Anabaptist Theology, Part 3

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. Extend a Christian greeting to each one who has gathered in to worship the fellowship this evening. I think we'll just move right into this fourth session of Anabaptist theology. The first thing I'd like to do this evening is to refresh our minds with the four basic points. [00:00:35] The first point of the Anabaptist vision is that the Holy Scriptures are the ultimate authority. And then the second point, since they are, I order my life and discipleship to Jesus Christ. Now the third one for tonight, when others do the same, I enter into a body relationship with them called the church. Now, when you and I look at those points, we say, well, of course, that's just the way it is. But do we realize that 500 years ago, people did not think this way at all? [00:01:14] And the concept of the church was very different, and we'll look at that this evening. Also, I'd like to point out before we get started here, is that each of these are sequential. Since the scriptures are the ultimate authority, then the discipleship follows, and then if other people are disciples, we are joining with them. It all fits together in one package. Anabaptist theology is very simple. The problem is, some people have found it too difficult to live, and so they find ways of explaining it away. [00:01:48] So, I think we're of like mind this evening that if Jesus says something, he expects us to live it. If you love me, keep my commandments. If we're going to be a disciple of Christ, we do as our master, as he taught us. First basic point, the Bible is the word of God, thus it's the ultimate authority in our lives. It's supreme over the church, it's supreme over the state, and it's supreme over the individual. [00:02:22] It doesn't matter what you or I think, it doesn't matter what we collectively think. If God says something, it is right. And we just say, yes, amen, to your will, Lord. This is the one we had the last time. discipleship, no man follows Christ except he follows him in daily life we talked about the oneness of faith and life rather than dualism where we have head and heart separate from walk of life God expects us to be one rather than dual where we separate faith and life and many of our protestant friends make no apologies about separating these two [00:03:10] That's two right here. And our Catholic friends do the same. But we'd understand the New Testament not to teach that. First of all, there are several basic concepts when it comes to the church. First of all, we'll talk about the Roman Catholic concept. This was the prevailing concept in Europe for a thousand years or more. The concept here is the Holy Mother Church. There's no salvation outside the church [00:03:42] Pope Boniface made that statement in 1302 Nobody, he said, could be saved outside the Holy Mother Church And they made sure that it was that way You had to come to the church in order to take the sacraments And the sacraments were blessed The Catholic churches are altar-centered And there's an elaborate liturgy, elaborate ceremonies To prepare the host, they call It's a wafer. And also the wine. [00:04:14] And they believe that a miracle happens. They believe that that wafer actually becomes the body of Jesus. And they believe that that wine actually becomes the blood of Jesus. And they believe when they take that into themselves, they get life. Literally. When Menno Simons was doing this one time, a doubt popped into his mind. He said, is this really turning into the body of Jesus? [00:04:45] It's called the doctrine of transubstantiation. He felt so bad about that, he went and confessed it to another priest. That he actually had that doubt. And lo and behold, later on, he had the same doubt. He thought, well, why don't I check the Bible? and when he went to check the Bible and by the way it was the first time he ever opened the Bible to read it and study it. He trained as a priest and all during his training he had never opened the Bible and so now he opened the Bible to find out [00:05:19] whether this actually turned into the body and blood of Christ and he couldn't find it. It wasn't there. Well that shocked him. How can it be that the church that was so old had so many authoritative counsels. How could the church be wrong? But he's like, well, I don't know. It's just the way it is. And then one day he heard about a man who was burned at the stake [00:05:50] because he was baptized a second time. Well, that's strange. Baptized a second time. Why would anybody be baptized a second time? So he decided this time, Instead of confessing it to a priest, he's going to look in the scriptures to start with. And so he got to looking in the scriptures and he couldn't find anything about infant baptism. You see, the Roman Catholic Church teaches that you need to be a part of the Holy Mother Church as soon as possible because the church saves you. And you get eight days from the time you're born to get baptized. [00:06:25] Because once you're baptized, then that baptismal water cleanses away original sin and then a person is saved. They even concocted a special little department. It's called limbo. If a baby died between the time it was born and it was baptized, it went to limbo. Now limbo is, I don't know much about this. I better not say very much. It's a place where