a little bit north as far as I understand.

But they wrote some more things down, some different people. And I'm just going to they talked about how church meetings should be held, who should preach, how they should pray when they preach, how they should dismiss. They talked about respecting their leaders, communal sharing and church discipline and correction.

All of these were things they wrote down to make applications, daily applications to their lives. In 1531, just a couple of years later. Now, this is an opponent to the Anabaptists.

This is somebody that didn't like the Anabaptists, like John Calvin, for example. He said this. These Anabaptists, they set rules about how poor the clothing should be.

Now, take it with a grain of salt. I'm sure they're exaggerating a little bit. But anyway, they set rules, how poor the clothing.

In other words, you need to wear simple, plain clothes, how many folds the apron have. And like the monks, they have rules about eating, drinking, silence, speaking and clothing. So their opponents, as early as the early 1500s, were saying that these Anabaptists had some rules.

Henry Bollinger in 1561, he said something very similar. He said they're like a new order of monks. They make rules about clothing, what garments people should wear, what cut, how long their coat must be.

They reject all ornaments. And they also prescribe rules about eating, drinking, sleeping, standing and walking. Wow.

Martin Luther had something to say about them, too. He said those Anabaptists, they say one must wear, not wear satin or silk, red or variegated clothing. And even John Kessler, which was a chronicler of the Swiss, talked about, described them as those that avoided costly clothes, wore coarse clothes like very rough, peasant style clothes.

And he said, broad felt hats and carried no weapons. These were the descriptions of the Anabaptists. You could even tell these guys when they would come into your area that you'd know he was most likely an Anabaptist by the way he dressed, by the way he talked.

Moving along, I'm going to skip over some of these. If you're interested in these, just come to me and I'll show them to you because I don't want to bore the rest of everybody else. But, you know, the Dutch Mennonites met.

They came up with some things. The most interesting to me was 40 years later, after the beginning of Anabaptists, 40 years later, we're talking second, third generation. They met.

The Anabaptists came from all over. It was a very large meeting and they came together and they wrote up 23 different applications. These are what they came up with.

These stood out to me. Number 11, the brothers and sisters should each to each, women to women, men to men, practice the holy kiss. And they shouldn't greet others outside of that, of the membership there.

Twelve, marriage was to be had prior to the counsel and knowledge of the ministers and elders and the fear of God and the permission of their parents. Number 16, no brother, listen to this one, no brother, no brother shall engage in buying, building or entering into any large financial undertaking without the counsel, knowledge and consent of the brotherhood and the elders. Wow.

So if you are going to go start some huge business now, they wanted you to come talk to the brotherhood to get a collective wisdom together before you just go and borrow a bunch of money. Now, this one's for you, youth. So listen up close, especially you male youth, although there are some some female youth among us that like this.

But they had a rule number 19. And it was this anyone among the brethren who wants to be shooting or trapping. I know Caleb's a trapper.

So this one you should think about shall be warned to hunt only where it is lawfully permitted. And if they disobey this, they shall be expelled with the ban. Wow.

These guys were serious. I mean, this is only 40 years after the beginning of the anabaptism. And they were serious about their walk with God.

They were serious that to go and to go on other people's land, to go against laws and break them was a bad testimony for the name of Christ. And they didn't want that. They wanted they must have had a problem with this.

So they said it. Number 20. Last one here we'll look at is they said tailors and seamstresses shall hold to the plain and simple style and shall make nothing at all for pride's sake.

The brethren and sisters shall remain steadfastly by the present standard of our regulations concerning apparel and shall make nothing for pride's sake. Furthermore, now we're all going to be in trouble today, including myself. No, no, I'm not in trouble.

Sorry, somebody else's. But anyway, shaving off the beard or trimming the hair of the head stylish way shall not be permitted. So I don't know if I agree with them.

But what I do say is they made an application for their day. They said for whatever reason, this was an issue that they felt maybe they were having problems. It says stylish ways.

They didn't want the styles of the day. Now, it's a different culture for us today. We deal with different things coming in.

But the point here is the Anabaptists were willing to make some some applications. They were willing to sit down and take the Bible in their hand with the Holy Ghost and to make some applications. My point is, is this this was an Anabaptist thing.