babies go. You know, the other place that older people went who weren't quite ready to go to heaven [00:06:56] is called purgatory. And you know as well as I do, there's nothing in the scripture that teaches that well there's nothing in the scripture that teaches limbo either but if you have a set of ideas you have to make up some stuff to make all this stuff work so that's what they did the Roman Catholic Church has seven sacraments I don't know if I can name them all right now it's the Lord's Supper and Baptism Extreme Unction [00:07:27] you know if a Catholic dies There has to be a priest there to give him last rites before he dies. That's one of their sacraments. And then the sacraments of penance. You have to make confession to a priest, and he tells you what penance. Like how many Hail Marys, how many Our Fathers, and so on. And by the way, they got good at this. It takes a long time to say 25 Hail Marys. So they invented a rosary. And a rosary is a fast way of praying. [00:07:57] if you just touch one of those beads on a rosary you said the prayer and you can go down the road and touch beads faster than you can say prayers but Catholics were time pressed just like we get sometimes so you can say your prayers fast except that's an invention too marriage was a sacrament for the Catholics and by the way if you weren't married by a priest you weren't married See, our Anabaptist forefathers wouldn't get married in the church [00:08:29] and so the state considered their children illegitimate. They couldn't inherit property. They were non-people. Those are some of the things that our people had to live with in the past. Well, anyway, the Holy Mother Church, if salvation is inside, everybody wants to make sure they stay inside the church. and the Pope had a real handle on this one. If the people were naughty someplace, [00:09:01] he would just simply say, alright, we're going to have interdict. I'm going to impose interdict. Interdict meant that we're not having church now for a while until you all straighten up over there. Well, that made the people put pressure on their leaders. Why can't we have church? We need grace. We need these sacraments. and you're the problem king you need to listen to the Pope and so they put pressure did you ever hear the story of Henry Henry the fourth he got a little upset with the priest and with the Pope [00:09:34] and he was disobedient and so there was a showdown who who really is top here the king of the Pope and so the Pope decided it's time for him to exercise his power here a little bit so he put Henry's realm under interdict so no more church well then the people got on Henry's case Henry you've got to listen to the Pope we got to have sacraments here we've got to have life we're sinners we need the sacraments so Henry decided all right the Pope was in a castle up [00:10:12] I was up in the Alps of Italy someplace. It was wintertime. So Henry went up to the Pope. And the Pope found out that Henry's outside the gate. He was kind of pleased with that. He thought, okay, Henry's out there. It's snowy. We're just going to let Henry out there for a while. Let him get good and cold. Let him know who's boss here. So, after a couple of days, they let Henry in. And then the first thing Henry had to do was walk in and kiss the Pope's big toe. [00:10:48] I'm serious. This is not a story. This is true. Well, Henry was very humbled. And he went home and he said yes, sir, to the Pope for a while. But it didn't last. He got upset. He and the Pope crossed themselves again later on and he had trouble again. But I don't think they repeated that story. Anyway, the whole culture of the Roman Catholic church system creates a culture of dependence. One of the things that... [00:11:22] You had to keep paying the church. You might have to pay money as part of penance. and you had to pay your church taxes and then when it came time to do indulgences you had to pay into this fund to get people out of purgatory. This is a true story. When I was in Texas I talked with a man one time who was from Yugoslavia and he said that his brother was killed in World War II [00:11:55] and whenever a family member is killed, the country gives a pension to the family. Well, the church convinced this family in Yugoslavia that that belongs to the church. But he said, we were desperately poor. We needed that money. We could hardly survive because we just didn't have much money. And so this man who was telling me this story says, one day he says, I decided I'm going to ask the priest. He says, I was seven years old. Just a little boy. [00:12:27] How long must we keep giving this pension to the church? So he did. After this priest, he says, How much longer must we give this pension to the church? We need it. We're poor. And the priest looked down on him and he says, God only knows my son. What was he supposed to say? The man of God said that. So, life went on. Desperately poor, needing this pension [00:12:58] One day, when he was 14, the Archbishop came to his village He thought, now if there's anybody who knows How long we have to keep doing this The Archbishop will surely know So I don't know how he did this But he arranged a visit with the Archbishop And he told him the same story He says, how much longer must we give this pension to the church? We're so poor And the Archbishop looked at him and he says God