It was an Anabaptist thing, and I believe it was even an early church thing. Even in 1607, which was like 50 years later, they met again, they accepted all those previous 23 articles and they added another one because it must have been a problem now in their day. And they said public use of tobacco and strong drink will not be permitted only for medical purposes.

And it must be done in secret. So for whatever reason, 50 years later now, they're they're struggling with people smoking, people drinking, and they didn't want that to continue. I'd like to move on now from church history and talk a little bit about churches that have lost.

Have lost out during time that changed, that had a standard and then lost them. I'd like to start out with the Church of the Brethren. How many of you know what the Church of the Brethren is? Anybody know? OK, who comes out of the Church of Brethren that we all know? German Baptists come out of the Church of the Brethren.

They used to be called the Dunkers. In 1881, the old German Baptists came out of the Brethren movement because it was sliding. They were concerned with the direction it was going.

It was going liberal, much like the Mennonites. And the German Baptist New Conference, we all know why it pegged all those guys up there, came out in 2009 from my understanding. So back in 1927, so this is kind of near that slide, the Church of the Brethren are sliding.

The old German Baptists have now come out and they wrote this. They decided to leave nonconformity up to the individual. They decided no longer to make it a church concept.

We will make it an individual concept. And in 1957, so that's 30 years later, 30 years later, this is what they said at their annual conference. This was at the Church of the Brethren's conference.

They said this. We declare again that our members should neither participate in war nor learn the art of war. It is recognized, however, that not all members will hold the beliefs which the church recommends.

Some will feel conscientiously obligated to render full military service and other noncombatant military service. Since the church desires to maintain fellowship with all who sincerely follow the guidance of conscience, it will respect such decisions in spite of its disappointment that its message had not been taught better or comprehended more fully. They're saying that you can hear their cry.

They're saying the Bible says this. The Bible says we shouldn't be going out and joining the military. And yet our members are doing it and we don't know what else to do now.

I guess we should have taught better. I guess we made a mistake in how we taught it. And we're trying to tell you this is how we see it should be.

But it was losing. It was a losing cause in their minds. I'm going to skip over this quote to move on, but you can see this church sliding.

It was losing its distinctions. It was losing the things that were important to it at one time. I want to move on to the German Baptists.

I was listening to a sermon by Clint Wolfe, who used to be a German Baptist from my understanding, and he brought up this article. It was in the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal is a renowned, prestigious newspaper read by rich people.

And this was back a year ago in June of 2024, June 29th, 2024. The title was Keep Old Traditions or Adapt. This is in the Wall Street Journal.

Keep old traditions or adapt a 19th century church struggles to survive. And then it goes on subtitle, a congregation founded to separate itself from the modern world, tried relaxing its rules to retain members, but lost them. Instead, this is a worldly person writing an article.

Here's the, the artwork that was in the article. So I don't know if you can tell this picture, but on this side of the mosaic is a kind of a shattered glass of a German Baptist girl looking that way. And on this side of the picture is a girl with a ball cap on, and that'll, you'll understand a little more about this article as I read it.

I'm not going to read the whole thing, but it says here in Modesto, California, a blue collared city surrounded by almond and peach orchards, members of one small traditional church, a shoe pop culture, have no televisions in their homes and declined to vote in order to avoid social entanglements. The clothes they wear, suit vests, black pants, and white long sleeve shirts for the men, long dresses and bonnets like bonnet like head coverings for the women are modeled on those of their 19th century ancestors. And to fast forward a little bit.

Now, Clinton Wolf said that when they pulled out in 2009, they had about 4,000 members. The article goes on that they roughly have, and this was written in 2024, 2150 members in their denomination as of current. The new conference has found itself losing members, even as more traditional and isolated sects around the country have prospered and grown.

What he's saying is for whatever reason, the more traditional sects are prospering, growing, and the new conference, which is trying to make it easier for the world is shrinking. I'm going to jump down a little bit in the article. He said a year earlier, the church nations leader asked congregation to propose how to handle what they call drift.

Now in 2009, they came out of the old order or the old conference. And it says by 2010, the new conference had already done away with a rule book that set lifestyle guidelines and lightened enforcement of unwritten rules. Young women increasingly have swapped the bonnet light covering for a more modern options like bandanas and headbands.