only knows my son. He said with that he says I turned on my heels I left the church and joined the Communist Party. He was he saw through what was going on and this if you go to Europe today you'll see huge cathedrals and I'm not talking about just one or two there are lots of huge cathedrals. [00:13:46] Anabaptist forefathers used to call them piles of stone, stone piles. Where did those cathedrals come from? They came from the blood, sweat, and tears and toil of poor people. That's one of the things that just makes you angry when you go over there. Beautiful pieces of stonework at the cost of desperation. But these people, they couldn't read their Bibles. They didn't know they were being deceived. At 1453, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, it's like Europe was unlocked. [00:14:23] Finally, the people could start looking in the Bible themselves to see whether their legs are being pulled or not. And they did. And found out they were being pulled a long time already. And with that, the culture of dependence was broken. Well, in 1517, Martin Luther came along. He had read his Bible. He had studied to be a priest. And he has his own personal story to tell. But what really upset him was Johann Tetzel and his selling indulgences. [00:15:00] Saying, as soon as the copper into the kettle tings, a soul from purgatory springs. Things like that. And Martin Luther knew this as hocus pocus. There's nothing to this. He was so upset. He went and told one of his superiors and he didn't know that the archbishop was raising money so he could buy an office called simony. the whole thing was about money [00:15:30] it was not a thing about people coming out of purgatory purgatory is what they told the poor people to get the money and that is what made Martin Luther nail his 95 thesis to the Wittenberg church door and say for these 95 reasons this whole thing is a false deal that started out the reformation ok that's a whole story in itself we better stop right there But anyway, Martin Luther said, this thing of sacraments, there's nothing to that. [00:16:04] Yeah, we ought to have communion, but it's not what really saves us. He says, everybody has their own personal relationship with God. We don't have to go confess our sins to a priest. We don't have to be forgiven of our sins by a priest. We have Jesus Christ as our mediator between us and God. And his favorite verse was justification by faith. Romans teaches justification by faith but Martin Luther didn't like the other justification thing in the book of James where it says a man is justified by works [00:16:35] Martin couldn't handle that one he says faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God and in Lutheran churches the sermon is very important everybody needs to come and hear the sermon and the sermon has to be done by a trained preacher who preaches right theology and so on so you have right kind of faith and so people did not have to have a Holy Mother Church anymore. It was them and God. Them and God. And it released not just simply them spiritually but under Roman Catholicism money had to go to the church. [00:17:10] And the Roman Catholic Church taught that charging interest was wrong. Well with Protestantism it turned it upside down, backwards. And suddenly it was right to have money and to loan money and to get interest on your money. And that working at a job was doing God's service. See, in the Roman Catholic system, there's two levels of people. There are the perfect, the monks, the nuns, and the people who had given themselves to the church. [00:17:42] That was the religious, the perfect, and then there was the secular. Well, most people were in the secular. These are the common people who couldn't be good all the time. They couldn't afford to serve God all the time. These were the married people who have children, who work in the dirt and raise the crops and gave the church money. Paid the church taxes. They were the lower sort of people. Martin Luther says, forget that. You don't serve God. By that time, the people in the monasteries, the monks and the nuns were corrupt morally and a number of other ways. [00:18:20] it was just a corrupt system and suddenly making money became godly and with the protestant reformation that idea was brought over to the United States of America and it was turned loose in puritanism and in America and with that the United States has become the most powerful and wealthy nation the world has ever seen simply because the people were unleashed from these fetters of Roman Catholicism. If you look around today, any place today yet [00:18:53] who is still under the chains of Catholicism, their culture is backwards. They're poor. The priests and the Roman Catholic Church still abuse the people to this day. Some of you could give some testimony to this in Central America. Well, that's a step forward. But along with Protestantism, we have this word, independence we don't need the church every man stands between him and has a relationship with himself and God independent well the Anabaptists were reading their Bibles [00:19:25] and they said well Martin there's still something a little wrong right here they taught these other things we've already looked at that Christianity is discipleship and that we need to be obedient to Christ and it's not just justification by faith yeah that's half of