A greeting kiss between male members referred to as a holy kiss in the book of Romans and elsewhere in the Bible is falling by the wayside. Watching movies at home has become something of a don't ask, don't tell activity. Some members acknowledge.

The slippery slope is very real for some folks said Sam Funkhauser. Um, for the ones that leave, it's like, if we're really not that different, then why bother with the dress? Why bother with the way we worship? Why bother with the restrictions on marriage and all this stuff? They go on to say some of the staunchly traditional groups have dumbled in their membership in the same timeframe. Meanwhile, the Modesto brother brethren rank have shrunk by a third since 2000.

Nolts data shows while nationally, nationally, the new conference membership has declined by 37% since 2009 little, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit forward. The most recent tensions within the community emerged in the early 2000s in response to the internet. One side, this is when they pulled out.

One side said that the internet was a menu of evil at one's fingertip. And the other side said it was necessary to function and run business. The large, more progressive group stayed and joined other congregations in taking a new conference into their name.

Within the new conference, individuality becomes more accepted. Members have more freedom to pick and choose how they follow scriptures. So long as it didn't deviate too much from traditional values.

Grover said this approach was effective in allowing members with slightly different lifestyles to coexist. Members say, but also opens the door for some to lose their commitment. I'm going to go a little bit forward talking about Barton.

Barton said the church's easiest restrictions made her leap. Sorry, let me read you that Barton. And this is a woman.

She's the church's eased restrictions made her leap into the wider society, feel more possible and more accepted by some of her family and friends. Then this incident happened. I don't know how the newspaper found out about this, but in 2017, which illustrates the difficulties for Modesto elders trying to hold a middle ground during a summer youth outing to the Pacific beach, 30 young people posed for a group photo with girls that at one of the girls posted to her Instagram, it showed boys in swim trunks, along with girls who had ditched their traditional head coverings for baseball hats or nothing.

The elders weren't sure how to respond to this clear violation. Jackson Denlinger, one of the beach goers room remembers being shocked at how stern their response was. He rethought his future in the church and spent more time with non brethren.

I started realizing they're not all that much different that different than me. Dellinger said he left the denomination in 2023. Jump to the end for now, Modesto's brethren are stepping up the effort to carefully steer members back to church traditions.

And then at the very last sentence, there's not a lot of appetite for rigid rules, said Cromer, but the reality is some of that is necessary. So the German Baptists, what about the Quakers? Um, the Quakers were originally a group of plain people, a lot like Mennonites. They actually had a plain lifestyle.

They wouldn't swear oaths. They, um, they believed in, um, plain dress. They, what else did I write here? They did not allow divorce and remarriage.

Um, they would disown, they called it disowning for discipline, church discipline for those who would fall into sin and would not repent. Um, back in the early 19th century, or maybe it was a late 19th century. They started to allow the individual to decide.

And I was looking up, uh, uh, about them just yesterday. And I ran across this article about the Quakers today. The title was, it was on the Guardian.

The Quakers are right. We don't need God. And then it starts out.

The Quakers are clearly onto something at their annual get together this weekend. They are reportedly thinking of dropping God from their guidance, from their guidance to meetings. The reason said one of them is because the term makes some Quakers feel uncomfortable.

So what's my point here? My point is that church groups, we, sometimes there's these thoughts that if we would just do away with some of these ideas, it will help us draw in the world. It will help us be more evangelistic. It'll, it'll change us, but that's not always the case.

The statistics don't always point to that. Um, you know, John Wesley, he was the, um, founder really of the Methodist church. I was looking at some statistics of the Methodist church and, um, he's got so many papers here.

Here's some, what the chart looks like back in the early 1750s. We can see this, this line going up. Just, it was an explosion.

Um, they say 300,000, 400,000, 500, six, seven. In fact, at one point in American history, it was the largest denomination, even over Catholicism for a short amount of time. Um, but look at where it is today.

They are losing members like crazy. John Wesley had a heart for holiness. He had a heart for people to get right with God.

He preached revivalism, circuit writing preachers all over the country. Look, what's happening to the Methodist church today. And we all know we've heard that Methodist church accepting, um, homosexuality and things like that.