it but we've got to have another half You know, if you have faith, you prove it by your living. Just like we talked about last time. If you don't live it, you don't have faith. Well, then a Lutheran says, well, you folks are just worksmen. Works, you just save yourself by your own good works. They didn't understand. No, they taught justification by faith. But in God's economy, truth walks on two legs, not just one. And they got that right. And they began to say, hmm. In the book of Ephesians, they read 1 Corinthians 12 where all this concept of the body where people are members one of another and they serve one another and they bear each other's burdens and every joint supplies what it can and they love each other and they support each other. [00:20:30] When somebody has a loss, everybody joins in and grieves together and helps to repair the loss. And when somebody joys, we joy together. And they say, well, this has to come to expression somehow. And so they formed a church, which was different from Roman Catholic kind of churches and is different from Lutheran kind of churches. The churches that they formed, I have to say this carefully, were even somewhat different from the way we have church today. [00:21:03] Their brotherhood concept was much stronger than what we have today. This is embarrassing, but I've got to tell you, I don't think they would have bought into insurance. They said, if God touches somebody, if the chastening hand of God is upon them then the church all suffers that and we all bear that and we have to reckon with the fact today [00:21:35] if we have insurance we protect ourselves and God is limited in the way he can do touch us well I don't want to go too far with that anyway you'll notice that these still have a circle churches still have accountability accountability and by the way this was strong in Anabaptist churches accountability one to another but it was not a holy mother church concept churches had authority but not nearly the amount of authority that what the Roman Catholic Church did and in these churches these members were accountable to each other but there were other churches and churches were accountable to other churches [00:22:22] You see, it's not just us. First of all, it's not just me and God. And it's not just us and God. It's like Revelation 1 talks about Christ standing in the midst of the churches. And I bless God that tonight the ministers are meeting in Sarasota, Florida. And pray that Christ can work in the midst of the churches as they're met in council. in Sarasota. [00:22:54] Well, this whole thing creates a culture of interdependence, which is a step above independence. And by the way, these are sequential. I have them wrong. Dependence should be at the bottom. Independence is a step up, and interdependence is a step up above this. But you cannot go to interdependence without going to independence first. You have to learn how to be independent before you can be interdependent. This is now being understood We do it even in the business community as an appropriate business model. [00:23:27] It used to be that America championed and gloried in their independence. And now the forefront of the business model is no longer that. The idea is interdependence. Whether it's, I don't know, in business terms, do you understand what we call horizontal management versus vertical management? Well, this whole concept of horizontal management is more of an interdependence kind of concept. And they're realizing that even on business levels, you can do better business interdependently than you can independently. [00:24:02] That's a whole subject itself. So, we'll just leave that. But this is central to understanding what we want to talk about tonight and the differences between churches. Now I'm oversimplifying these matters tonight, but these are three general basic concepts on how churches operate related to that. Independence here, people, accountable one, within the church itself. When it comes to a church, a New Testament church, the Roman Catholics drew their lines around territories. [00:24:35] It's like everybody in LaGrange County has to be, if the king or the governor was Catholic, everybody in LaGrange County had to be Catholic. If the governor of LaGrange County was Lutheran, you had to be Lutheran. No question. One day you woke up and you were Lutheran. And if you change governor, next day you woke up, you're Catholic. I don't know, but just, okay. That's called state churches. [00:25:06] But the Anabaptist people said, now there's something wrong here. We don't read that in the scriptures. They said, every man makes this choice himself. Faith is not forced. Every man chooses to love and follow Christ on his own. And nobody compels him. And so we have a concept of voluntarism that was born. Voluntarism, which means everybody chooses to be and it's not because you have to be it's because you want to be [00:25:37] now we as a people have been tested on this now for 500 years it's one thing for parents to choose that and it's another thing for children to choose that and let's be real honest about this one I've heard the story already where one father or mother says to his son or daughter I'll buy you a bow and arrow set if you become a Christian. Is that the way it works? Absolutely not. And I've been through this myself, so I understand. But after a while, we do our best as parents in teaching and training our children. We do everything we can short of pushing them into the kingdom. And then we've got to sit back and we have to wait until they choose. comes up then, what if they don't choose? [00:26:31] What if they don't? Some people have meant well and they just simply suggest to their children, well, why don't you just go through an instruction class? And I understand in some local churches around here, when you get to be a certain age, with certain of your friends, you just go through the instruction class and join church. That's a great way to have problems in the church down the road. Every individual, boy and girl, young person, has to make this choice himself because he recognizes his own sinfulness, [00:27:02] cries out to Christ in repentance and asks for forgiveness and desperately clings to Christ and wants to love and serve Christ for the rest of his days. And then baptism, again, is not as significant to us as it used to be. Back in those days, when you were baptized, it's like you stood up publicly and you said, alright, from here on, I've cast my lot with Christ and any time after I'm baptized I could be killed. What real threshold is crossed for us whenever our young people are baptized? [00:27:39] What cost? How much do they need to step out? Well, this is not an easy question to answer. But again, if you have a church full of people who are voluntary in their commitment to Christ, you don't have this whole thing of have to. You see, if you have to do something, then we've got our own self-will. You all know how it is. If somebody wants you to do something you don't want to do, it's like, I don't want to do that. We push back. All those little arrows, push back. [00:28:12] Have to focuses on all those arrows. But want to, where's the limit? What arrows are pushing back on that? Would to God that every single member of our churches would just be full of one, two. We want to go on with God. We want to go deeper with Him. Not because anybody is holding a stick over us or bribing us or threatening us. Simply for the love of Christ. Martin Luther taught the invisible church. [00:28:43] If we use all these dots right here as individual people, Martin Luther said, well, there's going to be an individual here and there who's going to repent and turn to Christ, but they're individuals. He called this the invisible church. He said on a group of people gathered on a Sunday morning, there might be 250 people there, but maybe only two or three that are really Christians. All the rest are there, but it might not be really Christians. He says, I'd really like to have a church of just those people. [00:29:13] But he says, I'm afraid we just wouldn't have enough. So we can't do it. We can't really have a visible church. Except the Anabaptists came along and they said, well, forget about it. We're not even going to worry about that. We're just going to have a church of committed people. And suddenly, somehow, they found a whole lot of people like this. And the people just flocked into the church that Martin Luther said couldn't happen. Well anyway, this represents the Anabaptist concept A gathered group of people in the midst of a society Sheep in the midst of wolves The little flock that Jesus was talking to [00:29:45] And this one illustrates Jesus says you are in the world But you're not of the world Some Anabaptist people got a little overzealous through the years And they decided, okay, if the world is so wicked Let's step outside the world And Jesus did not teach that And so they got themselves into trouble that way. Here's another way of looking at some of that same concept. The Protestant concept of the church. You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. And the Anabaptist concept of the church is [00:30:17] no man is in Christ apart from his brethren. You see all those circles are intertwined. What happens in real life? The Anabaptists taught a disciplined body. and he had some real things to deal with in the first two years of their existence and they have what's called a Schleitheim Confession and we can't go into all that tonight but look at this if this is a church and every one of those little circles has a star in it we'll say that every one of those circles represents a living relationship with Jesus Christ [00:30:50] and we'll say that the whole circle represents the whole church well you notice that not only is there a star in each individual circle There's a big star in the church. Christ is in the church. See, I have a relationship with God, but God doesn't work with just me individually, he works with us collectively. So Christ is in the midst of the body. Now, what happens if somebody dies spiritually in the body? Well, we have two choices. [00:31:22] Either we can pretend he hasn't died, and we don't want to lose members, and so we'll just make it look good, and we'll just keep him here. Well, the Anabaptist says, no. There is no such church unless it's a disciplined church. All people who have sin in their lives need to be excommunicated. and if you don't excommunicate, here's what happens. After a while, a little leavening is the whole lump and more people. If you let this person be worldly and have a worldly mindset and carnal, [00:31:54] then he influences other people to be that way. Yeah, there's still some