Listen to what John Wesley said towards the end of his life. I believe he said, I am distressed. I know not what to do.

I see what I might have done once. I might've said preemptorily and expressly here I am and my Bible. I will not, I dare not vary from this book either in great things or small.

I have no power to dispense with one jot or tittle of what it is contained therein. I am determined to be a Bible Christian, not almost, but altogether who will meet me on this ground, join me on this or none at all with regard to dress in particular. I might have been as firm and now see it would have been far better as either the people called Quakers or the Moravian brethren.

I might've said, this is our manner of dress, which we know is both scriptural and rational. If you join us, you are to dress as we do, but you need not join us unless you please. But alas, the time is now passed.

And what can I do now? I cannot tell another writing. He said, let me see before I die. A Methodist congregation full as plain dressed as a Quaker congregation.

Here we hear John Wesley's cry. Something was being lost. He was saying, I wish now after all my years of doing this, I wish we would have done something a little bit different.

Charles Finney was also a very influential leader. He was, um, part of the second great away awakening. He made this quote one.

Uh, and here I will confess that I was formerly myself in error. So Charles Finney is saying he was an error about something. He said, I believed and I taught that the best way to Christians was to dress.

So as not to be noticed, to follow the fashions and change changes. So as not to peer singular, he was saying the best way for Christians is just to be like the world. Don't try to change anything.

But I have seen my error and now wonder greatly at my former blindness. It is your duty to dress so plain as to show the world that you place no sort of reliance and things on fashions and set no values on them at all, but despise and neglect them altogether. But unless you separate yourself from the fashions of this world, you show that you do value them.

There is no way in which you can bear a proper testimony by your lives against the fashions of this world, but by plain dressing. These are men that were very instrumental in Protestant denominations. And they're at the ends of their lives, wondering, questioning, maybe I was wrong.

I, uh, years ago I was over in Idaho and I met, um, a man, his name was Joe. And he used to be part of the congregation in Grangeville where Denny Kenniston would come out. And I was telling him some of my thoughts and feelings.

And he told me that Denny Kenniston towards the end of his life began to question if what happened with the early charity days and, and trying to, um, the concept, if we just preach it, if we just preach it hard and we just, we just live it out, we'll all come to the same idea. We'll all fall into the same idea of what that means to follow the Holy Spirit and Denny Kenniston by the end of his life was beginning to question that. If that was, if he had made a mistake in that, I was also recently at Trevor's, um, thing over there at Shepherd's fold.

And I had lunch there and I was talking to the man there. I was asking him some questions and I turned out he is the brother of Moe Stosfus. I'm sitting across the table from the brother of Moe Stosfus.

So I said, I've got some questions for you. Started asking questions. He said, you know, brother Moe, so the end of his life started questioning the same thing.

He said, you know, brother Moe's when he went over to, um, Romania and the iron curtain had just fallen and these Christians had just come out of persecution and, and he, he saw these people that were on fire for God, right? You know, they just came out of persecution. They had a persecution on their lives and it was keeping a purity there. He said, why would we need any kind of written thing? Look at these people, they all love the Lord.

And so he came back. This is what the brother said. They came, he came back and thought, well, why can't we start a church like that here, but I think what he failed to realize, and this is me putting it in my own words, is Christianity is a little bit different under a persecuted culture than it is under a pleasure culture.

A little bit different. Maybe we don't have to write so many things down and have so many things we agree on in a persecuted culture, but in a pleasure culture, it may be something a little bit different. I want to read you something.

Uh, I didn't bring it, but I'll just read it. I wrote it down here. Um, here's a quote.

It says there have been rebellious voices raised from time to time, which claim that the church has no authority to regulate applications of doctrine and practice, but the Bible says, obey God, obey the scriptures, obey the church, obey overseers, obey parents, obey magistrates. Now, if obey the church and obey overseers means only in things expressly mentioned in the Bible, then by the same process of reasoning, children do not need to obey parents in anything, not expressly mentioned in the Bible and citizens do not need to obey magistrates and civil laws, except what is expressly stated in the scripture as magistrates have divine authority to make laws and ordinances, not expressly mentioned in the scripture for civil warfare and parents have divine authority to make rules for their children, not expressly mentioned in the Bible for the welfare of the home, just so the church has divine authority to make rules and restrictions, not expressly mentioned in the Bible. The word here is expressly for the spiritual welfare of her members and ministers, it would be strange indeed.