people who have life, but did you notice that the big star in the church is barely visible? If you look closely, you can see some of the dots for that. The administrative homework is not done in this church. Over here we excommunicate if life dies so that life remains in the rest. Now if we don't do anything here, eventually this is what it becomes. It's a club and we're no longer a church. [00:32:26] There is no life of Christ in any of these people anymore. Do they still meet and gather together? Yes. Might they call themselves a church? Yes. But there is such a thing as an Anabaptist club. Do you want to be a part of an Anabaptist club? I don't either. I want to be a part of a living body. That's the discipline part of the church. You see, you can have groups of people who have faith in other people and you can have families and businesses, you can have an army, [00:32:57] you can have society, you can have a club of people like this. And they're all bound together by organization. Whereas the New Testament concept of the church where we have Christ working with humans who have faith and trust in Christ we have a church that's working as an organism now listen brothers and sisters every organism is organized but you can't just have organization you can have organization and not organism when a dead body is in a casket [00:33:29] it is just as organized as it was when it was living five minutes before we'll say now there are some well-intentioned people who say all we need is organism but you show me one living thing that's not organized a big one will just introduce the idea the two kingdom concept listen carefully we often show it this way that the world and Christ two separate kingdoms well that's sometimes we feel it this way [00:33:59] that Christ and his church are small and the world is large feared out little flock but you know this is a faulty way of looking at it look at this This is a much better way of looking at it. The universe is made by Christ. He made everything, made all people. Christ owns it all and the world is just a small part. The evil is doomed to start with. It's a losing proposition. The people who apostatize and leave Christ, I don't know, they're not gaining anything. They're entering into a loss. And I look around and I see people doing this and I think, don't they know what they're doing? We have loving hearts who would like to reach into the world and to help people. [00:34:54] I heard it tonight in this service, people who would care about other people. But this world is dangerous, you know, all these jagged edges. But we go into the world to try to rescue people from the world but bring them out of the world. and we cannot have the world in the church. They are two opposites. Polar opposites. And we could spend a long time on this one but we can't tonight. The two kingdoms in conflict. You notice here is the power of darkness and the kingdom of God. And we have opposites like here. [00:35:27] Satan and Christ. Rebellion and worship. We have all these. It would be really interesting to look at all those. But look. All the life issues we face, every single one of them, is worked out in this context. We have a choice. Are we going to take the prince of darkness, the power of darkness, or are we going to take the kingdom of God in these life issues? For example, education. The flow of the culture is this way, toward the power of darkness. [00:36:01] I don't get it. People who say they have children and they love their children and send them to the power of darkness to be educated. I don't get that. Public schools. What do they teach? They certainly don't teach Christian values. I've been there. Some of you have probably been there. Why Christian people think they can send their children to public schools? I don't know. It's a life issue. and the kingdom of Christ has all kinds of resources in itself. [00:36:34] So there should be no question that education is worked out in terms of the kingdom of God. Well, look at all these. Art, food, schedules, cars, houses, business, clothes, recreation, money, possessions, leisure, romance, sexuality, marriage, authority. every one of those plus more is worked out in one of these terms right here and you know if you if you go this way you get the broad way to deal with again it's a losing proposition I can't figure [00:37:09] out why people want to go that way it's a loss from start to finish compared to the narrow way a few people choose this way but it's the winning way is it uphill yes does it take sacrifice and Yes? Is it worth it? Yes! Because there's life there. We could talk about that for quite a while. If you take this way, the Anabaptists soon discovered it, if you take this kind of concept of discipleship in the context of the church, you're going to suffer for it. [00:37:41] I think I might have shared this with you before. The inevitability of suffering. If they have persecuted me, Jesus said, they will persecute you. Jesus was hated and rejected when he was here. And this kind of concept is just too high. And it convicts other people. And they try to get rid of them. They say nasty things about them. They use innuendo and slander. And all kinds of things that discredit the kingdom of God. But let it be that way. That's the way Jesus was, and if we face it, we're just simply identifying with him and his sufferings.