If every other social group has the right to make a rule and a regulation for its own welfare and the church could not, those who would try to make such a claim would be robbing the church of her God given authority and binding the church helplessly to rules and traditions of the world. Now listen to what he's trying to say. He says, for it is not a question of whether or not we shall have rules and regulations, but only whether they shall be dictated by the church or by the world.

That you'll hear a lot of people talking about this today. There is a culture, whether you choose it or not, it's, if you don't choose one for your church, the world's going to choose it. And that's what he's saying.

Whether they shall be, whether they shall be back up here, whether they shall be applications of scripture or merrily worldly customs. I want to make some observations. First of all, I believe we protect the things we love.

Um, we all make rules about things we love. I remember, uh, years ago in my home, I love to sit around the table and have family time. I love it.

And one thing I saw that robbed away family time is that dreaded phone, right? Everybody's over there doing their thing. So I made a rule. I said, you know what? Everybody who comes to my table, all my children, when you come, leave your phone over at the counter.

Leave it, right? Well, now I made a rule. Now my children could have thought I was being unfair, whatever, but I was trying to protect something I loved. So I made this rule.

Don't bring your phones to the table. Now, I also remember another time where I, I made so many rules that one of my children was told me that, well, I can't keep up with all the rules. It's becoming such a stress.

Okay. Now that's a problem too, right? If I would make so many rules to protect the thing I love that pretty soon, nobody could enjoy family time. Well, then we've kind of gone a little overboard, right? The rules have become a burden.

Nobody can, nobody can, everybody's tiptoeing and trying to, you know, around family time because I might break some rule and they've lost the heart of, this is a time that we can relax and talk and spend together. Now we have a rule. One of our rules in our, our group is we'd like to see white or black, I think it says, head coverings.

Now we're trying to protect something we love. We love the head covering. We see out in the world that many of the churches today do not put an emphasis on that.

So we love this. And so we, we are protecting, we make a rule and we even say a color because we think that it's important. There's several things.

A, it communicates value. The head covering is an important thing. When you, when you specify, we want it, we don't, we want it this color.

You're saying it's valuable to us. It's important to us. It communicates.

We don't want self-expression. It communicates it's holy. It communicates something that we want to pass on to the next generation.

Something we want to retain, something we don't want to lose. It communicates importance. Just like my rule did about the phone.

John D. Martin said this in one of his sermons, he said the greatest danger of true spirituality is self-expression. The greatest danger of true spirituality is self-expression. And that's what we're, we, we, we guard that thing because we, we don't want self-expression.

There's another thought. Well, only if it's an expressly in the Bible, as we were just reading. Now, let me ask this.

If, if the church is only bound to what is expressly in the Bible, what if next week, one of you is a member would come here and have a Mohawk, a pink and a bright blue Mohawk. Now, is there anything expressly in the Bible that says like, you can't have a pink and a bright blue Mohawk? No, no, no. Not really.

Right. So if we are going to bind ourself to that concept, we could not say anything to it. What if somebody came with tongue ring or a nose ring? You could say, well, the old Testament, but we're not bound by the old Testament.

Right. What if somebody came with feminine slacks on what we'd all say? Well, modesty, the word says, you do. I don't know.

Go look up the word modest in your Bible, but it doesn't say address. It doesn't say that we're interpreting what modest means. We're interpreting.

We think it means address, but it doesn't say that anybody could say they're modest and feminine slacks. It's different than masculine slacks. So there's gender distinction.

What if somebody started using marijuana or started wearing a tattoo? You cannot, you cannot correct them from expressly from the Bible. Can you? Oh, here's a good one. What if one of them showed up with one of these muscle cars or, you know, a Ferrari.

If we're going to bind by the expressly written scripture and they're just principles, it's up for my interpretation and be against your interpretation, right? The church has no binding power to make any interpretations, but if God wants us to make collective decisions and collective interpretations, let me see how many more pages I have. I'm at a, I'm on a quandary. We're at noon right now.

Maybe I should just wait on this. And finish it off another day. But I do want to at least say this, by the way, the Bible never does say thou shall not comb my hair in a Mohawk, right? Well, thou shall not drive a Ferrari.

Doesn't we have to make this decision together. Now you could make it individually. Sure.

And that's between you and God. But as the question is, is there a problem with brothers coming together with the Bible in their hand, empowered by the Holy Spirit to decide together? We don't want that. We don't think that that signifies Christianity.

I was listening to a sermon by Clinton Wolfe and I thought he made an excellent point. I've been thinking about this for a couple of years. I thought about, you know, the Anabaptist world.

I don't know about you, if you've checked recently, but they don't have the best preachers and they just don't. I mean, you go to some of their sermons and they're just a little bit dry, right? And yet they're so many of their churches are still around and so going. And then we had the charity days with all of the exciting preaching and all that.

And yet that's kind of many ways fallen by the wayside. And Clinton Wolfe in the sermon, it was the title was life and structure in a strongly bonded church. He said this, he said, our churches are built around brotherhood and strong bonds.

They are not built around great preaching. Now, first you think, well, what do you mean? He said the divorce rate in our Anabaptist churches is very low. Now, the question he asked, is that because of good teaching? Is the divorce rate so low in our Anabaptist churches because we have good teaching? You remember the Brethren Church? They said, oh, everybody's lost and we must have been us.

We just must have not had a good teaching. Remember that they said that? Is the divorce rate being so low in Anabaptist churches because of good teaching? We've got to wrestle with this. He goes on to say, you know, I've listened to some really good, world renowned preachers, Andy Stanley, whoever ever heard him.

He's a he's a good preacher. Paul Washer, how many of you heard of him? Yeah, good preacher. He said these guys are world renowned speakers, better speakers than he better speakers than anyone in our Anabaptist circles.

But after their great sermon and they can preach great sermons about holiness, they can preach great sermons about not having divorce. But after their sermon, people do whatever their culture around them accepts at the end of the day. That's what happens.

And I brought it up, I think last week, the divorce rates are so. Are in some places the same as the Protestants, people do what their culture around them accepts. And so his his plea is.

His plea is. To have a strong culture, because at the end of the day, what will hold people back more than good teaching is a strong culture, think about the early days of the United States, whether they were Christian or not, divorce was so unheard of because the culture around them didn't accept it. Right.

And so today, in the same way, if we could learn from history, we'd say having a strong culture about something will keep this out more than just good teaching. He went on to say that great teaching. But the culture says we just can't live up to it.

After a great sermon like that, the culture says we're not going to be able to live up to that ethic. And he goes on to say that, you know, some of those Anabaptist marriages, if their culture would have allowed them to divorce, they probably would be divorced today. But because the culture said stay together, stick with it now, they might even have a happy marriage today because the culture said, don't do this.

He said this at the end of his time there, he said, history has also 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 is allowing it, it will happen. And so I don't know how I'm ever going to finish this, but I'm going to stop here because it'll be another 15, 20 minutes, I think.

So let's do this, let's close and let's think about, to be continued, some more observations. But I guess to sum this up for today, the point I was trying to make is that we've got to wrestle with this question, you know, and I'm not saying the other side of the interpretation is wrong. There is an interpretation that today we don't have the right to make these decisions because only the apostles could.

But what if we can, what if we can look at history and we can make decisions based off of history and we can see the mistakes made, we can look at these great men who have questioned in their heart, maybe we did some things wrong. What if we could find the balance between over-regulation and under-regulation? What if we could determine the failures of over-regulation and the failures of under-regulation? What if we could look at these as a guideline, but not as life itself? And those are some things I want to talk about in the next time we get together. So I'm sure a lot of you are going to have a lot of questions because I didn't finish.

But so just keep in mind, it's coming in another day. But let's let's seek God. Let's not allow this concept of culture or rules to become and take the place of Christ.

At the same time, let's not react and throw them out because of some things we saw in the past where somehow when we saw hypocrisy under strong culture, we thought that this was something that we should just throw out to have life. So may God be with you and bless you.